This might start and end a little unusually. On June 10th, we’ll witness this year’s Strawberry Moon here in Copenhagen. That inspired me to take some sunset photos from the rooftop of the newly opened Skolen ved Dybbølsbro.
This in two photos – one in color, one in black and white. That, in turn, sparked a return to music-making for the first time in quite a while.
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the black-and-white version of the photo, which reminded me of the bright whiteness of the magnesium-based fireworks from my childhood;
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Nick Cave’s song Cinnamon Horses, whose lyrics have puzzled and intrigued me for some time (for example, horses are not usually found in trees); and
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Arvo Pärt.
Unlike my previous recordings, this one was created using tube-based gear for the sound production.
Sunset 2B
Cinnamon Horses, Nick Cave, Wild God
‘Cinnamon Horses’, which is track 7 on ‘Wild God’ from 2024 by Nick Cave feature the neologism (a newly formed word) three times:
And the cinnamon horses / In the turpentine trees (verse 1)
And the cinnamon horses / Stroll through the castle ruins (verse 2)
And the cinnamon horses / Dance beneath a strawberry moon (verse 4)
Grammatical analysis
Grammatical analysis of sentence 1 (the most interesting):
‘And’: conjunction
‘The cinnamon horses‘: subject, noun phrase
‘In the turpentine trees’: adverbial (locative prepositional phrase) or subject complement
(are or were): Elided copular verb?
Symbolism & etymology
The cinnamon (evoking colour, tactility, smell, location, spirituality, nostalgia, a word of Ancient Greek, Hebrew & Phoenician origin) horses moves from being in the alliterative turpentine trees, to dancing in castle ruins to dance between a strawberry (of Old English origin) moon (which I initially thought was a neologism too, but it turns out to be a term for the first full moon in June.
The next strawberry moon will occur on June 11th (2025) here in Copenhagen.
Also see: ‘The Time Is Out of Joint’ ~ Shakespeare, Deridda, T.S. Eliot
A verb-less haiku?
It’s as if the lines “And the cinnamon horses / In the turpentine trees” could be read as a simple verb-less, haiku-style poem in itself – reminiscent of Ezra Pounds iconic: “”THE apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough”.
Also see: Bill Evans: The Paris Concert Two + An Interview by Jim Aikin
The nouns
Looking at the text’s nouns from beginning to end, we get the following sequence:
friends
life
things
love
cinnamon (used adjectivally but part of compound noun below)
horses
turpentine (used adjectivally but part of compound noun below)
trees
castle (used adjectivally but part of compound noun below)
ruins
someone
dozen (used numerically but refers to quantity of the next noun)
vampires
moon
nothing (used abstractly like a noun)
everything (used abstractly like a noun)
Mostly short, everyday words, except for the cinnamon horses & the strawberry moon(s) – and a lot of ‘s’ phonemes, the versions especially pronounced in Nick Cave’s delivery (friends, things, horses, trees, ruins, dozen, vampires).
Nothing & everything
Semantically, we have cinnamon horses and strawberry moons suspended in a way, between nothing & and everything.
Might it be Christmas?
The simplest interpretation could be a strong memory of cinnamon-flavoured gingerbread cookies (in the shape of horses) blended with the pine smell of a newly cut Christmas tree?
Re-interpretation
I said that one thing fades, & another waits
That time slips sideways through rusted gates
& a dozen pale angels
Trace circles in the orchard gloom
You whispered,
You whispered,
You whispered that
Beneath a cinnamon sky
The chemistry of it
Some types of cinnamon, particularly less expensive ones, have a certain metallic taste akin to blood which can be experienced during nosebleeds, for example, (oxidized iron), due to the cinnamaldehyde compound. So the associations are not entirely positive for all.
In addition, there are overlaps between the active compounds in cinnamon and terpentine.
Turpentine: α-Pinene, β-Pinene, Limonene, Camphene, Myrcene, Terpinolene, Linalool
Cinnamon: Cinnamaldehyde, Eugenol, Limonene, α-Pinene, Linalool, β-Caryophyllene, Myrcene, Terpinolene
The smell of many of these compounds has direct neural connection to our amygdala and hippocampus (by-passing the thalamus) – which results in often very powerful sensations, compared to vision or hearing, creating powerful emotions and a sense of instantaneous unfiltered recall of memories decades old.
Intertextuality
‘Cinnamon horses’ is a reference to Neil Young’s ‘Cinnamon Girl’ from 1969 (Wikipedia lists more than 20 cover versions, among others by: The Who, The Smashing Pumpkins, Kashmir, Radiohead, Foo Fighters).
Here the sentence structure and meaning are more simple:
“I wanna live with a cinnamon girl / I could be happy the rest of my life / with a cinnamon girl”
Lana del Dey ‘Cinnamon Girl’ 2019) starts with a sentence fragment:
“Cinnamon in my teeth / from your kiss”
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