VIRB

"There is a rusty light on the pines tonight
Sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow
Down into the bones of the birches
And the spires of the churches
Jutting out from the shadows
The yoke, and the axe, and the old smokestacks and the bale and the barrow
And everything sloped like it was dragged from a rope
In the mouth of the south below

We've seen those mountains kneeling, felten and grey
We thought our very hearts would up and melt away
From that snow in the night time
Just going
And going
And the stirring of wind chimes
In the morning
In the morning
Helps me find my way back in
From the place where I have been

And, Emily - I saw you last night by the river
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water
Frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever,
In a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky'd been breathing on a mirror

Anyhow - I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all I knew of the rote uniVerse were those pleiades loosed in december
I promised you I'd set them to Verse so I'd always remember

That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee"

These are a few lines from the song 'Emily' from Joanna Newsom's album 'Ys'.
For the first time in years I was listening to music whilst walking through Holborn and I had to stop and sit down. My eyes were filling with tears and the street was too hectic and bustled...

Why? What is it about this music that broke my heart?

Was it the songwriting? Expansive and bardic, pushing out of themselves with classical inflections and rhythmic shifts.

Her voice? Like Mirah, Bjork and others, perhaps the archetype is Billie Holiday on Lady in Satin. Their voices are far from 'perfect' but they shatter and crack themselves open, emotion sharpens the edges of the notes until they cut through into bone.

The lyrics? What I have quoted above is poetry. There are so many other lines I love: 'Our bodies recoil from the grip of the soil' etc. They too are bardic in their flowing narrative and in the skill of rhyme and of structure. For some reason the lines about the metorite are just devestating. The cold stone that still may yet, as Celan would say, 'consent to bloom'.

The harp itself? Waterfalls, single raindrops, feet splashing puddles, floods....And yet still a precision and a sense of urgency, movement.

Of course it is all of these. And those things that are on the other side of language and cannot be spoken about. To pull them from the clearing leaves them deadened, mute.

I am so glad that reading about Smog (who I already love) led me here...

Anyway...forgive the rambling and bad spelling as I am very very very very hungover today and barely awake...x