¤ milky moon ¤

Apologies for that instance of moderator incompetence. Not sure how to do most things, still, but I'll work it out. Probably shouldn't attempt this when I'm a little drunk.

I also viewed the whole last few minutes of this song as a reference to the eruption of Vesuvius in Pompeii, being used as a metaphor for losing love. Certainly is an interpretable track.

very nice- yes I see that

it's definitely apocalyptic

Here's something interesting - "Halcyon", which used adjectivally means "calm, undisturbed, peaceful, serene", refers when used nominally to the kingfisher (Halcyon is the genus to which kingfishers belong) or to a mythical bird that nests on the sea, calming the waters.

I said that earlier in this thread no?

Oh! I didn't read over the rest of it. Oh, right, there. Well, I guess I elaborated on it a little.

So I haven't attempted to penetrate this one at all yet, but I gathered some parcifal and the holy grail myth references in 81 and so I feel I should at least point out that maybe it has something to do with the "Fisher King" of the grail myths. Such as with "baby birch" and "go long" and really all of them I sense a lot of gender archetypal stuff and the grail myth with the fisher king wound and all that stuff represents the deep foibles of males... Just some scattered thoughts...

Actually, I think it's more about Joanna kind of flipping out--she's Christian, and she's deathly afraid of the second coming (pardon the horrible pun ), at least from what I get from the other songs on the album.

She's also trying to get God to spill the beans regarding the way He tests people--giving you a sock in the face so you have practice dealing with it; never enough to crack your skull, but definitely enough to give you a challenge and a handful--and maybe a black eye--which can seem pretty dang mean at times.

Joanna also apparently wants to know more about Jesus as a person--where He hid, whether He had a special someone he had to leave behind, etc., to relate to her.

The song also shows Him comforting her, consoling her about the "love she left on the farm."

Oh, and one more thing: Gormless means stupid, idiotic, brainless.

Also, the title could refer to the way He was the king of the fishers of men...

I grew up religious, but to be honest I don't notice even a hint of Christianity from her songs. Definitely some "oh lords" and some very spiritual phrasing, but I don't see anything Christian.
The only explicit references I hear to god are when she is questioning if he even exists at all in Ribbon Bows "blink once if god / twice if no god" and a sort of demeaning reference to him in Soft As Chalk ("I glare and nod like the character god / bearing down upon the houses and lawns").
In fact, her existentialist struggles portrayed by the lyrics in Ys suggest that her belief in an afterlife is tenuous at best. (This is alluded to most explicitly in Emily and Sawdust & Diamonds).

I think one of the first written appearances in Arthurian legend of the Fisher King is in Chrétien de Troyes' unfinished epic Le Conte du Graal (The Story of the Grail) which was the invention of the story of the holy grail. In this story the Fisher King is weakened and only kept alive by a grail which carries a communion host that he eats every day, and there is also a mysterious bloody lance (gender issues anyone?) but I definitely think the idea of a dependency in a relationship comes through the lyrics of this song and if not directly related to Chrétien, I think there's some link to the Fisher King of these tales. That's my view anyway Jordy.

There's a sense of some kind of supernatural force, I think ("loving him, we move within his borders", though I was never sure that didn't just refer to their dad, who she's with), but it's a far cry from Yahweh.

Didn't know about the Fisher King in Le Conte du Graal. I sort of half-remember some grail stuff from when I read From Ritual to Romance that I only remember now as it pertains to Eliot, since that's why I was reading up on it. I might read it again, because I feel something like déja vu reading lines like, "oh, Lord,/it happens without even trying", "in naming, rise above time,/as it, flashing, passes" and, "I swear I know you. You know me./Where have we met before?/Tell me true:/to whose authority/do you consign your soul?" - kinda like they might come from the same place as The Waste Land, but not actually from The Waste Land, which is why there's no more than a tenuous link.

I can kinda see how the atom bomb and Vesuvius images fit together, because they have something in common - they left behind immortal impressions of their victims. In Pompeii and Herculaneum, there are the famous casts of people who were burnt alive; in Hiroshima and Nagasaki there are silhouettes of people and objects that were vapourised blasted into the concrete.

When HOOM first came out, I subconsciously divided it's songs into four categories, from the brilliant Baby Birch heading the top one, down to the somewhat less essential You And Me, Bess in the lowest. Kingfisher was firmly in the third category.

It has risen steadily over the months, and is now one of my favourites on the album. The point where she slows it down is simply spine-tingling, and the following lines are among my musical highlights - not just Joanna's, but anywhere:

We came by the boatload,
and were immobilized:
worshipping volcanoes,
charting the loping skies.
The tides of the earth
left us bound, and calcified,
and made as obstinate as obsidian,
unmoving, save our eyes:*
just mooning and blinking

*