u/acelgdzie

The catalogue accompanying the Echolalia exhibition (widely excerpted by certain fan accounts online) has the following quote from Björk, which I found interesting:

>Sometimes the most abstract thing is the most autobiographical. Like when I got this energy meltdown in Australia, and I did those high-energy piano arrangements on my laptop. Suddenly I’m over-sharing the state of my fatigue with very fast piano music… Sometimes it’s not in the lyrics.

Might be an overinterpretation but it seems the twinkling piano lines in “Nerve Bloom” (and possibly on other songs on the upcoming record, who knows) were written during the Cornucopia residency in Perth in March 2023. I remember attendees’ comments saying she seemed off/tired during some of the shows (did not come out for encores, performed some songs sitting down, etc.). Well, I guess she doesn’t let a good crisis go to waste!

Let England Shake

>And if, when all a vigil keep,
The West’s asleep, the West’s asleep—
Alas! and well may Erin weep,
That Connaught lies in slumber deep.
But, hark! some voice like thunder spake:
“The West's awake! the West's awake!”—
“Sing oh! hurra! let England quake,
We’ll watch till death for Erin’s sake!”

— The West’s Asleep by Thomas Osborne Davis

The Glorious Land

>How is our glorious land being ploughed?
Not by wooden ploughs is our glorious land being ploughed,
Not by iron ploughs—
Our land is being ploughed by horses’ hooves;
And the glorious land is being sown with Cossack heads.

— untitled poem from Russian Folk Lyrics, collected and translated by Roberta Reeder

The Words That Maketh Murder

>White had a sense of duty; he kept his disappointments for his diary: ‘Dear little wife and kiddie I seem so far away from you all; I do not want to speak about the war; it’s horrible. If I let myself think too much my nerves would go. Have seen and done things I want to forget.’
…
Godley didn’t know much but, like Enver, he knew the rhetoric one falls back on to dress up defeat as victory, the words that make murder sound like an act of statecraft.
…
I was in the first line to advance and we did not get ten yards. Everyone fell like lumps of meat… All your pals that had been with you for months and months blown and shot out of all recognition…
…
Pinnock arrived in an Egyptian hospital and suddenly realized he had come from an unearthly place. He was overjoyed to see a woman's face and hear a piano.

— Gallipoli by Les Carlyon

All and Everyone

>The Anzacs were not going forward; they were clinging to 400 acres of useless beachfront, as though staying there was a point of honour, which it was.
…
You had to know you were alive here. Death was everywhere, in the air and in the sounds coming from second ridge. Death was there when you rolled a smoke or told a joke or carted water. Day and night it was there.
…
The mines at the Nek killed 70 Turks, probably wounded hundreds more, left two great craters and rattled the bones of the light horsemen lying in the open after the four charges of August 7.

— Gallipoli by Les Carlyon

On Battleship Hill

>A shooting star cascades through the night and the moon begins to slide down behind the Sphinx, the jagged spur, fluted and sharp like a rotten tooth, that dominates this part of the beach.

— Gallipoli by Les Carlyon

In the Dark Places

>We got up very early,
Washed our white faces,
Walked around the fields
Put up crosses,
Invoked Egor’:
Brave Egor’,
Macarius the saint!
Protect our flocks,
Every animal—
In the field and beyond the field
In the forest and beyond the forest
For you wolf, bear,
Old beast,
Fox and hare—
A stump and a log
At the edge of the forest!

>You mean old lady,
Stump and log,
At the edge of the forest!
Go to Tatarus (Hell)
Return again,
Pass through the damned mountains
Don't find your way back!

>We walked around the field
Invoking Egor’,
Praising Macarius:
You, our brave Egory,
Macarius the saint!
Save our flocks
In the field and beyond the field
In the forest and beyond the forest,
Under the bright moon
Under the beautiful sun,
From the nasty wolf,
From the mean bear,
From the sly beast!

