On the cover the 'butterfly' is a pinned Cosmia moth.
This song is about the death of one of her best friends. Here are some quotes from an article I found:
"...The hammer blow that began this series of hard knocks [the experiences that inspired the album] was the sudden death of Newsom’s best friend, 'one of the loves of my life.' Newsom got the call while she was driving between gigs, during the year when her career was first blowing up. 'So mortality is huge on this record. And there’s more than one type of death, of course, and that’s where the turmoil of the relationship figures in, but not quite as largely as you might suppose.'”
"After the singer gets the devastating news, she walks into a cornfield, and moths almost drown her. Later, she invokes the classic image of moths immolating themselves in the artificial sun of a porch-light—those attractive but dubious goals towards which so many of us so readily plunge. But here wild Cosmia, her form a thing of water and fire, flutters off on a farther flight, towards the possibility of a 'true light' that might even shine back down here, when the night comes in.
"Like the whole record, 'Cosmia' affirms life without offering a wisp of false consolation. 'The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again,' says Newsom. 'But there’s also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. It’s what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there’s a God is that there’s so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that’s his only proof. There’s so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There’s no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form. And those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about–unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things.'”
"Towards the end of high school, when she was eighteen, Newsom went down alone to a wild spot along the river. After asking their assistance, she arranged some stones into a circle, and then sat down within the ring. She stayed in the circle for three days, fasting, facing the river. Her best friend and some pals camped a few miles away, bringing her water and small portions of rice while she slept. She had assigned herself things to do but abandoned them all. She just sat there and watched the river, and, even more, she listened to it.
“'I was a completely different person before I went to the river, and a completely different person after,' Newsom says. When she first got back the girl was a total wreck. She would start crying when she woke up and not quit until she slept. She stopped going to school. She’d pick up the local paper, and read a headline like 'Man Dies in Car Crash,' and then the crash would be in her mind, and the man’s bloody crumbled body, and his pain and dread and fearful exit from this world. 'None of the calluses or borders or walls we put up to protect ourselves from going absolutely insane while experiencing life – none of those stood anymore. They had been worn completely away. I was like infantile and dysfunctional, a weepy, drunk mess.'”
So yes--you find more and more that her songs don't just contain literary symbolism and abstractness, but they're her way of putting into words some of those close and visual memories she has of life and relationships, things that she has stored on her own heart.
On the cover the 'butterfly' is a pinned Cosmia moth.
This song is about the death of one of her best friends. Here are some quotes from an article I found: "...The hammer blow that began this series of hard knocks [the experiences that inspired the album] was the sudden death of Newsom’s best friend, 'one of the loves of my life.' Newsom got the call while she was driving between gigs, during the year when her career was first blowing up. 'So mortality is huge on this record. And there’s more than one type of death, of course, and that’s where the turmoil of the relationship figures in, but not quite as largely as you might suppose.'”
"After the singer gets the devastating news, she walks into a cornfield, and moths almost drown her. Later, she invokes the classic image of moths immolating themselves in the artificial sun of a porch-light—those attractive but dubious goals towards which so many of us so readily plunge. But here wild Cosmia, her form a thing of water and fire, flutters off on a farther flight, towards the possibility of a 'true light' that might even shine back down here, when the night comes in.
"Like the whole record, 'Cosmia' affirms life without offering a wisp of false consolation. 'The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again,' says Newsom. 'But there’s also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. It’s what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there’s a God is that there’s so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that’s his only proof. There’s so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There’s no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form. And those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about–unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things.'”
"Towards the end of high school, when she was eighteen, Newsom went down alone to a wild spot along the river. After asking their assistance, she arranged some stones into a circle, and then sat down within the ring. She stayed in the circle for three days, fasting, facing the river. Her best friend and some pals camped a few miles away, bringing her water and small portions of rice while she slept. She had assigned herself things to do but abandoned them all. She just sat there and watched the river, and, even more, she listened to it.
“'I was a completely different person before I went to the river, and a completely different person after,' Newsom says. When she first got back the girl was a total wreck. She would start crying when she woke up and not quit until she slept. She stopped going to school. She’d pick up the local paper, and read a headline like 'Man Dies in Car Crash,' and then the crash would be in her mind, and the man’s bloody crumbled body, and his pain and dread and fearful exit from this world. 'None of the calluses or borders or walls we put up to protect ourselves from going absolutely insane while experiencing life – none of those stood anymore. They had been worn completely away. I was like infantile and dysfunctional, a weepy, drunk mess.'”
So yes--you find more and more that her songs don't just contain literary symbolism and abstractness, but they're her way of putting into words some of those close and visual memories she has of life and relationships, things that she has stored on her own heart.