Hearing a couple things differently, and a couple listens in the headphones are confirming it, I think:
"how a young man yearns after a nurse"
"his impotent heart racing"
and a very subtle "if" before "desire"
I nearly wrote an essay concerning the last stanza, and I think it's actually not a bad place to approach much of J Tillman's catalog from, that statement. There's a bit of confusion of perspective here, and I'm not certain if I'm implying it or if it's there to be found, but "the universe makes much more sense without a purpose" being immediately followed by the head-hangingly sullen "poor, poor James" certainly carries a sense of pity for the character, but, and here's where things might get a little worth arguing over, I think there's a bit of quotation happening here. As in this is a thing that James has said, and Tillman's "poor, poor James" is an expression of pity in response to James' expression of the sentiment.
Or perhaps it's the other way around, suggesting that James' crippling fear of himself, his future, fate, and the universe, and perhaps even God are keeping him from his own life.
If desire is what makes upright mammals human,
put me out to graze, give this beast a burden.
I can't help this line, though, and it's what I keep returning to. It's a conditional statement, not just a declaration, and Tillman suggests that, if desire is what is human in us, then he wants to be put out to graze, which is an odd idiom to use here. The immediate connotation is that of "put out to pasture," but this carries a different weight in usage. I wish I had a better handle of this, but the image I'm getting is of his desire to be most human, put to feed on desire itself, to take the weight of this humanity as his own burden, so that in doing so he might truly live. A bit of a plea to be thrown into the thick of it all, proclaiming (ah, here we are) that "the universe makes much more sense without a purpose." Perhaps he's not pitying James for coining the line, but proclaiming it in response to the character, choosing to live without needing the answer to it all figured out, instead of being crippled by uncertainty about it.
Hearing a couple things differently, and a couple listens in the headphones are confirming it, I think:
"how a young man yearns after a nurse"
"his impotent heart racing"
and a very subtle "if" before "desire"
I nearly wrote an essay concerning the last stanza, and I think it's actually not a bad place to approach much of J Tillman's catalog from, that statement. There's a bit of confusion of perspective here, and I'm not certain if I'm implying it or if it's there to be found, but "the universe makes much more sense without a purpose" being immediately followed by the head-hangingly sullen "poor, poor James" certainly carries a sense of pity for the character, but, and here's where things might get a little worth arguing over, I think there's a bit of quotation happening here. As in this is a thing that James has said, and Tillman's "poor, poor James" is an expression of pity in response to James' expression of the sentiment.
Or perhaps it's the other way around, suggesting that James' crippling fear of himself, his future, fate, and the universe, and perhaps even God are keeping him from his own life.
If desire is what makes upright mammals human, put me out to graze, give this beast a burden.
I can't help this line, though, and it's what I keep returning to. It's a conditional statement, not just a declaration, and Tillman suggests that, if desire is what is human in us, then he wants to be put out to graze, which is an odd idiom to use here. The immediate connotation is that of "put out to pasture," but this carries a different weight in usage. I wish I had a better handle of this, but the image I'm getting is of his desire to be most human, put to feed on desire itself, to take the weight of this humanity as his own burden, so that in doing so he might truly live. A bit of a plea to be thrown into the thick of it all, proclaiming (ah, here we are) that "the universe makes much more sense without a purpose." Perhaps he's not pitying James for coining the line, but proclaiming it in response to the character, choosing to live without needing the answer to it all figured out, instead of being crippled by uncertainty about it.
Thoughts?