What We Have Known: Music Revealing the Timeless Nature of War

Californian folk singer-songwriter Joanna Newsom’s What We Have Known grapples with the state of the world at the time it was released; first in 2003 on her EP Yarn and Glue and later as the B-side to her single Sprout and the Bean in 2004. In analysing its lyrics, Newsom ruminates on the idea of war and the destruction it causes. In a 2005 interview, Newsom said this about the song:

“Quite often, though, I include things that I feel do relate to things going on in the country. They’re not explicit, because I hope nothing that I put into these songs is too heavy-handed — but it should be accessible. I mean, last year I put out a single, and the B-side was a song about the war in Iraq, called ‘What We Have Known’. Basically, it was about cultural amnesia and about how we repeat the same awful mistakes. Some people got it immediately, but I had … well, I don’t need people to literally get everything, because I want everything to be open to all sorts of interpretations. But I had thought it would really take some hard work to ignore the anger and the element of hopelessness in that song. But I feel a lot of people did ignore it, because they didn’t want to see a song that existed in the present. Or to see me as someone who was pissed off about there being a war…”

Newsom uses these elements of anger and hopelessness to portray war in an almost timeless nature; though she has stated this song was about the war in Iraq, reading the lyrics does not provide a specific location (and no explicit references to the war). Starting with the first verse, Newsom conjures up pastoral, peaceful imagery, contrasted with violent imagery – “The tadpole buoyant as basalt, the seahorse horsing in assault”. In this case, the tadpole’s buoyancy being as basalt causes it to sink, unable to float back up to get to land when it needs to, almost representing a death of potential in life; contrasted by the seahorse who is now aimed to attack and assault (likely) the tadpole, getting it swept up in some conflict it never chose to be a part of.

Newsom’s imagery here conveys the same hopelessness often seen in war; children represented by the tadpole get their opportunity and potential for fruitful life hopelessly assaulted away from them. She introduces similar imagery in the next two lines: “The owlet in his greenery, the narwhal in his cup of sea,” the owlet representing a child and the narwhal a potential threat, who in this case is not attacking anything unlike the seahorse. She uses these various animals as contrasting depictions of human nature, and the line “they all believe, they all believe” places them all in unity, holding some vague universal belief.

In the context of the song so far, the next verse introduces imagery potentially referencing the “real” winners of these wars, the people who profit off them. The verse frames it in an old-fashioned sense, but still has very real implications today: Modern day companies like Raytheon who manufacture weaponry and arms and sell them to governments would want to see wars continue as long as possible to maximize their profits from them, regardless of what the cause is or who its participants are. For example, they sold arms to Saudi Arabia to use in the Yemeni Civil War, a decision which was initially blocked by the Obama administration in 2015 yet reversed by the Trump administration six months later. The song also references collusion and “back alley” dealings, the collusion is likely referencing government lobbying; attempts by individuals and private groups to influence the decisions of government to serve their own interests instead of those of the public. I find it interesting how she uses “we” in the line “We throw the bones into the street” – implying that she is also complicit either in the collusion (as a taxpayer) or, more likely, linking back to the song’s theme of cultural amnesia, that she and the rest of society were collectively complicit in brushing aside the horrors of war.

In the next verse, she ruminates on the power of history, in how it tends to repeat itself (“And all the books our fathers wrote … History brittle, brown and broke”), especially when people are not aware of and do not learn about it; history gives us the tools to see problems that are otherwise invisible in the present by analysing and explaining problems of the past. When history is erased, even little by little as she says, the present’s problems are no longer as apparent and seem like new problems (“We can’t remember what was spoke / So we stare in wonder at the smoke”), contributing to the sense of cultural amnesia she describes. As she says, we know not now what we have known.

The reference to whalebones in the following verse (“Ladies, breathe deep against your whalebones”) is also interesting as she references whales again in a later song, Colleen (all about the power of naming and claiming identity), as well as invoking lots of whale imagery in the song. The plot of Colleen is about the mythological selkie, beings which are capable of changing form from seal to human by shedding their skin, and how the selkie she talks about in that song has had her seal skin stolen and has forgotten about her selkie identity in the process, leading her to be taken in by a village that names her Colleen (Cailín is Irish for “girl” – she is now born again as a generic expression of her gender). As she adapts to this new way of life and tries to live as a human, she feels constantly unfulfilled outside of her natural habitat in the sea. In a sense, she is facing a war of her own, one between her natural inclinations and trying to remember who she is, versus societal mandates and pressure that tell her what she has to do throughout her day-to-day life. Of course, this song came before Colleen, so it seems like more of a coincidence. Newsom also talks about wars and brings up their imagery from time to time, even in her later work: the militaristic and broken Soft as Chalk, the cinematic and violent Kingfisher, both on Have One On Me, and the temporally transcendent Waltz of the 101st Lightborne on Divers. The next line is a haunting reminder of the cost of war – “your children come back made of stone” – either they do come back and are forever traumatized by the horrors of war, or they die and the stone is meant to represent a headstone, or perhaps a memorial of some sort for those who have died in service.

The following verse also draws up more images of conflict; perhaps meant to represent a shoreline invasion of some kind, as seen by the “wheezing of the bay”, and “travelling westward on the breeze” could also hint at this being a colonial war, of which the Iraq War which this song influenced was very much one (though, I think this song just talks about the horrors of any war in general), additionally evidenced by the last line “bring us all to our knees”, implying a forced servitude to some colonial empire.

The dappled horse she references in the next verse may represent some decorated military officer/general; the state of being dappled refers to being marked with spots and round patches, which are very common in photos of officers with lots of experience serving in the military, and horses often symbolise freedom and power, which she uses to contrast with a sorrel mare, both of whom “stare” as opposed to “seeing”, the former implies passively looking at something, while seeing implies actively looking; the boots she mentions, given this analogy, could just represent standard black military boots. Interestingly, she compares it to malachite, which is not black, instead it takes on a dark green colour – and using these boots, “drives a nag into the night”; nags are an informal term for a horse, especially one that is in poor health, bringing the horse analogy even further.

The final two verses of this song are, in my opinion, the most chilling, both because of Newsom’s delivery and their content. Given this song being about the horrors of war, the idea she portrays of raising a young child and seeing them grow up and joining the military, disillusioned by its true intentions, and being made to believe that it is in the service of one’s country (“eyes averted from the storm”), are sent off to die in “perfect form”. She once again repeats the main motif, that now, we do not know what we have known in the past; cultural amnesia has made people forget about these horrors of war.

Up until now, the pastoral imagery used in this song suggests that it is taking place in a time long ago, but Newsom mentions satellites here, which are much more modern technology, and played its first critical role during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, being used to dismantle Saddam Hussein’s military, and ever since then forever changed warfare, and the rhetoric she refers to could likely be speeches made to effectively persuade people into believing these wars are necessary, which has been done throughout recent times and is largely responsible for this cultural amnesia, and how they often involve euphemisms to mask their true intentions. The song ends with the final reminder: “When they come back, broke and burned: those who return have not returned”, clearly detailing just how much war can affect someone, even if they have returned, the horrors they have seen will forever haunt them.

This song is, as far as I know, the only song which Newsom has fully confirmed the meaning of, and I found it interesting to analyse from the meaning which she gave; knowing the intention she was trying to go for it makes it much easier to get a better insight into how she writes and phrases her lyrics. Her later work is far more intricate and eloquently worded, which makes it all the harder to analyse, especially given how she barely gives anything away to help interpret these songs. However, this song stands out as a very underappreciated one in her catalogue, and I hope this at least interests people into checking out this song and the rest of her work.