Joanna Newsom: Trending quotes

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Joanna Newsom: 122 quotes0 likes

“I'm really interested in the harp as a fully actualized, self-contained way of presenting songs. That there is a bass in the harp - there is a way to create a rhythmic sense without drums - there's a way to have all sorts of textural variations and expressive variations.”

Joanna Newsom

Sunday Service, 13 December 2004
Context: I'm not terribly interested in playing harp on other people's music right now. Partly because I feel like many people view the harp as this kind of gimmick. You know, like they have songs that are fully realized, complete songs, and then they think "How do we make this special? - Ooh, let's bring the harp in!" and they kind of want a harpist to play a glissando and play some heavenly noise in the background. I'm really interested in the harp as a fully actualized, self-contained way of presenting songs. That there is a bass in the harp - there is a way to create a rhythmic sense without drums - there's a way to have all sorts of textural variations and expressive variations.
I also don't want to feel bound to the harp, I'd be interested in bringing other instruments in at some time. But I think the harp has been viewed in one particular way for so long, and has been limited for so long, that I feel like I am really interested in stretching the boundaries of what it's capable of doing and how it's perceived.

“And my clay-coloured motherlessness rangily reclines;
come on home now!
All my bones are dolorous with vines!”

Joanna Newsom

Ys (2006)
Context: And everything with wings is restless,
aimless, drunk and dour;
butterflies and birds collide, at hot ungodly hours.
And my clay-coloured motherlessness rangily reclines;
come on home now!
All my bones are dolorous with vines!

“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.”

Joanna Newsom

Anecdotes Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015) Context: 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.

“My favorite book of all time is The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.”

Joanna Newsom

chickfactor.com - Issue 16, 2005
Context: Well, Nabokov is definitely my favorite author, though I feel strange calling him an "influence," since I can't trace the ways in which his writing may or may not have seeped into my own. But I also love William Faulkner, Thomas Pynchon, Kenneth Patchen, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Mark Helprin (who wrote a beautiful book called Winter's Tale), and Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite book of all time is The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.

“And I could barely breathe, for seeing
all the splintered light that leaked her fissures,
fleeing, launched in flight:
unstaunched daylight, brightly bleeding,
bleached the night with dawn, deleting,
in that high sun,
after our good run,
when the spirit bends
beneath knowing it must end.”

Joanna Newsom

Leaving the City Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015) Context: In December of that year, the word came down that she was here. The days grew shorter. I was sure, if she came 'round, I’d hold my ground. I'd endure. But they'd alluded to a change that came to pass, and Spring, deranged, weeping grass and sleepless, broke herself upon my windowglass. And I could barely breathe, for seeing all the splintered light that leaked her fissures, fleeing, launched in flight: unstaunched daylight, brightly bleeding, bleached the night with dawn, deleting, in that high sun, after our good run, when the spirit bends beneath knowing it must end.

“held her there,
kicking and mewling,
upended, unspooling, unsung and blue;
told her "wherever you go,
little runaway bunny,
I will find you."
And then she ran,
as they're liable to do.”

Joanna Newsom

Baby Birch
Have One On Me (2010)

“Well I'm starvin' and freezin'
In this 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)”

Joanna Newsom

Only Skin
Ys (2006)

“All we saw was that Time is taller than Space is wide.
That's why we got bound to a round desert island,
'neath the sky where our sailors have gone.
Have they drowned, in those windy highlands?
Highlands away, my John.”

Joanna Newsom

Waltz Of The 101st Lightborne Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)

“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”

Joanna Newsom

Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)