Joanna Newsom

Joanna Newsom performed in Urbanguild, a small club in downtown Kyoto, on Monday, February 19th with Bill Callahan and mamma!milk. That afternoon, I went to a butoh class taught by Ima Tenko (more on THAT later!), and went to see Joanna with two friends from class, Cara and Adam.

The club was so small that the fliers for upcoming shows and the merchandise tables were set-up in the hallway of the building. The audience and stage occupied a space about the size of two large living rooms put together. After we paid at the entrance, Cara was bold and clear, weaving through the crowd (about 3/4 Japanese, 1/4 foreigners) to find us ground seats a breath away from the stage, returning into the crowd to pull the timid Adam to his seat at the feet of the performers. Bill Callahan was pungent, sad-eyed and soothing. I like his songs, acoustic guitar, strong voice, and the constant tap of his shoe.

Joanna emerged and sat center stage behind her harp. To the right, a calm man playing a small guitar resembling a mandolin. To the left, a red-eyed man set up behind bass drums, barefoot.

She began with "Emily." The song is so breathtakingly beautiful,and it compounds with the vibrant hands on harp strings, her facial reactions to the words she sings, her voice, lower and more sonorous than in her recordings. Her face looks justlike my old friend Anna, and I traveled back in time while I listened with allof my being.The feelings of hearing a slow steady voice read me poetry, walking in the park and talking about love andlost promises, smoking clove cigarettes in the car and listening to Ani Difranco and Radiohead, her bright bright eyes and these feelings branched out to others, holding Melissa's hand as she cried at a performance of "this woman's work," Jae holding my hand in the art garage while I cried. I did not recollect the times consciously, but insteadl felt all of these rare moments that were real and didn't words, but were like growing up, caring for each other like siblings and instructing each other the difference between meteors and meteorites, gathering before our storytellers. As Joanna's song progressed, it built to heights I couldn't have imagined, Joanna unrelenting. the drumbeat louad and alive. I was crying uncontrollably, lips quivering, shaking. Oh sweet sweet sweet sweet Lord.

The song ended and I had a chance to pull myself together. While she spoke, I took a few pictures, mostly to remember alter how close I was. I did not dare use flash, so they are mostly Joanna blurs. (And remember - no zoom is used either!)

The show remained captivating until the end, even when they had left the stage and the vibrations still existed in the room. Her album Y's was presented in a scope and scale impossible in recordings. It is a good example of the full vibrancy live performances can achieve in comparison to recordings. They played a few of her milk-eyed mender songs, like "peach, plum, pear" and "the book of right-on," which were re-arranged for the trio present onstage. It sounded wonderful. I was enraptured. I cannot think of a time that I had felt like what I described above. Felt a longing and a joy for how life has fit together. And felt such awe. It made me hate modern dance.

Before the show started, I was talking with Adam, a dancer who has never been formally trained in ballet or modern dance. He has taken a few classes in a college in Ohio, but most of his work is him, moving. As he described some of the pieces to me, they sounded so clear and purposeful, and I could imagine his body achieving great communication and wonder. What he is doing wouldn'y be called modern dance. Would it be called contemporary dance? There is no school of technique or choreographic method behind it. Just one person talking with his body. I thought of the dancing that I have done and wondered if I have ever really danced. I wanted to divorce modern dance. I wanted to throw it away, complete with the person it made me, how it made me feel. I felt like I had been doing it all to communicate to myself when I was a smart and content child, dancing in the living room daily for joy. Modern dance takes me further away- just as the adolescent is socialized and therefore pulled further away from childhood, the modern dance body is trained in patterns, socialized in a technique in an effort to de-socialize the body. It sounds garbled. It all sounds garbled in my head, too. How did it happen? Perhaps I felt life in a way listening to Joanna that dance has only served to distort. It still sounds garbled.

Since Joanna did not have a set list that night, she would ask her two bandmates what they wanted to play after each song. When she asked the small guitar-playing man in front of me, I would whisper "what about Sadie?" and they would hear me but then play a song that was not "Sadie." It was in no way disappointing, though, since every song chosen was a joy, of course.

For the last song, she sang a duet with the percussionist. This man, with normally severe, slightly-red eyes, completely changed as he sang. His countenance was soft, his eyes peacefully closed. His voice was like aloe or honey or something equally soothing. Then they exited. Eventually, Joanna returned alone for an encore. I think she smiled at me the second before she sat down. And then she played "Sadie." Each intonation and stress was different, and the song hurried. It seemed an exploration of the song by a weary traveler, sincere, yet searching and tweaking sounds and looking for completion.