Ich habe mich bisher eher am Klang und Rhythmus der Worte erfreut als mir groß Gedanken über die „Aussagen“ dieser Songerzählungen zu machen. Newsom kann sehr gut mit Worten umgehen. Aber ich habe im Netz Interpretationen von „Emily“ gefunden, die ich einigermaßen einleuchtend finde:
UnbekanntIt’s a meditation on her relationship with her sister, her family, and her growing fame, but at its core is the theme of mortality.
The first section details bucolic scenes and memories of shared moments with her sister. Emily has an interest in astronomy, and she teaches Joanna the names of stars. Joanna writes them in her journal, sets them to song. The sisters both have their particular ways of ordering the universe – one through science, the other through the arts – and this concept of „ordering the universe“ becomes key as the song progresses.
At the point of „You came and lay a cold compress against the mess I’m in“ the song turns to a darker tone; „The mail is late and the great estates are not lit from within.“ In times of trouble and emotional turmoil („there are worries where I’ve been“) Joanna turns to her sister, the „midwife“ to „help me find my way back in.“ „Come on home,“ she intones repeatedly, a plea for both herself and for Emily to return to the sacred place they share.
If you fondly remember a moment when a parent pointed out constellations to you, that’s what’s going on in „Pa pointed out to me / for the hundreth time tonight / the way the ladle leads / to a dirt red bullet of light“ (her father is tracing the path to the red star Arcturus from the handle of the Big Dipper). „Joy,“ Newsom remarks; but she isn’t content to leave us with a nostalgic afterglow. She quickly follows on with, „landlocked in bodies that don’t keep / dumbstruck with the sweetness of being, till we don’t be.“ She can’t see the beauty in the world without being reminded that we will cease to exist. Even the earlier image of skipping stones is undercut by the ominous „they were lost and slipped under forever.“
That is the tension running through the song, through almost all of Ys. Constellations don’t exist – they’re figments, a byproduct of the human need to impose form and order on the chaos of nature. We need constructions to assuage anxiety, to temper our fear of the void – Family, Art, Science – and this puts Joanna’s vision of nature closer to Herzog’s Grizzly Man than to Gentle Ben.
Michael MetivierThe essence of „Emily“ is a tribute to sisterhood (Newsom’s sister Emily sings backup vocals on the track), expressed through the geographical language of both heaven and earth, „We’ve seen those mountains kneeling, felten and grey,“ „You taught me the names of the stars overhead…/ Though all I knew of the rote universe were those Pleiades, loosed in December.“ Within the context of its story, the song even features an educational rhyme for remembering the difference between meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids. Skeptics might wonder what’s the use of lines like „Peonies nod in the breeze / And as they wetly bow with hydrocephalitic listlessness / Ants mop up their brow,“ but there is definite purpose beyond novelty (and why shouldn’t one’s lyrics be novel?). Newsom positions her relationship with Emily in the grandest scheme possible: eternity. Between terrestrial life („Butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours“) and the machinery of the universe („Pa pointed out to me, the way the ladle leads to a dirt-red bullet of light“), all things are impermanent, and love and life all the more precious.
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To Hell with Poverty