¤ milky moon ¤

Another entry to the collection of Nabokov references:

"Amora Obscura" refers to "camera obscura", a device for projecting an image on a screen, using either a lens or pinhole, which fits perfectly with the imagery of this song. But "Camera Obscura" is also the original Russian title of Nabokov's novel which in English translation became "Laughter in the Dark".

Camera Obscura is also the name of Nico's last studio album (produced by John Cale). But I don;t think that is relevant here. I see Joanna's 'amora obscure' as a clever piece of word play, to suggest the camera obscura, and love.

Camera obscura's literal meanbing is dark room (or chanber), refers to the simple optical device which can produce a focused image without the need for a lens (albeit upside-down and reversed), because light from each point of the subject has only one path (through a tiny hole) to the screen or film at the opposite side of the room or box. The device may be a as large as a room (there are several examples throughout the world) or simply a cardboard box. If the subject is bright enough, it needn't even have sides (just the holed screen in front and a screen upon which to project behind it: such a set-up can be used to view a solar eclipse safely).

This song is filled with references to light and optics: the mention of 'the sky over the ocean' starts them off, implying reflection, as contrasted to the earlier lines which hint at the descent of something airborne (should we recollect the crashed 'plane in The Family Jams, or is this flight, and its poor flight attendant, something more allegorical?) Following this, there's a 'bright garden', and a 'honeycomb made of light' (which recalls both those hexagons one sees as an effect of pointing a camera too close to the sun, and this section from Easy: "in the river made of light, / I'm your little life-giver. / I will give my life". The song finishes with the segment concerning the bright light and the pin-hole.

Incidentally, there's another fairly obscure physics related word in there, too. "homes, intersected: / each enclosed, anelectric and alone". This at first seems to be contradictory - the homes are both intersected and alone. But perhaps she is alluding to the fact that, however close ones lives to ones neighbours, there is still a sense of isolation. An anelectric object or material is one which, when rubbed, does not become electrically charged through the transfer of electrons. Contrast this with a balloon, comb, or even your body as you walk across a carpet - these things can build up static electricity, and so are ideoelectric. Perhaps Joanna is saying that, no matter how much interaction one offers to the residents of these homes, there is no built up of energy in them.

The above may well be completely wrong, but I do find it interesting that, whereas previous songs have offered plenty of scope for 'delving' into historical and contemporary persons (HOOM's Go Long and Have One On Me being great examples), on Divers she still offers this (Sapokanikan) but also allows delving into science, cosmology, and mathematics, in a depth last seen with Emily.

There's a fantastic camera obscura in Edinburgh which uses a series of mirrors at the top of a tower to create a movable, real-time image of the city. There are two handles you can use to adjust the mirrors, which reflect light into a pinhole which then casts an image on to a bowl, around which visitors stand. It's kind of amazing - like an omnipresent CCTV camera. I think you can even zoom in.

Thank you everyone for what you've contributed about this incredible song... That sounds amazing, Jordan! Another reason to want to go back to Edinburgh. I saw on genius that someone linked to James Dickey's poem, and I found this little illuminating write-up that he did about it.

The poem, Falling : http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171431

His reflections on it:

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/po ... alling.htm

On "Falling"

James Dickey

I suppose if any poem of mine has gotten much attention, "Falling" has. The original idea came out of a newspaper item I once read to the effect that an Allegheny Airlines stewardess had fallen out of an airplane and was found later on, dead. But when you have a little hint like this that entertains your imagination, you take off with it and make your own thing out of it. I made her fall from an airplane over the Midwest. It’s not a jet. People think of it as a jet, but it couldn’t possibly be a jet. If it had been a jet, it would be so high that she would have been flash-frozen. But if you’re a poet, you can make it happen the way you want it to. So I made the plane one that would be flying at a speed and altitude over the Midwest at which such a thing could happen to the stewardess.

"Falling" is a record of the way she feels as she falls; panic at first and then a kind of goddess-like invulnerability. She discovers that the human body can actually fly a little bit. She tries to find water to fall into, but in the end she can’t and falls into a cornfield and dies there. She undresses on the way down, because since she’s going to die she wants to die, as she says, "beyond explanation." She would rather be found naked in a cornfield than in an airline uniform. So she takes off everything, is clean, purely desirable, purely woman, and dies in that way. I also tried to think of the mystical possibility there might be for farmers in that vicinity, under those conditions.

