Songs That Make You Cry: Readers Respond
Joanna Newsom &mdash Emily
When I was six years old I hid in the library of Mount Tamalpais School, poring over a large black book with pictures of Jupiter, asteroids and collapsing stars. My friends were outside in the sun, playing tag. I'm still like this, more or less, for better or worse. Gradually, I have come to appreciate nature more than its simulacra.
Joanna Newsom's language is a dense tangle of ivy and murky sunshine; the lilt of her voice a counterpoint to nigh maniacal precision. She creates a pastoral landscape peopled by pine trees, rivers, cottages with smokestacks, animals and their observers. This is a world compulsively described, and as its author enumerates its inhabitants--word by word, day by day, season by season--the listener is held captive.
The refrain (which seems increasingly inevitable with repeated listening) is what really gets me. Emily is science incarnated within the cathedral of nature. Not a stomping, constrictive science, but one which opens up the world and makes it legible. Not a taxonomy, no insects crucified on the pinning block. No microscope, no telescope; only our eyes, the sea and the sky. In this world, the clearer our vision, the deeper our feeling.
Beau Sievers is a composer, sound designer and sometime computer programmer. He lives in New England and misses San Francisco very much. He can be found on the web at beausievers.com.