Talking Joanna Newsom’s Divers, tesserae, growing up with harps around, and more… with A Hopeless Endeavor Podcast
Recently, a bottle of water and a microphone and me had a metaphorical ramble with the friendly co-hosts of A Hopeless Endeavor: A Joanna Newsom Podcast! It was a pleasure to spend some time with Nikki Fortier and Sam Morgan, who’ve been exploring Divers, line by line, over the last year and change. Be sure to give their series a listen, especially if there’s a song in particular you’ve been wrestling with!
Our conversation ran the gamut… I don’t want to spoil the listening, so I’ll just invite you to check it out if you’re curious.
Here are the links to the first episode…
And here’s part 2:
In addition to talking a little about my writing process, we touched on some of these topics:
- some overarching themes in Divers
- the interplay between Christian and Greek myths
- ways of reading Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
- the trickiness of writing about Newsom’s newest songs
- random ideas from the cutting room floor
I’m on unfamiliar territory with nouveau-radio, but Sam and Nikki have an infectious energy and I had a lot of fun experimenting with the looser format and back-and-forth it provides. And if you’ve ever read my articles and thought — “Where in the heck are we going with this?!” — then maybe it’ll provide a little glimpse into why.
Hope you enjoy.
Read more…
Nikki says this is her “paradigmatic Michael Hicks article” —
Conspiracy theories abound… was the timing of this article coincidence, or did I have an inside scoop? ;)
We touch on the polysemy of “argonaut” in my exploration of “The Air Again” and “Little Hand”
