I haven't had a great deal of time yet to think about this song, so I don't have much of an accuratish interpretation. But early this year for school in English I read T. S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland', Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway' and Michael Cunningham's 'The Hours'. The storyline and emotion behind this song is I think not quite the same, but gosh, there are similarities... read them if you haven't, they are at least incredibly clever...
Anyway, as to the storyline, here is the raw first impression I have - probably in some things wrong, but just putting it out there. I will think about it more and post later, (nearly holidays!).
The first part is definitely a reference to war... a man standing under violent attack. The description is dreamlike, surreal, horrifying... everything is vivid and exaggerated. This, as well as the context, suggests that this is an image of a man who was in the war, but is now home... suffering post-traumatic flashbacks or such.
"Then there was a silence you took to mean something:
mean, run, sing/ For alive you will evermore be/ And the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulkin'/ Has gone east/ While you're left to explain them to me/ ...It was a dark dream, darlin', it's over/ the firebreather is beneath the clover... " - not only an incredibly powerful comment on mortality, these lines show the way his mental condition and memory of the past consumes him, and the way he now shares them with the speaker, the woman. "Clear the room! There's a fire, a fire, a fire..." shows the way this perception permeates his reality, and the song progresses to show how the woman has come into his life to comfort him and to help him forget... almost like a mother, but it's clearly a romantic relationship - "Fire... moves... away/ Fire moves away son/ Why would you say/ I was the last one?"
She goes out to find something that will heal him. There are lots of references in this part of the song... and much writing that just creates an image to emulate a feeling. It's so incredible. I like how she says "Rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes/ I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it!/ Smell of a stone fruit being cut and being opened/ Smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking" - this talks about the reason for the woman's attraction to him. She is enthralled by his story. It is tragic... the image of cutting open a fruit, death, to serve an eater, is profound. Maybe she is caught rowing along the river of his depth and his intensity... the fact that he needs her, and she needs him... fascinated by him, sorry for him?
"Scrape your knee; it is only skin/ Makes the sound of violins" starts to show the death in the situation. There is detachment from reality, a fascination with pain and brokenness brought on by the extreme pain of the situation. Perhaps it questions the way society views humanity... losing its sense of the value of life, people are thrown away as objects, 'threshed' by humanity. There is a verging insanity when you compare injury to music, as if the subject's experiences have made it so he is numb (though it torments him mentally and emotionally... there's the painful conflict...) and it suits the theme so wrought with the feeling of internal and actual death.
When it says "Knowing how the common-folk condemn/ What it is I do, to you, to keep you warm/ Being a woman, being a woman", this sheds more light on the nature of the relationship, but it is here that I'm hesitant to interpret for fear of being embarrassingly wrong. Anyway, if you've read Virginia Woolf's work, this reminds me a lot of Lucrezia Warren Smith: married to Septimus not because he loved her, but because he needed her as an 'anaesthetic'. Only the speaker here, I think, isn't married... she comforts him 'as a woman' and in so doing is condemned by society. But she does it to try to make him better. Also hesitant to use the label 'codependent', but it bears some similarities. No doubt if this is right there are some references in the song that I'm missing... and wouldn't like to explore besides. Anyway, that's just the impression of it in my reading... not going to psychoanalyse it...
Well, here's a stanza that fascinates me: "But always up the mountainside you're clambering/ Groping blindly, hungry for anything:/ Picking through your pocket linings - well, what is this?/ Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?" Sassafras is used as a painkiller, a stimulant and a medicine for various diseases. Sisyphus is, in Greek mythology, a king punished in the underworld by being set to roll a huge rock up a hill throughout eternity. This is the frustration and hopelessness of the situation... he can't recover, he's stuck and it's not his fault... and he's addicted to whatever will numb him further. It is sad. It is unfair. It is tragic.
The part with the spiders and the cherry trees... won't delve too deeply into that, but it is beautifully phrased and again illustrates death and hopelessness, the way the man is discarded.
"Are you mine?/ My heart?/ Mine anymore?"... it does affect the speaker deeply. She is committed to him, but it breaks her too... in joining with him, she enters his world. That's why - and here's something I'm not sure about, but anyway - I think she is overwhelmed and leaves him - "See, I got gone when I got wise/ But I can't with certainty say we survived". And then she comes back in the only ray of hope in the end "And if the love of a woman or two, dear,/ Couldn't move you to such heights, then all I can do/ Is do, my darling, right by you" - recklessly facing the portrayed hopelessness of their reality by sticking with him. That seems to be her only answer: "We have everything/ Life is thundering blissful towards death..."
