If you love indie rock, you probably already have this album, NPR's album of the year. Snagged it two days ago and have fallen in love with it.
The album was inspired by a Japanese folk tale, and the album is based on two "macro" song concepts, The Crane Wife and The Island, the latter of which was inspired by William Shakespeare's The Tempest. If you know me well, you can already see why I might like it. I love Japanese culture, and I love Shakespeare. It's really a beautiful album. I'm sure if you listen to the radio, you've heard the Valencia song, but trust me, the rest of the album is more and better.
But, what is the crane wife?
The Crane Wife is an old Japanese folk tale. A poor man finds an injured crane, takes it in and nurses it back to health. After releasing the crane, a woman appears at his doorstep with whom he falls in love and marries. Because they need money, his wife offers to weave wondrous fabric out of silk that they can sell at the market (the song talks about clothes, but in the version I've heard, she makes magical sails for ships), on the condition that he agrees never to watch her making them. They prosper and live a comfortable life, but he asks her to weave them more and more, as his greed increases. Unnoticed by the man, his wife's health is diminishing. As these tales go, curiosity gets the best of the man, and he eventually peeks in to see what she is doing to make the silk she weaves so desirable. He is shocked to discover that at the loom is the crane plucking feathers from her own body and weaving them into the loom. The crane, seeing him, flies away and never returns.
What I like best about this story is that the "moral" differs from person to person, and isn't so obvious.
What
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4 comments:
Thanks for sharing this story, and I like how your post ends in
"what"
If it was a mistake, I hope you don't fix it.
Heh, it was a mistake... I must have cut what I was finishing with... it was something about how I love the ambiguity of the story... and the songs about it on the album are from the man's perspective... it's about how he was sad, but he didn't mean for what happened to happen, etc... really moving stuff.
I must say that this is one of the few albums that I've fallen in love with upon first hearing. Truly a masterpiece. One of the songs even made me tear up on the drive to work!
I like that you took the time to tell us this story. Made me think.
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