joanna newsom's new album - have one on me - is doing wonderful painful things to my heart. amazing things. make-me-want-to-be-this-good-at-making-art things. there are a million million lines on this album that are just soooo good. (and that's disregarding the brilliant melodies and instrumentation...) one day i would like to make a painting/drawing/something for each and every song. that would be 18 paintings/drawings/somethings.
anyways. here's a really rough drawing-sketch-thing i did and the lyrics to one of the songs - california.
my heart became a drunken runt
on the day i sunk in this shunt,
to tap me clean
of all the wonder
and the sorrow i have seen,
since i left my home:
my home, on the old milk lake,
where the darkness does fall so fast,
it feels like some kind of mistake
(just like they told you it would;
just like the tulgeywood).
when i came into my land,
i did not undertan:
neither dry rot, not the burn pile,
nor the bark-beetle, nor the dry well,
nor the black bear.
but there is another,
who is a little older.
when i broke my bone,
he carried me up from the riverside.
to spend my life in spitting-distance
of the love that i have known,
i must stay here, in an endless eventide.
and if you come and see me,
you will upset the order.
you cannot come and see me,
for i set myself apart.
but when you come and see me,
in california,
you cross the borders of my heart.
well, i have some untidy furrows
across my soul,
but i am still a coward,
content to see my garden grow
so sweet and full
of someone else's flowers.
but sometimes
i can almost feel the power.
sometimes i am so in love with you
(like a little clock
that trembled on the edge of the hour,
only ever calling out "cuckoo, cuckoo").
when i called you,
you, little one,
in a bad way,
did you love me?
do you spite me?
time will tell if i can be well,
and rise to meet you rightly.
while, moving across my land,
brandishing themselves
like a burning branch,
advance the tallow-colored,
walleyed deer,
quiet as gondoliers,
while i wait all night, for you,
in california,
watching the fox pick off my goldfish
from their sorry, golden state -
and i am no longer
afraid of anything, save
the life that, here, awaits.
i don't belong to anyone.
my heart is heavy as an oil drum.
i don't want to be alone.
my heart is yellow as an ear of corn,
and i have torn my soul apart, from
pulling artlessly with fool commands.
some nights
i just never go to sleep at all,
and i stand,
shaking in my doorway like a sentinel,
all alone,
bracing like the bow of a ship,
and fully abandoning
any thought of anywhere
but home,
my home.
sometimes i can almost feel the power.
and i do love you.
is it only timing,
that has made it such a dark hour,
only ever chiming out,
"cuckoo, cuckoo"?
my heart, i wear you down. i know.
gotta think straight,
keep a clean plate;
keep from wearing down.
if i lose my head,
just where am i going to lay it?
(for it has half-ruined me,
to be hanging around,
here, among the daphne,
blooming out of the big brown;
i am native to it, but i'm overgrown.
i have chooked my roots
on the earth, as rich as roe,
here
down in california.)
