Essential Fantasy: Waltz of the 101st Lightborne - Website of author M.C. Burnell

"But there was a time, we were lashed to the prow
Of a ship you may board but not steer,
Before you and I ceased to mean now
And began to mean only right here.
To mean inches and miles, but not years."

Going slightly off-script, you caught me. Yes, yes, it’s neither fantasy nor strictly-speaking literature. I’m generally of the opinion that song lyrics are poetry, and in any case I’m not here today to dispute genre delineations. I just want to talk to you about one of my favorite pieces of speculative fiction of the last few years: Joanna Newsom’s Waltz of the 101st Lightborne.

Newsom’s memorable voice is the perfect vehicle for this haunting story, at once throaty and pellucid. The melody is carried by piano and accompanied by violin. As the name implies, the song is a waltz, and trust me, you will have goosebumps. It makes me choke up, although I’m not sure why: it isn’t sad, this is a harrowing sci-fi dystopia.

"Making time just another poor tenant, bearing weight,
Taking fire, trading smokes,
In our war between us and our ghosts."

The premise is as simple as it is alarming: having uncovered the secrets of time travel, humanity plunges into perpetual war with past generations of ourselves. Not an original idea, of course, but the song has a heartbreaking sense of fatalism I find striking.

This melancholic ‘whoops, we broke creation’ vibe stands out against the sometimes-frantic pace of other dystopias. There is no ‘we can put this right’ rhetoric here, no rage against the light that died. The narrator isn’t a hero or even a soldier but a lover left behind, one of those presumably benefitting from the weaponization of time. There’s a feeling of futility to the lyrics, of a person or people untethered. Like asserting their dominance over history has caused it to lose all meaning.

I’m not a music critic and have no further insights to offer. Just a forceful recommendation that you go listen to this song.

"That’s why we got bound to a round desert island
‘Neath the sky where our sailors have gone.
Have they drowned in those windy highlands?
Highlands away, my John…"