Theres an interview with nardwar where he tells her she never sweared on a song, and she stopped and thought for a second, and then said that maybe a combination of words to replace the one word could convey more emotion. My theory is that maybe she wrote that line on purpose after that intervierw haha
I first heard Bridges and Balloons on a college radio station shortly after it was released. I had forgotten any lyrics to search for but the sound of it haunted me for years, slowly vanishing into a memory of what may have been only a dream, until one day I happened upon Sprout and the Bean and recognized her voice. I cannot describe the joy of finally discovering the magical voice from the radio memory.
I just wanted to add my 2 cents about something that I never see fans mention: this earlier version of En Gallop is SOOOOOOOOO much better than the one on Milk Eyed Mender. It's so raw and so god damned perfect it brings tears to my eyes. That is all.
Dang it…. I really wanted to sink into this, RU-vid won’t let me watch and listen. For me, all I get is an endless white screen-like a snow storm-and an occasional sound of the harp. There’s no play or pause or anything. Just white, forever and ever. Obviously something’s wrong with my end. I’ll come back another day and see. Until then I’ll be lining my pocket with a scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus? 🐇
firstly: Yarn and Glue should always be the first song. It's what she used to sing a capella at the beginnings of her shows to get over her stage fright. That's just where it belongs. second: What We Have Known alone is better than 90% of almost every other musician's catalog, I've always thought that, in a sense, Divers was a return to the driving forces behind that song, in an attempt to finally do the ideas justice. In terms of just pure poetic chops, it's so mature compared to the rest of what she was writing before Ys, it's a bit of a shame it doesn't really fit comfortably into either her early or her later work, it sort of has to stand alone.
This comment is fascinating to me. I never knew that she used Yarn and Glue as a set opener, and knowing that makes the song richer. I am curious how the themes in "What We Have Known" are connected to Divers, but I would guess that it has do with a vision of civilization ending (ie: "we were wrong to try, never saw what we could unravel..."from "waltz"). Are there other connections that you see? And while the poetry of this song is sublime, I'm not sure why it is more mature than other work from this time period... can you give an example? Finally, why do you feel like it doesn't fit with the songs that made it on proper albums?
@@zachhocking9053 What We Have Known is her first song dealing with the ramifications of war. It's a song about posterity, and how time and lineage alter not only our view of reality, but ourselves. Divers has a specific focus on time, and on crossing thresholds, whether it's the surface of the sea, the limitations of time, from birth into death or vice versa, it is about breaking through unknowns and being changed, and in some cases, about returning. Similarly, What We Have Known is about going to war and returning changed, but also about how the knowledge passed onto us from prior generations decays, both disappearing and simultaneously becoming part and parcel to the world. "Those who've returned have not returned" is, in particular, a very Divers sentiment, imo. The main focus of the song is more mature than her other work of the time, but there is some filler in there she wouldn't have let stick around in later works. The whole first stanza, really, should have been cut. Her other pre-Ys songs are personal, experiential, I would say confessional. Maybe mature isn't the right word -- but this is the first song where she really deals with the world outside herself, or her circumstances, on a complete/thematic level. It focuses on bigger ideas and bigger issues, and it does it without removing herself from the middle of it -- she handles both the "micro" and "macro" levels of a theme in a way she had only done before by making appeals to nature. Like, This Side of the Blue does this by comparing artists to "the impossible birds, in their steady, illiterate movement homewards" which is absolutely goddamned gorgeous, but it is using sort of the ineffability of nature as a crutch to get at something she, as a writer, can't directly evoke. What We Have Known (and her later work) do not rely on such crutches. It could have worked on Milk-Eyed Mender, theoretically. My guess is that she got poor feedback on it at the time. The people who would have loved her work at the time of Milk-Eyed Mender's production, in the indie music world, wouldn't really have gotten it. And it does feel unfinished, compared to something like Sadie, and it isn't twee enough. As for why it couldn't fit on Ys or anything after, essentially, she'd need to edit out its flaws in order to make it good enough for those albums. This is a little off the beaten path, but I have a lot of old poems that I think someday I would love to re-edit and make up to my current standards, because I love them for what they are, but they belong to another me from another time, and I just don't have the ability to re-enter them and do that work. My instinct is that this song is somewhat similar for Joanna -- she would very much have liked to make it complete, but realized that her effort was better spent extrapolating its ideas into new works.
@@tetryst oh wow i came across this thread while what we have know was playing and it sure was a trip of a kind. great conversations you guys had here, i feel expanded :)
@@wronglever8130 Just a guess, but I think she may have been trying to avoid these comparisons: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-i42YBkfRmiQ.html
@@wronglever8130 there's some chance. For some reason people compare her to kate bush all the time, as if they're deaf, or insane, or something. No matter why they do it, it's very common, and Joanna's probably more than passingly aware of the comparison. That said, obviously whether or not she rereleases this song has no bearing on what stupid comparisons people will make. In reality, the most likely reason is just that the lyrics are kind of a mess. As a piece of writing it shows promising technique, and it does carry meaning, it's just clearly juvenile and unpolished -- and, from a position of experience, I would say, practically impossible to polish to a satisfying state. As an outside observer I can say I like the song, even with its eccentricities, but at the same time I just know that when Joanna reads/listens to it, she cringes so hard it's not even funny.
Never understood why these started being referred to as EPs. I don't think Joanna even thinks of them as EPs---they're kinda just self-released demos. Plus Walnut Whales contains more tracks and a longer running time than most official definitions of an EP (definitions vary but the most lenient is 5 tracks and 30 min max; Walnut Whales is at 8 tracks and 36 minutes). I guess it's not that important at the end of the day, just splitting hairs. Either way they're both gems anyway, thanks for the upload.
Does anyone have any insight as to what Flying a Kite is about? It sounds a lot like it’s about drug abuse to me, but I can imagine that’s just a fraction of the song’s meaning, like Only Skin.
the majority of the song is about jilted love -- she's trying to get the attention of a boy she likes, but he's oblivious to her. A game of "cat and mouse" (as per the last lines) leaving nothing more meaningful in its wake. The kite seems to be describing the feeling of being in love, but it is also the albatross of the rime of the ancient mariner (although in this case far more like the albatross in the Baudelaire poem). To break it down, I think the easiest way to read the song is to say the central metaphor, the kite, is describing puppy love. When the object of your desire is seen in its own element, in the distance, it is a creature of unimaginable beauty. When you hold it in your hands, when it is grounded, when "the fall blots it out" -- "How comical, how ugly, and how meek/Appears this soarer of celestial snows!"