H'm, I can be really verbose. Sorry. I'll blame it on this being a long song :-) Skipping through bits to get to the point...
"Last week our picture window produced a half-word/ Heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird/ ...Said a sort of prayer for some sort of rare grace/ Then thought I ought to take her to a higher place/ ...Then how I hollered!
cause she'd lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two/ ...Then, saw the treetops, cocked her head and up and flew..." - this relates so strongly to the imagery in 'The Hours'. The reference to the wasteland a bit later on makes me think it could be intentional - even so, it fits thematically, incredibly well. An image of death, and ressurection... think on that a while, it's powerful and links to so many things. The same imagery is in this: "Take my bones, I don't need none/ Cold, cold cupboard, Lord, nothing to chew on!/ Suck all day on a cherry stone/ Dig a little hole, not three inches round/ Spit your pit in the hole in the ground/ Weep upon the spot for the starving of me!/ Till up grow a fine young cherry tree..." - death to bring life, but it's still wearying and terrible.
It's this kind of exploitation of people that has destroyed the man, and she is in the line of the damage. So she leaves. But she can't stay away, and she comes back to him. That's where the song ends. It's a mess, they're stuck in the middle of a war that is endless death that never seems to die in its own immortality - but they have each other....
So... anyway, I am not one to analyse the intention behind a work with haste and say that I am right. I don't want to read Joanna wrongly through her words, not knowing her personally, or the situation she wrote from. But looking at the text alone, I would say it's sybolic and deeply personal... a feeling relating to parts of her own relationship with somebody, which is encapsulated well in the metaphor, whether all parts of it are accurately linked to events in her life or not. It could relate to many things. If not in her life, someone who could relate to it would be a person in a relationship with someone who is broken, but she longs to make him better, he needs her, and it breaks her too but she can't leave - trying to take the blame off him. Or it could have nothing to do with a relationship, and be a narrative whose feeling relates to one Joanna had felt... maybe she was fascinated by the hopelessness or feeling of death, or yearning, or those things, and related it to something else.
Don't know. Haven't thought deeply enough to know, and haven't got enough background. But certainly it is a really human song. It stirs you, it's deep and the way it's musically executed is incredible. It does get you thinking... there is so much there...
I haven't had a great deal of time yet to think about this song, so I don't have much of an accuratish interpretation. But early this year for school in English I read T. S. Eliot's 'The Wasteland', Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs. Dalloway' and Michael Cunningham's 'The Hours'. The storyline and emotion behind this song is I think not quite the same, but gosh, there are similarities... read them if you haven't, they are at least incredibly clever...
Anyway, as to the storyline, here is the raw first impression I have - probably in some things wrong, but just putting it out there. I will think about it more and post later, (nearly holidays!).
The first part is definitely a reference to war... a man standing under violent attack. The description is dreamlike, surreal, horrifying... everything is vivid and exaggerated. This, as well as the context, suggests that this is an image of a man who was in the war, but is now home... suffering post-traumatic flashbacks or such.
"Then there was a silence you took to mean something: mean, run, sing/ For alive you will evermore be/ And the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulkin'/ Has gone east/ While you're left to explain them to me/ ...It was a dark dream, darlin', it's over/ the firebreather is beneath the clover... " - not only an incredibly powerful comment on mortality, these lines show the way his mental condition and memory of the past consumes him, and the way he now shares them with the speaker, the woman. "Clear the room! There's a fire, a fire, a fire..." shows the way this perception permeates his reality, and the song progresses to show how the woman has come into his life to comfort him and to help him forget... almost like a mother, but it's clearly a romantic relationship - "Fire... moves... away/ Fire moves away son/ Why would you say/ I was the last one?"
She goes out to find something that will heal him. There are lots of references in this part of the song... and much writing that just creates an image to emulate a feeling. It's so incredible. I like how she says "Rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes/ I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it!/ Smell of a stone fruit being cut and being opened/ Smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking" - this talks about the reason for the woman's attraction to him. She is enthralled by his story. It is tragic... the image of cutting open a fruit, death, to serve an eater, is profound. Maybe she is caught rowing along the river of his depth and his intensity... the fact that he needs her, and she needs him... fascinated by him, sorry for him?
"Scrape your knee; it is only skin/ Makes the sound of violins" starts to show the death in the situation. There is detachment from reality, a fascination with pain and brokenness brought on by the extreme pain of the situation. Perhaps it questions the way society views humanity... losing its sense of the value of life, people are thrown away as objects, 'threshed' by humanity. There is a verging insanity when you compare injury to music, as if the subject's experiences have made it so he is numb (though it torments him mentally and emotionally... there's the painful conflict...) and it suits the theme so wrought with the feeling of internal and actual death.