— St. George’s Songs from Russian Folk Lyrics, collected and translated by Roberta Reeder

Bitter Branches

>It is not a little white birch bending toward the earth,
It is not silken grass spreading out in the field—
It is bitter wormwood spreading out, spreading out.
Nothing in the field is more bitter than you, wormwood!

>In the white world the soldiers go on campaigns,
Go on campaigns, stand in formation,
Stand in formation and hold their rifles.
Stand with frisky feet in the damp earth,
Hold onto their fiery rifles with their white hands,
With their bright eyes they look beyond the Danube.

— untitled poem from Russian Folk Lyrics, collected and translated by Roberta Reeder

The Colour of the Earth

>I lost my dearest friend, Teddy Charles, that day. We joined up together and saw the campaign through together until Chunuk Bair. There were no officers left, no NCOs. Just soldiers. Teddy led thirty men forward to try and hold the ridge. He called, “Come on Vic,” but I was impeded by Turkish fire. We never saw those thirty men again. Later, in the dark, I thought I heard Teddy’s voice calling for his mother, then for me. By then the place was crawling with Turks and I couldn’t get to him. He’s still on Chunuk Bair, a pile of bones… If I was asked to give a description of the colour of the earth on Chunuk Bair on the eighth or ninth of August, I would say it was a dull or browny red. And that was blood. Just blood.

— Voices of Gallipoli by Maurice Shadbolt

(With thanks to The Garden forum user March who many years ago generously shared the fragments from Russian Folk Lyrics and Gallipoli)

>Beneath the oak grove is flax, flax
Beneath the green grove is flax, flax
“Already I have sown, sown the flax,
And I kept repeating,
With my boots I beat it down,
On all sides I turned it:
Turn out well, turn out well, my flax
Turn out well, my white flax,
Catch someone's fancy, my darling!”
“Teach me, mama,
How to weed the flax.”
“Well this is how, daughter,
This is how, daughter of mine,
This is how, little dove,
This is how, little dove.”

— untitled poem from Russian Folk Lyrics, collected and translated by Roberta Reeder

>Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

— Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

>He had risen that morning vigorous, determined to fling it all aside, to forget it and not allow himself to think about it. But without noticing how it occurred he had all the morning not merely not interested himself in the work, but tried to avoid it. What had formerly cheered him and been important was now insignificant. Unconsciously he tried to free himself from business. It seemed to him that he had to do so in order to think and to plan. And he freed himself and remained alone. But as soon as he was alone he began to wander about in the garden and the forest. And all those spots were besmirched in his recollection by memories that gripped him. He felt that he was walking in the garden and pretending to himself that he was thinking out something, but that really he was not thinking out anything, but insanely and unreasonably expecting her; expecting that by some miracle she would be aware that he was expecting her, and would come here at once and go somewhere where no one would see them, or would come at night when there would be no moon, and no one, not even she herself, would see—on such a night she would come and he would touch her body…

— The Devil by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude

>Along the mountains,
Along the high mountains
A young gray eagle
Was flying high
Flying high,
Shrieking pitifully.
In the formation a soldier
Was sighing heavily:
“For myself I am not sorry, not sorry
For myself
I am only sorry
For the green garden:
In the green garden
Are three trees:
The first tree
Is a cypress,
The second tree
Is a sweet apple tree
The third tree
Is a green pear tree.
The cypress tree
Is my dear daddy:
The sweet apple 
Is my dear mamma,
The green pear
Is my young wife”

— untitled poem from Russian Folk Lyrics, collected and translated by Roberta Reeder

One more from the collection of items donated by PJ Harvey to the V&A Museum – a set of cue cards with ‘points of concentration’, given to Polly by theatre director Ian Rickson, used during the Let England Shake tour as prompts before taking to the stage.

Part of a letter by Jeff Buckley, sent to PJ Harvey in late 1996/early 1997. Donated by Polly to the V&A Museum.