The Natural Bridge

passing an abandoned Drive In
with ivy growing on the screen 
it's like I caught Hollywood sleeping 
sleep without the dream

It's an album which may well be best appreciated on a cinematic level. Cinematic in its imagery and cinematic in the way we are guided through the space and time that it occupies. In a similar way to David Lynch getting in to film because he wanted his paintings to move, David Berman seems to have gotten into making music to make his poetry move. To make it more physical. There are at least 2 explicit references to architecture, the second being

all houses dream in blueprint 
our house, it dreams so hard
outside you can see my footprints
I've been dreaming in your yard

It is in this dreamscape where the album works best. When Bunuel criticised Italian realism he did so on the back of it  not allowing a certain dreamlike element into the films. For him this prevented the films from being truly realistic. Life isn't all it appears to be. It's more or less something else. For kitchen sink realism to be truly realistic it has to let in a certain amount of kitchen sink surrealism. In part, this is the appeal of art, its unclear verisimilitude. Which is the only verisimilitude there is. Clear verisimilitude being a contradiction in terms. All mirrors may look the same, but only to one set of eyes. Berman knows that when he is trying to reach something truly recognisable, approaching on real, he is at his best when he dream(s) all day and write(s) at night. The verisimilitude that he is aiming for is encapsulated in the line

guard my bed
while the rain turns the ditches to mirrors
by evasive carnations from central Ohio
where the looking machine can't hear us

There's a cartoon in The Portable February in which Berman draws the the state of Texas and then replicates the shape drawing a few clouds within it and calls this shape a map of the sky above Texas. This is the America where the album resides, the space between America and the universe (recorded around Louisville). So although the looking out point is a specifically Southern American, the real location is far more universal

in space there is no centre
we're always off to one side
in space there is no centre
we're always off to one side

The themes, too, are universal. Ultimately it is an album about light in its myriad forms, both physical and ephemeral. The light comes from a dark place, a world who's attachment to surface value is too consuming, self deceptively buying into the emperor's new clothes, how do you turn a million steers into buildings made of mirrors? It asks as the make up girls make out with the mannequins etc. However, it ends with the stars shining into our eyes. So, though you cannot stop the night from coming in, there's a twist, maybe you cannot stop the light from coming in either

don't cha know God stays up all night

Berman tells us in Dallas, ending the song

some kind of strange magic happens 
when the city turns on her light

A wise Monk (Thelonious) once said, "it's always night or else we wouldn't need light". I wonder if that's what's going on in the painting on the album's sleeve.