When it says "Knowing how the common-folk condemn/ What it is I do, to you, to keep you warm/ Being a woman, being a woman", this sheds more light on the nature of the relationship, but it is here that I'm hesitant to interpret for fear of being embarrassingly wrong. Anyway, if you've read Virginia Woolf's work, this reminds me a lot of Lucrezia Warren Smith: married to Septimus not because he loved her, but because he needed her as an 'anaesthetic'. Only the speaker here, I think, isn't married... she comforts him 'as a woman' and in so doing is condemned by society. But she does it to try to make him better. Also hesitant to use the label 'codependent', but it bears some similarities. No doubt if this is right there are some references in the song that I'm missing... and wouldn't like to explore besides. Anyway, that's just the impression of it in my reading... not going to psychoanalyse it...
Well, here's a stanza that fascinates me: "But always up the mountainside you're clambering/ Groping blindly, hungry for anything:/ Picking through your pocket linings - well, what is this?/ Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?" Sassafras is used as a painkiller, a stimulant and a medicine for various diseases. Sisyphus is, in Greek mythology, a king punished in the underworld by being set to roll a huge rock up a hill throughout eternity. This is the frustration and hopelessness of the situation... he can't recover, he's stuck and it's not his fault... and he's addicted to whatever will numb him further. It is sad. It is unfair. It is tragic.
The part with the spiders and the cherry trees... won't delve too deeply into that, but it is beautifully phrased and again illustrates death and hopelessness, the way the man is discarded.
"Are you mine?/ My heart?/ Mine anymore?"... it does affect the speaker deeply. She is committed to him, but it breaks her too... in joining with him, she enters his world. That's why - and here's something I'm not sure about, but anyway - I think she is overwhelmed and leaves him - "See, I got gone when I got wise/ But I can't with certainty say we survived". And then she comes back in the only ray of hope in the end "And if the love of a woman or two, dear,/ Couldn't move you to such heights, then all I can do/ Is do, my darling, right by you" - recklessly facing the portrayed hopelessness of their reality by sticking with him. That seems to be her only answer: "We have everything/ Life is thundering blissful towards death..."
H'm, I can be really verbose. Sorry. I'll blame it on this being a long song :-) Skipping through bits to get to the point...
"Last week our picture window produced a half-word/ Heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird/ ...Said a sort of prayer for some sort of rare grace/ Then thought I ought to take her to a higher place/ ...Then how I hollered! cause she'd lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two/ ...Then, saw the treetops, cocked her head and up and flew..." - this relates so strongly to the imagery in 'The Hours'. The reference to the wasteland a bit later on makes me think it could be intentional - even so, it fits thematically, incredibly well. An image of death, and ressurection... think on that a while, it's powerful and links to so many things. The same imagery is in this: "Take my bones, I don't need none/ Cold, cold cupboard, Lord, nothing to chew on!/ Suck all day on a cherry stone/ Dig a little hole, not three inches round/ Spit your pit in the hole in the ground/ Weep upon the spot for the starving of me!/ Till up grow a fine young cherry tree..." - death to bring life, but it's still wearying and terrible.
It's this kind of exploitation of people that has destroyed the man, and she is in the line of the damage. So she leaves. But she can't stay away, and she comes back to him. That's where the song ends. It's a mess, they're stuck in the middle of a war that is endless death that never seems to die in its own immortality - but they have each other....
So... anyway, I am not one to analyse the intention behind a work with haste and say that I am right. I don't want to read Joanna wrongly through her words, not knowing her personally, or the situation she wrote from. But looking at the text alone, I would say it's sybolic and deeply personal... a feeling relating to parts of her own relationship with somebody, which is encapsulated well in the metaphor, whether all parts of it are accurately linked to events in her life or not. It could relate to many things. If not in her life, someone who could relate to it would be a person in a relationship with someone who is broken, but she longs to make him better, he needs her, and it breaks her too but she can't leave - trying to take the blame off him. Or it could have nothing to do with a relationship, and be a narrative whose feeling relates to one Joanna had felt... maybe she was fascinated by the hopelessness or feeling of death, or yearning, or those things, and related it to something else.
Don't know. Haven't thought deeply enough to know, and haven't got enough background. But certainly it is a really human song. It stirs you, it's deep and the way it's musically executed is incredible. It does get you thinking... there is so much there...