#microanalysis

So, I was rewatching Treasure Planet today (again). And of course before we see our hero as a temperamental, law-breaking, leather-jacket-clad teenager, we meet him as this adorable little bundle of cuteness: 

Big-eyed, smiling, and gap-toothed. The image of childhood innocence (even if he is awake at least an hour past his bedtime so his disregard for rules has already kicked in ;) ).

But take a closer look at the tooth that is missing. Second to the right on the top row. From an artistic perspective this is a nice choice. Being off center, it is aesthetically pleasing. And of course, showing a kid with a missing tooth is a classic way to emphasize playful youthful innocence.

But from a science perspective, this is a rather odd tooth to choose. According to my research, the average age to loose that tooth is around eight to nine years old.

[For the curious, here is the source I used, a chart by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry: http://www.aapd.org/media/Policies_Guidelines/RS_DENTGrowthandDev.pdf (See exfoliation (falling out) of the maxillary (upper) lateral incisor (second from the front).)

Note: I have also seen sites that say that 7-8 is the average age to loose this tooth, but I can't find where they are getting their info and so I don’t know if it is a reputable source, so I'm going with this one. And it really doesn't matter anyway.]

There is no way this little mini-munchkin who looks like he's barely tall enough to reach his Mom's knees is eight years old:

(Also, if this mini-micro Jim is eight, then the rebellious "teenager" we know and love from the main story is actually twenty years old, post-12 Years Later time skip. Seems unlikely.)

This Jim is probably around eight years old, especially if the internet is correct in telling me that the artbook says that Jim's father left when he was eight:

Big difference.

Depending on whether you believe that Jim is fifteen or seventeen during the main adventure, our mini-micro-Jimbo is either three or five, and either way, that is very young for him to have lost that tooth naturally.

The more likely scenario would be that wittle mini-Jimbo managed to knock that tooth out.

Judging from Sarah's reaction when he jumps a couple feet (if that) from his headboard to his mattress:

And his complete disregard for gravity at any age:

My guess, though we are clearly diving into headcanon territory instead of just analysis, would be that he jumped off something too tall onto something too hard, knocked out a tooth, and then proceeded to gain absolutely zero respect for gravity from the experience.

In conclusion, Sarah really had her hands full raising Jim right from the start.

Lyric 2.0: Bon Iver's "Minnesota, WI"

Armor let it through, borne the arboretic truth you kept posing. Sat down in the suit, fixed on up it wasn't you by finished closing. Ramble in the roots, had the marvel moved the proof be keeled fine's glowing. Storing up the clues, had its sullen blue bruised through by showing.

Settle past a patience where wishes and your will are spilling pictures. Water's running through in the valley where we grew to write this scripture:

Never gonna break, never gonna break never gonna break, never gonna break Not for a part in any gamut of the dark.

Doubled in the toes annex it, it minute closed in the morning. Did not lose it in the stacks' stow. Imma lay that call back on ya. You know it won't beseech you, we're layin' in an open field. I will let you grow, no need to know this. So carry on, my dear, what is clear up in the daylight is we're hung here. Fall is coming soon, a new year for the moon and the Hmong here.

Never gonna break, never gonna break never gonna break, never gonna break All that it seems, bellows tracing through the streams.

Never gonna break, never gonna break never gonna break, never gonna break All as its seams, swallows swelling for the beams.

If you’re like anyone who is like anyone at all, you read through these lyrics and let out a tired sigh, one that pains to even think: what the f*ck is with Bon Iver? That’s because these lines are stuffed full of syllables, the syntax is schizophrenic, and it’s hard to tell when one sentence ends and the next begins. And with an entire orchestra behind them, featuring several instrumental breaks, that this is all packed into less than 4 short minutes makes it feel like a hairline crack at the base of the Hoover Dam... And Justin Vernon is sitting there, picking at the stone.

But, luckily, that’s the whole point. 

If “Perth” (the album’s opening track) brings down the old, clearing the space for something new, track 2, “Minnesota, WI,” shows the first, hesitant attempts to let something out into that space. The song begins with the lonely plucks of guitar strings, trickling a chord into the empty soundscape, followed closely by heavy drum beats and percussive but muted bass-guitar slaps, like a monstrous swirl behind 10 feet of concrete. And as the words begin, so do the fluid sounds of woodwinds and increased fingerpicking. A pained and restrained flow has begun.

