image by beehive
Some songs are needy. They insist that you listen to them and only them, and only intensely. There is something in them you know you need to hear, but you aren’t sure what it is.
I first heard Joanna Newsom’s “Baby Birch,” in this YouTube video of a live performance that she gave in Amsterdam. If you’ve heard her before, you know that her songs are oceanic expanses of story and sound (often exceeding 7 or 8 minutes), built with intricate, surprising diction. What CAN’T she rhyme, folks?
My first impressions of the song were of its enormous power (especially evident in her performance in the video). I caught snippets of lyrics that seemed to be about guilt, geese, the Titanic, closing doors, and a demonic barber. Uh-oh, I thought. I could feel myself switching into obsessive-song-deciphering mode (anyone else have this setting in their brain? It’s true, I was born with a hyper-sensitive urge to decipher, and it has only worsened with time).
So what is this song about?
As a poet and writing instructor, I work to avoid all overly-simplifying readings of songs/poems/texts, e.g. “The goose in this song represents death,” or “The bunny in this song symbolizes God.” But I do want to understand and appreciate what I’m analyzing. I’m a disciple of the School of Figuring Out What the Hell Is Going On (Without Killing All the Mystery and Joy). And there is real stuff going on in this song, just as there is ambiguous, nebulous, paranormal activity. The song is haunted. It has a poltergeist in it, making all the real stuff explode and dance around.
Where to begin. Well, always with what we know. In this song, we know that the speaker dedicates the song to “Baby Birch,” who is a she. So, a female baby tree, or someone or something like a baby….young, in need of protection. We also know that the speaker of the song is sad, really and truly rolling around in loss and pain and shame. Rueful, is the word. Newsom laments, “I wish we could take every path,/ could spend a hundred years adoring you…..I hated to close the door on you.”
So this song is about a decision (or decisions) that Newsom (or the character she is voicing) has had to make. She had to close a door on some possibility, and she hated doing it…she sings the line again later in the song.
Now what? Some listeners and critics have suggested that the song might be about abortion. While the song does indeed contain baby/decision-making/death/operation language, and while the song may gesture toward this, I don’t want to solve this song so easily. There’s more here for us.
Part of the song’s complexity comes from the pronouns, and the confusing relationships they hint at. In the opening lyrics of the song, Newsom declares, “This is the song for Baby Birch/ though I will never know you.” Is “you” Baby Birch? She continues, “…and at the back of what we’ve done/ there is the knowledge of you.” Who is “we?” And that deliciously ambiguous “what we’ve done” tells us that something big and significant has happened, has been committed. And whatever was wrought, this had something to do with the Baby Birch character.
Most of the song is directed to a “you,”—at times, the “you” is Baby Birch, the something that never happened or had to not happen because of something else. Other times, the “you” shifts. She’s singing about Baby Birch (this thing that could not be born) TO someone else. “If I should die before I wake,” she wonders, “Will you keep an eye on Baby Birch?/ Because I’d hate to see her make the same mistake.”
The end of the song gets really crazy, in the best way possible. As you can see in the video, the rest of the band gets involved, there are other voices, the pace of the words changes and becomes more frantic. It’s a nightmarish scene that she describes: “There is a blacksmith/ and there is a shepherd/ and there is a butcher-boy,/ and there is a barber, who’s cutting and cutting away at my only joy.” So stuff is being forged, is being guided and killed and cut. And even worse, Newsom catches a “rabbit” that she sees, and skins her, “held her there, kicking and mewling/ upended unspooling, unsung and blue.” This is fantastically disturbing stuff, this. What a horrible, violent image.
And the end, Newsom begs, “Be at peace, baby, and begone.” That “begone” is important; she doesn’t want to be haunted. That is what makes this song work so well, for me. Newsom is using this song (and all its imaginary characters) to talk to someone (possibly herself) about a painful decision, about wanting closure. That’s what good art does: it lets the artist talk to many people at the same time. And viewers (or listeners) get to witness an incredibly intimate moment that is and is not directed at them.
To get at understanding this song, which is ultimately (for me) about looking ghosts squarely and lovingly in the eye and then letting them go, I recorded a version of it. It’s a dangerous thing, covering a Joanna Newsom song. I’m not trying to measure up to her; rather, recording this song helped to untangle some of its ambiguity (without killing all the mystery and joy). This song reminds me of “The Tennessee Waltz” and “Amazing Grace” (songs about loss and making peace with loss, gee, what do you know!), so I kept a country/folksy sound in mind while recording it.
Click here to listen to Hannah’s Baby Birch
What songs push your obsession-buttons?
And am I right about “Baby Birch?” What other meanings have I missed?
—
In these interludes, poet and singer-songwriter Hannah Stephenson invites you to eavesdrop on the music bouncing around her brain. She’d love to hear your thoughts, your inner soundtrack, and what band inspired that shrine in your bedroom.
write to us at spoonfulzine@gmail[dot]com
