Joanna Newsom Quotes

I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight No I was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.

Nick had sent me an email that day containing a link to a Joanna Newsom song. I sent back a link to the Billie Holiday recording of ‘I’m a Fool to Want You’, but he didn’t reply.

Never get so attached to a poem You forget truth that lacks lyricism

In the sinking sand, where we’ve come to rest, have I had a hand in your loneliness?

The moment of your greatest joy sustains: Not axe nor hammer Tumor, tremor Can take it away, and it remains It remains

the signifieds butt-heads with the signifiers and we all fall down slackjawed to marvel at words while across the sky sheet impossible birds in a steady illiterate movement homewards.

Come on home. The poppies are all grown knee-deep by now. Blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow. Peonies nod in the breeze, and while they wetly bow with hydrocephalitic listlessness, ants mop up their brow. And everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour; butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours. And my clay-colored motherlessness rangily reclines — Come on home, now! All my bones are dolorous with vines.

Last week, our picture window Produced a half-word, Heavy and hollow, Hit by a brown bird. We stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake And pant and labor over every intake. I said a sort of prayer for some rare grace, Then thought i ought to take her to a higher place. Said, “dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you, And though you die, bird, you will have a fine view.

The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again. But there’s also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. It’s what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there’s a God is that there’s so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that’s his only proof. There’s so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There’s no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form. And those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about–unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things.

All my life, I've felt as though I'm inside a beautiful memory, replaying with the sound turned down low.

I fought angrily against seeing particular types of poetic organization because it seemed awful to see my own life and these actual events in that way. But when you put forth an intention into the universe to speak a certain truth and narrate a certain period of your life, you start to see the sorts of symmetries that you are not usually supposed to be able to see until you are on your deathbed and your life flashes before your eyes. And you see exactly why everything happened. And even the most painful things you’ve ever been through can seem unbearably beautiful.

I was once asked to pick a couple of records for an interview I was doing on Radio 2. I picked one by Will Oldham and one by Joanna Newsom. Someone on the production phoned me to say that I couldn't have either record because they were 'too alternative' and I could just pick two from their playlist. Now, personally, I think that Radio 2's listeners would dig both Joanna Newsom and Will Oldham if they heard their records, and that the fact they don't get to hear them contributes to the cultural wasteland we live in. I told them that I'd been to see Joanna Newsom in the Albert Hall a couple of weeks before and it had been sold out. How could she be 'too alternative'? 'Alternative' and 'mainstream' aren't strictly to do with whether things are popular or minority interest. They are ideological labels. Someone like Joe Pasquale would be called 'mainstream' and regularly pops up on TV, but would play the smaller end of the touring-theatre circuit. If Joanna Newsom can sell out Albert Hall, why can't she get played on Radio 2? I would agree that it's because her work is too layered, challenging and interesting. Think about that. What you get to hear about is filtered, and not filtered to get rid of useless cunts like Joe Pasquale, but of things that might enrich your life.

The fire breather is beneath the clover, and beneath his breathing there is cold clay forever

Darling, there's a place for us Can we go, before I turn to dust?

We’ve seen those mountains kneeling, felten and grey. We thought our very hearts would up and melt away...

And I regret, I regret how I said to you, Honey, just open your heart, when I've got trouble even opening a honey jar. And that, right there, is where we are.

Maybe a good goal would be to just at least always try to create something good. Like something that is connected to love in some way. Like the [musical] equivalent of…you can make a decision to be kind. You can make a decision to greet people kindly and make jokes with people and connect.

She turned up the cherubic harp music. Each song is twenty minutes long and meanders like a bitchy cat. The woman's high folksy voice hurts our teeth but we would never tell Bunny this. We said we loved this song. So much. But Bunny wasn't listening. Bunny was singing along in her own high voice. Cherubic harp music is her very, very favorite.

Among the responsibilities of any writer is that, no matter what else, they know what they mean. So, even if no one else knows what you're talking about, you do. The listener can sense that, even if they don't get the literal meaning. The faith that they place in the clues and the connections and the secrets of the lyrics is of the utmost importance.

Arianna simply wasn’t up to it. She had a pretty voice, she could carry a tune—that was never a problem. But she had no depth. She couldn’t interpret a song, place her stamp on it. Unlike Lesley, who fairly stomped on it! And that’s what you need in folk music. These are songs that have been around for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. They existed for centuries before any kind of recording was possible, even before people could write, for god’s sake! So the only way those songs lived and got passed on was by singers. The better singer you were, the more likely it was people were going to turn out to hear you and remember you—and remember the song—whether it was at a pub or wedding or ceilidh or just a knot of people seeking shelter under a tree during a storm. It’s a kind of time machine, really, the way you can trace a song from whoever’s singing it now back through the years—Dylan or Johnny Cash, Joanna Newsom or Vashti Bunyan—on through all those nameless folk who kept it alive a thousand years ago. People talk about carrying the torch, but I always think of that man they found in the ice up in the Alps. He’d been under the snow for 1,200 years, and when they discovered him, he was still wearing his clothes, a cloak of woven grass and a bearskin cap, and in his pocket they found a little bag of grass and tinder and a bit of dead coal. That was the live spark he’d been carrying, the bright ember he kept in his pocket to start a fire whenever he stopped. You’d have to be so careful, more careful than we can even imagine, to keep that one spark alive. Because that’s what kept you alive, in the cold and the dark. Folk music is like that. And by folk I mean whatever music it is that you love, whatever music it is that sustains you. It’s the spark that keeps us alive in the cold and night, the fire we all gather in front of so we know we’re not alone in the dark. And the longer I live, the colder and darker it gets. A song like “Windhover Morn” can keep your heart beating when the doctors can’t. You might laugh at that, but it’s true.

I have got some business out at the edge of town Candy weighing both of my pockets down Till I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them (and knowing how the commonfolk condemn What it is I do, to you, to keep you warm: Being a woman. Being a woman.) But always up the mountainside you’re clambering Groping blindly, hungry for anything; Picking through your pocket linings — Well, what is this? Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus? I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain Little sister, he will be back again I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain Spiders’ ghosts hang, soaked and dangling Silently from all the blooming cherry trees In tiny nooses, safe from everyone — Nothing but a nuisance; gone now, dead and done — Be a woman. Be a woman.

Lord: is it harder to carry on, or to know when you are done?

Be a woman, be a woman!

Nightjar, transmit — once more, and innumerable times more!

There’s a big black spider Hanging over my door Can’t go anywhere anymore

All my bones, they are gone, gone, gone Take my bones, I don’t need none Cold, cold cupboard, lord, nothing to chew on Suck all day on a cherry stone Dig a little hole not three inches round Spit your pit in a hole in the ground Weep upon the spot for the starving of me ‘Til up grows a fine young cherry tree When the bough breaks what’ll you make for me A little willow cabin to rest on your knee What’ll I do with a trinket such as this? Think of your woman who’s gone to the west But I’m starving and freezing in my measly old bed Then I’ll crawl across the salt flats to stroke your sweet head Come across the desert with no shoes on I love you truly or I love no one