astronomy with joanna

and, Emily - I saw you last night
by the river
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across
the surface of the water
frowning at the angle where they were lost,
and slipped under forever,
in a mud-cloud, mica-spangled,
like the sky'd been breathing on a mirror

anyhow - I sat by your side,
by the water
you taught me the names of the stars overhead
that I wrote down in my ledger
tho all I knew of the rote universe
were those pleiades loosed in december
I promised you I‘d set them to verse
so I'd always remember

that the meteorite is a source of the light
and the meteor's just what we see
and the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

and the meteorite's just what causes the light
and the meteor's how it's perceived
and the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee

On Emily: Like every other song on this record, "Emily" is deeply biographical. The Emily in the song is my sister, who's an astrophysicist; the narrator is myself, who is not an astrophysicist. Emily is the wanderer; she lives in Argentina and sometimes New Zealand. I'm not a wanderer, which is funny because I'm on tour half the time. I'm a home, hearth and family kind of person.

On Ys: There were four very big things that happened in my life in this particular year, and so four of the songs are about these things. The fifth song, "Only Skin", was an effort to talk about the connections between the events.

for more: milky moon and pitchfork.