Some crows caw all day, some have nothing to say. I see one of them pace back and forth on my lawn the way I’ve seen Hamlet do on stage. Whatever is bothering him seems insoluble, too much for one crow to figure out on his own.
I’ve just come across them in the New York Review of Books, and it made me think of the way this album has come together: many of the lyrics I’ve contributed here began with me scribbling on my own, concluding I had nothing to say and putting them away in a drawer. Too much to figure out on my own. But then a certain Steve Jones contacted me and asked if I had any ideas for lyrics…
So I thought I’d share the lines from Simic, from his piece ‘Winter’s Philiosophers’ in the December NYRB. I love the density of his writing: crows as philosophers, philosophers of winter at that; the crow as Hamlet, with all the mortal resonance that brings; or just crow as actor, pretending to be Hamlet? And the idea that these secret problems are too much to solve alone. Better to get a friend to help.