-- Leo's gemini proxy
-- Connecting to gemini.circumlunar.space:1965...
-- Connected
-- Sending request
-- Meta line: 20 text/gemini
It's a beautiful Spring morning, with what seems like the first sun in weeks, a brisk April breeze blowing through the treetops, cotton-wool clouds scudding across the sky, and the likelihood of showers. On the front lawn, the fuchsia-colored blossoms of the crabapple tree are in full bloom. And today's Nick Drake song of the day, as I drive my son to school, is "Fruit Tree."
It's a typically exquisite Drake song, with minor-to-major shifts and unexpected diminished chords, string orchestration, and the haunting melody of a cor anglais, overlaid with the singer's characteristically wan delivery of bittersweet lyrics. In this case those lyrics are even more poignant than usual, since they are of course a foreshadowing of Drake's own unsung career in his short life and his posthumous fame. Melancholy even by Drake's usual standards, they stand perfectly as a poem in their own right:
> Fame is but a fruit tree
> So very unsound.
> It can never flourish
> ‘til its stock is in the ground
> So men of fame
> Can never find a way
> ‘til time has flown
> Far from their dying day
>
> Forgotten while you’re here
> Remembered for a while
> A much updated ruin
> From a much outdated style
> Life is but a memory
> Happened long ago
> Theatre full of sadness
> For a long forgotten show
> Seems so easy
> Just to let it go on by
> ‘til you stop and wonder
> Why you never wondered why
>
> Safe in the womb
> Of an everlasting night
> You find the darkness can
> Give the brightest light
> Safe in your place deep in the earth
> That’s when they’ll know what you were truly worth
> Forgotten while you’re here
> Remembered for a while
> A much updated ruin
> From a much outdated style
>
> Fame is but a fruit tree
> So very unsound
> It can never flourish
> ‘til it’s stock is in the ground
> So men of fame
> Can never find a way
> ‘til time has flown
> Far from their dying day
>
> Fruit tree, fruit tree
> No-one knows you but the rain and the air
> Don’t you worry
> They’ll stand and stare when you’re gone
>
> Fruit tree, fruit tree
> Open your eyes to another year
> They’ll all know
> That you were here when you’re gone
As we pull up at the school to the refrain of the last few lines, I explain to my son what the song is about, and how eerily prophetic they are of the singer's fame, which as the song seems to predict only came to fruition after he himself was no more than a passing memory.
I drive home reflecting on this, and back at home pause in the blustery morning to take some photographs of the blooming crabapple tree. The fruit of the crabapple tree are small, like miniature replicas of regular apples, and are too bitter to eat alone. They are edible, though, and have traditionally been made into jam. As I wait for the sun to come out from behind the clouds so that I can photograph the blossoms, it occurs to me that the crabapple tree might have been the tree that Nick had in mind as he was writing that song, with its tiny, bittersweet fruit that only become palatable after being preserved.
The crabapple tree in our garden is unpredictable: some years it hardly produces any fruit, others the lawn is so carpeted with fallen crabapples that it takes a weekend to clear it. This year the blooms are glorious, and it looks like being a bumper crop. This autumn, I think I might try my hand at making crabapple jam, and I know what I'll be listening to.
> Fruit tree, fruit tree
> Open your eyes to another year
> They’ll all know
> That you were here when you’re gone
-----
-- Response ended
-- Page fetched on Tue May 7 23:24:18 2024
