¤ milky moon ¤

There. Tobias and the angel becomes a mother and child on the flight into Egypt.

Thank you so much for recording this. I'm in awe. I reckon her bluesy/whatever efforts are not much of my liking though (I tend to skip Soft as Chalk), but her singing on this song is just mesmerizing. I'm completely in love with her !!!

By the way, some Last.FM user commented on Joanna Newsom's page that her new album is coming out sooner than we think and that it'll have 14 tracks. True? False? ...

false

Also:

In whose employ contaminant himself proceeded John's fall.

John Purroy Mitchel died falling from an airplane, so a reference to that? The rest of the sentence is weird though, can't figure out how it's supposed to go.

yes! yes. oh god. falling from the airplane into thick snow. okay I'm typing this all up right now hold up

Wow. I just watched the vid for the first time and I'm a bit dumbstruck. I don't know any of the lyrics and haven't read any of the discussion in this thread but this song effected me in such a strong way. I just burst into tears about 2/3 through. Not sad tears mind you, but rather tears of joy at the fact that the world is often so depressing, trivial, and banal, and yet an artist is still capable of creating something brilliant, affecting and unexpected. Although I love the Diver's Wife, it seemed very close to her other recent material and didn't have such an immediate effect on me. I guess unconsciously I was perhaps expecting her other new material to be a simple extension of this. The lesson: never doubt Newsom's drive to continually push herself artistically. This song felt like a breath of fresh air or a beam of sunlight on this rainy day. I'm so happy this exists. When I witness an individual artistic breakthrough it gives me hope that humans are perhaps also capable of a collective breakthrough in a political sense. Things don't simply stay the same. But now I'm really starting to ramble...

Ha, direct quote from the New York TImes article about his death:

"He was frequently mentioned as having shown unusual daring."

Damn, and he's actually quoted as saying "That's all right; it's all over now," right before boarding the plane as a response to a man saying he was sorry he hadn't vote for him.

The article:



Aaaaand, "It makes my hair stand on end to see Major Mitchel fly."

Well i just heard it for the first time.
Some thimgs are just too beaitiful for words.

Yes! It's

swearing that our hair stood on end
to see John Purroy Mitchell depart

Also -- anyone else hearing, "My cunt" after the Western front part...? Or is that just me?

and

Interred with other daughters,
in dirt in other potters' fields.

I'm glad I didn't miss out fully on the lyric party.

The only other thing I can think of right now is that:

"The event is in the hand. / Oh God."

Is actually:

"The event is in the hand / o' God."

"O" can replace "of" in that way, right? I feel like the sentence makes more sense that way.

I think it makes sense either way really and it doesn't really make sense that she'd contract such a pronounced syllable. I think I do prefer it as "hand of god" tho. I dunno

It's really interesting that, after an album embedded in the lore and imagery and history of northern California, we're getting a song rooted in the city, specifically New York. I think that's really reflected in the academic word choices...

I hear O mercy, O God, and not an x sound.

yeah okay. it's good enough probably. it's the flurry of water/ol flory walker bit that's really stumping me.

The King Tamanend bit works really well!