Sunday Service, 13 December 2004
Kontext: I'm not terribly interested in playing harp on other people's music right now. Partly because I feel like many people view the harp as this kind of gimmick. You know, like they have songs that are fully realized, complete songs, and then they think "How do we make this special? - Ooh, let's bring the harp in!" and they kind of want a harpist to play a glissando and play some heavenly noise in the background. I'm really interested in the harp as a fully actualized, self-contained way of presenting songs. That there is a bass in the harp - there is a way to create a rhythmic sense without drums - there's a way to have all sorts of textural variations and expressive variations.
I also don't want to feel bound to the harp, I'd be interested in bringing other instruments in at some time. But I think the harp has been viewed in one particular way for so long, and has been limited for so long, that I feel like I am really interested in stretching the boundaries of what it's capable of doing and how it's perceived.
Joanna Newsom: Zitate auf Englisch
Ys (2006)
Kontext: And everything with wings is restless,
aimless, drunk and dour;
butterflies and birds collide, at hot ungodly hours.
And my clay-coloured motherlessness rangily reclines;
come on home now!
All my bones are dolorous with vines!
Anecdotes
Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)
Kontext: In the folds and the branches,
somewhere, out there,
I was only just born into open air.
Now hush, little babe.
You don’t want to be
down in the trenches,
remembering with me,
where you will not mark my leaving,
and you will not hear my parting song.
Nor is there cause for grieving.
Nor is there cause for carrying on.
“My favorite book of all time is The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.”
chickfactor.com - Issue 16, 2005
Kontext: Well, Nabokov is definitely my favorite author, though I feel strange calling him an "influence," since I can't trace the ways in which his writing may or may not have seeped into my own. But I also love William Faulkner, Thomas Pynchon, Kenneth Patchen, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Mark Helprin (who wrote a beautiful book called Winter's Tale), and Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite book of all time is The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.
Leaving the City
Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)
Kontext: In December of that year,
the word came down that she was here.
The days grew shorter.
I was sure, if she came 'round,
I’d hold my ground. I'd endure.
But they'd alluded to a change
that came to pass,
and Spring, deranged,
weeping grass and sleepless,
broke herself upon my windowglass.
And I could barely breathe, for seeing
all the splintered light that leaked her fissures,
fleeing, launched in flight:
unstaunched daylight, brightly bleeding,
bleached the night with dawn, deleting,
in that high sun,
after our good run,
when the spirit bends
beneath knowing it must end.
Waltz Of The 101st Lightborne
Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)
Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)
Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)
You Will Not Take My Heart Alive
Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)
The Book of Right-On
The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004)
Divers
Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)
Ys (2006)
“Love is not a symptom of time.
Time is just a symptom of love”
Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)
Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 2005
Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)
