#toxicmetropolis

I want it to draw on themes from Joanna Newsom’s Sadie because it’s probably the song that really hooked me on her work back in something like 2006ish (wow holy shit). in the song she gave expression to a tension i’ve always felt but couldn’t word right until i heard that song (also made me feel like, ‘wow what am i going to possibly do/make that will ever compare to this, shit why bother’ but anyway).

Her description of what the song describes is better than what I could write:

There are actually three stories; as with almost all of my songs, there's this recurring triumvirate structure that imposes itself without my even realizing it at first. The three subjects are always connected, but often in merely intuitive or symbolic ways. In this particular song, the most straightforward subject is my then-dog, Sadie, who passed on recently. She was a lovely white Labrador who liked nothing more in the whole world than to play fetch. And I've always been impatient about that; I'd look at the soggy pinecone dropped at my feet while I was trying to get into my car, and I'd say, "I'll play with you later."

The second subject of the song is a friend, my age, who was diagnosed with cancer. I remember marveling at the reaction of people around me, the way they sprung to action, finally articulated to her their love and appreciation, finally made those lunch dates they'd always talked about...and I sheepishly include myself in this phenomenon. It wasn't disingenuous; it was just that our collective illusion, that we have forever to let someone know how loved she is, had been shattered.

The third subject is one of my most beloved friends, whom I've grown apart from. We had this sort of running argument, or a running series of disagreements founded on the same fundamental points of divergence, and if we had been close at that point, talking every day or whatnot, then those disagreements would have seemed like nothing. But because our correspondence had fallen behind, and we'd developed insecurities and bitterness, these disagreements became all-consuming; we fixated on them, let resentments build around them, let a silence build between us. And I remember just having my breath taken from me in one sickening moment when I paused one day to imagine what I'd do if this friend fell ill with cancer, like my other friend. I knew that I would fly to be with her, stay by her side forever if I had to, and revel in her extraordinary rarity, intelligence, kindness, forget all the shitty stupid petty small points of contention between us, because they were so insignificant in light of our own inevitable mortality.

So. Those are the basic subjects of the song. It's about all sorts of things, but I guess the main story is about death, love, putting things off...

the song itself is synthesizes the small joys of what brings you love with its opposite, the tragedy of overlooking/delaying/deferring the full apprehension and appreciation of that love. years later in divers, anecdotes develops that theme, what do we do with the light our borrowed bodies borrow that illuminate our experiences and the people/things in them that we love and how will we persist in their memory, through song, through image through monuments:

But inasmuch as that light is loaned, insofar as we’ve borrowed bones, must every debt now be repaid in star-spotted, sickle-winged night raids, while we sing to the garden, and we sing to the stars, and we sing in the meantime, wherever you are? 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

there’s an active nihilism at work here, that our memories and experiences and loves will ultimately dissipate into nature itself and be forgotten, and we can neither rejoice nor mourn that we were or that we perished. but we can while here make some of that meaning. how love effects (yes, with an e) time and how we desire to imprint ourselves in a way that transcends our selves and the time we borrow throughout our existence is something i want to permanently engrave onto my borrowed flesh, but i haven’t picked the three elements for it. 

I have ‘the look’ kinda down, i want to look like a cross between something quilted, stained glass, and medieval woodcut. i’m not committed to it if something else would look better with whatever three things i pick, but stitching, stained glass, and medieval woodcut i feel i would want.