Many different interpretations have been given to this poem. A lot of people say that it’s too far-fetched, that nothing like this would really happen. I’m quite sure it wouldn’t. But I was interested in trying to determine, by using my own particular capacities, what might conceivably go on. I was interested in using the kind of time-telescoping effect that Bergson talks about in discussing the difference between clock time and lived time. It takes twenty minutes to read the poem, more or less. It surely wouldn’t have taken her nearly that long to fall. But as to how long it seemed to her, that’s quite a different thing. Time has a way of widening out when you’re in an extreme adrenalin kind of situation. I felt justified in writing "Falling" the way I did. I wouldn’t want to go back and try to write it again. I suppose there are faults in it which people will be pointing out to me for years, but I did it the way I wanted to do it, and I’ll stand by that.

[….]

I evolved the split line to try and do what I could to reproduce as nearly as I could the real way of the mind as it associates verbally. The mind doesn’t seem to work in a straight line, but associates in bursts of words, in jumps. I used this technique for "Falling."

From Self-Interviews. New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1970. © 1970 by James Dickey.

What a wonderful poem, it seems almost impossible that it has not partly inspired A Pin-Light Bent. I find it very hard to separate this song from You Will Not Take My Heart Alive, they both seem to be about falling from the sky.

I think this is my favourite

this track and Time really struck me and continue to grow as favorites

in reading another hardcore fan's take on why she didn't/doesn't like these tracks as much - it explained alot as to why I adore them and feel they are big steps forward in her evolution as a song composer.

To simplify the perspective - these songs aren't the personal trials and tribulations of youth & relationships that so many fans tend to identify and relate to previously, and go so far as claim as their own ::cough:: feminists ::cough::

There feels like a universe unfolding before us in where JN will take the music next, bigger, broader strokes and stories that are told through the detail of her words and music. That is the hope of hearing many more years of her art.

wanbly, i don't know if i well understand you but i never considered JN as especially feminist, speaking of women doesn't means necessarly be feminist, no ?
As a non native english speaking ppl, i first stuck on PLB melody and furthermore simplessness, don't forget that i'm probably the only longterm fan who really dislike (huh) Ys, i like JN when it's simple, even if i adore leaving the city for his super catchy line. Then i read the lyrics of PLB and fell in love for also this simple poetric vision.

I think you misunderstood, Milki. He's making a very bizarre dig at feminists because one fan said she didn't like the song.

although I will admit to being bizarre, this isn't a dig at anyone at all, merely a reflection that helped clarify a few things for me personally

Now as to all the feminist co-opting of JN and her art, I have attempted to stay way out of that since the early Tumblrs and discussions.

For me it is neither here nor there that it is feminism - more that there are any "isms" associated.

The political machinations of any isms as applied to an artist by a fanbase, without said artist laying claim or subscribing to such schismatic views is simply off-putting.

She's pretty clearly feminist in interviews and pretty clearly feminist in the themes of her work. She's better educated than the standard of feminist argument you sometimes see on the Internet, but that's it. I think her being a feminist is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

each work is the digestion of a public and don't you think you overreacting feminist analogy in her work ? it's not a political machination, it's politic indeed but there no machination and no will of mispelling her work. Of course you interpret someone's work as you want. I consider certain book or art product as an inspiration in my political ways, even if the author doesn't mean it at a first place. I just finish my movie, and for my editor it's clear that i deal with the migrant saudade in the script, i didn't meant it at all but why not, an art product is a projection of who you are. Then i still don't understand the feminist pb with this girl claiming she doesn't like the song, but hey, i'm not on the FB page, it's more a "local pb".
Alex, i think that 99% of educated women are "inducively" feminist or conservative with a tea-partying craziness. I never notice her as clearly feminist, as Björk, they are normally aware of a problem, there are not especially militant...i'm always ill at ease when ppl consider a woman as a feminist just because she's speaking about women. It's not relevant as sexism is a serious pb and need a real constructed speech of political way of acting. Catherine Breillat is a feminist artist, Amy Winehouse is just a free-speaking woman.

the light is refracted as soon as the diameter is a fraction of the wavelength due to the wavelengthing theory of light...well i can probably explain this better in french, but i probably won't as i don't discuss optic physic since cinema school
to mee the amora obscura is less complex as the camera obscura, maybe JN melts the idea of the CA and stenope, it suits better with some part of the lyrics, isn't it ?
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A9nop%C3%A9

good sum up of the feminist stuff Alex, i agree

Well, a pinhole camera is a type of camera obscura - the most basic type. I don't know why I didn't realise the light would always be refracted! Duh, that's why it produces a projected image at all.