Black Horse and a Cherry Tree
"…tells the story of finding yourself lost on your path, and a choice has to be made. It's about gambling, fate, listening to your heart, and having the strength to fight the darkness that's always willing to carry you off."
-- KT Tunstall
-- KT Tunstall
Well my heart knows me better than I know myself,
so I'm gonna let it do all the talking.
I came across a place in the middle of nowhere
with a big black horse and a cherry tree.
I felt a little fear upon my back
I said, Don't look back, just keep on walking.
But the big black horse said, Look this way,
he said, Hey, lady, will you marry me?
But I said, No, no, no, no-no-no
I said, No, no, you're not the one for me.
No, no, no, no-no-no
I said, No, no, you're not the one for me.
And my heart had a problem in the early hours,
so I stopped it dead for a beat or two.
But I cut some cord, and I shouldn't have done it,
and it won't forgive me after all these years.
So I sent it to a place in the middle of nowhere
with a big black horse and a cherry tree.
Now it won't come back cause it's oh so happy,
and now I've got a hole for the world to see.
And it said, no, no, no, no-no-no
It said, no, no, you're not the one for me.
No, no, no, no-no-no
It said, no, no, you're not the one for me.
It said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
you're not the one for me.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
you're not the one for me.
Big black horse and a cherry tree
I can't quite get there cause my heart's forsaken me.
Big black horse and a cherry tree
I can't quite get there cause my heart's forsaken me.
Music and lyrics by KT Tunstall 2006
Art inspiring art: "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" with Chinese Characters
by Parcel-Sister 2006
"…I believe the Chinese translates to "old horse knows the way" and refers to a story where people get lost on a trail and release an old horse to show them the way back home."-- Parcel-Sister, artist
From Tunstall's blog, a split geo-biography that reflects the heart in flux, finding just the right flow rate:
// There she was, in cactus-country, Arizona, far from the adoptive London scene that provided the backdrop to four albums, 4 million sales, one Ivor Novello and one Brit Award, and further still from the Scottish folk heartland that had nurtured her. She was working with Giant Sand frontman Howe Gelb; maverick, desert punk spirit, a storied musician and producer. In Tucson’s Wavelab Studios, the pair were recording a set of songs that had bloomed into life, almost without Tunstall knowing it, and that foreshadowed two momentous events that would make summer 2012 a turning point in the 37-year-old singer/songwriter’s life.
“I’d always had this yearning to crack open my ribcage and be able to let everything out," she reflects. She had attempted it through her personal journal writing, but had never had the confidence – the unselfconsciousness – to do it in song. “And then last year led to it all happening without even trying anymore,” says Tunstall. She’s referring to the death of her dad last August, then, the following month, her split from her musician husband. “But you know, the first half of the record was written before any of that happened, so there is a kind of weird savant quality to it.”
The result: an album of two halves, both temporally and physically. Invisible Empire//Crescent Moon straddles either end of 2012, the year KT Tunstall’s world was rocked from its axis before settling on a new emotional orientation. Each was recorded in Arizona, and both are swaddled with atmosphere, poignancy and, yes, hurt – but, also, hope. One, oddly, prefigures the losses that were to come; the other, beautifully, captures a new, reinvigorated state of being in the aftermath. Together, they combine to create the album of Kate Victoria Tunstall’s life. //
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