Overtop this instrumentation, the lyrics swell with images of welling and spilling, of water carving veins through a river valley, bellows bouncing through the hills, and roots bursting through a hardened, armored ground. The dam - the one the speaker vows is “never gonna break, never gonna break” - has sprung a leak, and unless the leak is contained - which is a tall order - we’ll have a real mess on our hands.  The depressing part? There’s no way around it: “it’s clear up in the daylight [that] we’re hung here.”

If to borrow is to take and not return, I have borrowed all my lonesome life. And I can’t, no I can’t get through. The borrower’s debt is the only regret of my youth.

And believe me, it’s not easy when I look back. Everything I took I’d soon return just to be at Innisfree again. All of the sirens are driving me over the stern.

One day at Innisfree, one day that’s mine there!

In the street one day I saw you among the crowd in the geometric pattern dress gleaming white just as I recall. Old as I get, I would never forget it at all. Old as I get, I could never forget it at all.

One day at Innisfree, one day that’s mine there…

It's tempting to read “Bedouin Dress” as a simple requiem for one’s lost youth and innocence.  And there’s no doubt that the speaker feels regret and longing for a different time and place – namely, the mythical Innisfree.  At first glance, Innisfree stands as the reward for his penance, “returning all the things he took.”

But I’m struck by the specificity of the name Inisfree. Where did it come from, anyway? In literary circles, the most prominent reference to the place comes from William Butler Yeats’ poem “Lake Isle of Innisfree,” written in 1888. 

The poem is super over-the-top in the way it idealizes this place.  And, so far, this description fits with FF’s use of it.  But, we shouldn’t overlook the poem’s ending: ultimately, Innisfree is only a thought, a daydream in the speaker’s mind, trapped in the future tense.  He will go to Innisfree and finally find peace, but as he stands now (“on the pavements gray,” a far cry from the idyllic, pastoral fantasy of Innisfree’s shores) he can only sense its appeal, and that it's still out of reach.

So stands FF’s speaker in “Bedouin Dress.”  He’ll be there, one day, but only if he can survive the sirens’ song that’s repeatedly (the speaker is sure to echo himself every time it arises) “driving [him] over the stern.”  Only if he can forget the shimmering bedouin dress dancing before his mind’s eye – a feat that, he resigns, seems unlikely no matter how old he gets (another fact the speaker is sure to repeat for clarity).  Even more damning for the speaker, though, is the way he seems to link Innisfree to his youth, which is paradoxically also the “scene” of his crime.  From this point of view, Innisfree appears as a tragic figment of his imagination, itself as much a distraction as the kaleidoscopic, hypnotizing dress he remembers so fondly.*

So, as with other tracks on this album, we meet a speaker who is trapped by his own idealism.  On one hand, Innisfree serves as a catalyst both for creativity and, maybe more urgently here, means of redemption.  On another hand, though, Innisfree never materializes but as transient flashes in his spiritual pan.

Imagine not being able to fall asleep because you’re so excited about the dreams you’ll have…

*One commenter (Spartan3500) on a lyrics site made an interesting argument about how the song describes a hallucinogenic trip, with Innisfree as the nirvana-esque state of bliss while on said trip, and the titular bedouin dress standing in for the way shapes and colors dance while tripping. While I love looking for references to altered states in pop cultural texts, I don’t think this interpretation addresses the song’s dominant attention to feelings of guilt and acts of penance, among other issues.

"perth" - bon iver

I’m tearing up, acrost your face move dust through the light to fide your name it’s something fane this is not a place not yet awake, I’m raised of make

still alive who you love still alive who you love still alive who you love

in a mother, out a moth furling forests for the soft gotta know been lead aloft so I’m ridding all your stories what I know, what it is, is pouring – wire it up! you’re breaking your ground…

If Bon Iver is an album that uses geographical imagery in order to “[put] a name to a state of mind” (as Pitchfork explains), then the album’s opening track “Perth,” is all about clearing space for construction of those images. It starts and ends, in fact, with excavation: “I’m tearing up, acrost your face,” and, “You’re breaking your ground,” respectively. 

In between these two images, though, we don’t find cleared space at all. Instead, we find a huge span of musical and verbal play.  The orchestration marches from muted guitar plucking into thickly textured sweeps, driven by the increasing rhythm of snare drums in the background. Lyrically, Vernon’s words waste no time playing with what we think we hear and, in turn, disrupting what we think they mean. Vernon does this less by inventing words than by slightly altering them or intentionally giving them two meanings (tearing up, fide, fane, and others). Rather than a vacant build-site, “Perth” offers a gigantic mess, full of conflicting meanings and instruments in competition.