Joanna Newsom Lyrics

Do you know what this is son?
This is the panopticon
And all around us blink the brash
And shifty eyes of common cash

So do we die or do we travel?
Down the path by which one dabbles
In the arts of antediluvian crafts
With yarn and glue

So gather twilight to your breast
And couch the rabble-rouser's nest
And we will take a day of rest
And we will all be heaven-blessed

And we will gather 'round to dine
And pass the time with wicked rhymes
And toast in dandelion wines
To hear their mellifluous chimes

We toast the fallow furrows that we sow
We toast the monies that we owe, oh, oh
We toast the creditors we daily face
Who topple down with gruesome grace

And we toast the aristocrats with blood of blue
Because we know our collars are that color, too
And we toast the artisans of antediluvian crafts
With yarn and glue

We do, we do!

Notes

The panopticon is a design for a surveilling prison, invented by Jeremy Bentham and borne to broader meaning by Foucault.