Next Tuesday, the 20th of August, it will have been six months since the release of my book You are a Tree: and other metaphors to nourish life, thought, and prayer. To mark the occasion, I will be releasing the final episodes in my series on metaphor. In this episode, I speak with the singer-songwriter Henry Jamison.
When I asked Henry which metaphor in my book he would like to discuss, he settled on “Safety is (not) a castle.” He lives in a neighbourhood whose symbol (“somewhat dubiously” he laughs) is a tower. High on a hill in a park near his house there is a tower, built for no real purpose other than to look grand. The tower, austere and alone, he says, is not the symbol he would choose for his life. One day on a walk, he was listening to an episode of The Weird Studies podcast on the symbolism of towers. The hosts were talking about how many of the most popular video games have to do with defending a tower, and Henry was thinking about what this said about our need to defend the ego, to see ourselves as against the world. Why did this lonely, military symbol appeal to people so much?
Hadleigh Castle, John Constable, 1829
In the midst of this thought, Henry rounded the corner to home. There an antithetical image greeted him: his wife in the garden with his baby. They were at work and surrounded by stones that looked as though they could have been the stones from the tower. Here was a different image. Like defending the tower, it had to do with effort, with building something. But here the effort was not toward defence and separation, but nourishment. This is how Henry Jamison’s mind works— letting a thought pass through his imagination and into something new.
Henry used to joke that his genre was Pop Country Rilke. His songs have an other-worldly-folkiness about them. On the one hand, they seem to be about real moments in his own life— wandering through an art museum or a grocery store, passing the open doors of a cathedral— as a young adult finding his way and love and a place in the world. And yet, one always has the feeling that something archetypal is going on in Henry’s music. Images and metaphors weave themselves in and across albums, so that the quotidian moments he describes return to him transfigured into something new, almost spiritual. But for all that, there’s also a playfulness and self-mockery in Henry’s music, and a real musical pleasantness. Each album song is like a puzzle you could unpick, but you don’t have to. And perhaps you shouldn’t. The music is its own offering; no need to disembowel.
“We used to feel our rage just like the sea
Now we get it on an instalment plan…”
Henry Jamison, “Boys”.
I first came across Henry’s music from his single “Real Peach” in 2016, which he describes as a “joke” that he wasn’t sure why he was so intent on telling. My favourite of his albums is Gloria Duplex (2019), a patchwork of songs about boyhood and manhood, in my mind an antidote to the TedTalk styled self-help for young men that was coming to popularity at the time, championing a sort of hardness and enmity with the world (and woman). The closest thing I can describe seeing him play the opening track “Gloria” live in London is like being at a charismatic worship conference (a fair few of which I participated in in my youth!). I’ve enjoyed Henry’s music with interest ever since as well: Tourism (2020), The Years (2022), and other singles along the way. When Henry’s lyrics made their way into You are a Tree, I decided to reach out to him and see if he’d like to discuss metaphor on my podcast. To my delight, he said yes.
(I hope he will forgive me for the title of this episode… couldn’t help myself!)
On this episode, we speak about Henry’s songwriting process, thinkers and poets who have influenced his music and thought, as well as the metaphor of safety as a tower. Something I appreciate about Henry is his confidence in language— language as a great and mysterious gift. More often than not, it is not language which fails us but our dull ways of using it. The way that Henry describes his writing process seemed like a tangle of metaphors to me; he speaks of sending ideas and images into the depths, letting them pass through the Imagination, and returning to him in a new form. That rings of journeys to the underworld to me…
Henry shared that this was the most he’d ever said publicly about songwriting. So I’m very thankful for his time and thoughtfulness! I always asks guests if there’s a work of art—be it poetry, a painting, a movie, a novel— that’s nourishing them lately. Henry had in mind this poem, which I will leave you with:
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
“Widening Circles,” Rainer Maria Rilke
(Oh, btw: after the debacle with Henry’s mic, it seems that min switched to my AirPods near the end of the interview,. Technology triumphs over me again! Apologies).
I hope you will all tune in next week for a two part episode with theologian and co-founder of the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts Trevor Hart on the importance of the parenthetical not (You are (not) a Tree) in metaphor. And if you enjoyed this conversation with Henry, catch up on the rest of the series!
People are (not) Trees with Malcolm Guite
Wisdom is (not) Light with Lydia Schumacher
Love is (not) a Disease with Christopher Tin
Sadness is (not) Heavy with David Zahl
Change is (not) Birth with Jennifer Banks
Life is (not) a Journey with Alison Milbank
If I get myself together, I also hope to do something to celebrate six months of You are a Tree being in the world… so stay tuned for that. And in the meantime, I will temporarily renew my offer to give a free month of paid subscription to this Substack if you order a copy of You are a Tree. To obtain this, just reply to this email or send me an email at thejoynessthebrave@gmail.com with a screen shot of your receipt. It needs to be a recent purchase—August 1st or after.
Wishing you all a lovely week!
Joy
The ruins of the St Andrews castle, looking out over the North Sea.
You are (not) a Real Peach with Henry Jamison