Bon Iver by Mark Beaumont

Author:Mark Beaumont [BEAUMONT, MARK]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85712-864-5
Publisher: Music Sales Limited
Published: 2013-02-14T22:00:00+00:00

* It was also suggested to refer to a tattoo, of which Justin has many.

* Another outré suggestion had the song being narrated by a young loon gosling, the “mother on the wall” being a stuffed bird on a hunting lodge wall.

* The fact that maroon is the colour of dried blood hints that Justin was singing about the damaged after-effects of a relationship.

† Justin has never spoken about selling a car in order to make the journey back to Wisconsin. Other suggestions included the horse being a metaphor for war or a symbol of nobility and success. But a particularly satisfying, if unlikely, reading is that it’s a reference to the ‘horse latitudes’, another term for the doldrums where Spanish boats transporting horses to their colonies would often become delayed by the lack of winds and the crew would have to push any horses that died from starvation or drought overboard. Hence “sold my red horse for a venture home/To vanish on the bow/Settling slow/Fit it all, fit it in the doldrums”.

* A suggestion to move on their relationship past the resentment phase, a promise to shoo off the “wolves” or perhaps a recommendation to go impose her cruel ways on some other guy.

† Another interpretation has the protagonist as an old man returning to his hometown to peer through the window of old friends or lovers shortly before death, the “agony” being realisation of his life having slipped past.

* Being ‘on a full count’ is a baseball term describing a situation where a batter has two strikes and three balls, meaning that a third strike will send them out and a fourth ball will give them a walk. This gives the line a double meaning; he’s both fulfilled by the woman he’s with but also on edge, the relationship could easily go one way or the other, he could take a chance and swing at his hopes and risk losing everything or do nothing and win an easy but unfulfilling advancement.

† Some argue this lyric may in fact read “so ready to be fought”.

‡ See also the line “seminary sold”, referencing a loss of a spiritual base, and the possibility that “spit out by your mouth” could refer to Biblical verse in which Jesus spits out lukewarm Christians. These two lines, however, could be interpreted as using religious imagery to illuminate the relationship in the song, Justin’s solid security or “seminary” being sold from under him and his being spat from his lover’s life for not being to her taste, respectively.

**A reading supported by the protagonist, in the final verse, questioning if he himself was the cause of the conflicts and if he’s ready to reform.

* Commentators have put forward many other interpretations of the phrase “creature fear”, from the fear of wild animals seeing their habitats destroyed by mankind to humanity’s terror of living without laws and regulations and the fear of change or of not being loved.

† Also arguably a reference to prayer, since she’s tired of and uncomfortable with his parable.

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