Re: Re: Political Music

[think!harvard!topaz!jerpc.PE.UUCP]

> Sorry if I popped your balloon but jeez ...

I only use mylar balloons.  Also they come with a secret
ingrediment... you have to read net.mail when I'm really angry
in order to get it out, otherwise it just sits there, quietly
protecting things.

> ----------------------------------
> hofmann ( I don't like "apartheid" )
> -----------------------------------
> 
> Let's talk about music, said the idiot to the fool - L Lunch

Ok... there's something I thought of on the San Juan Ferry (from
Orcas to Anacortes) this past Wednesday morning.  I had walked
back to the back of the ferry with my camera to get some
photographs (it was dark but I hoped maybe this new 1600 ASA
film would work) when I passed a PILE of life jackets (like
maybe 400 of them).  Immediately the song "And Dream of Sheep"
started playing in my head... out in the water I saw a buoy...
also a seagull... I started thinking... lo an' behold, I
discovered, not the Data Movement Primitives, but... a "hidden
meaning"!  And a sinister one, too.  The lines:

	If they find me racing white horses,
	They'll not take me for a buoy.

had bothered me for a long time.  Obviously there is something
more to it than wanting to be recognized in the water. 
Obviously, too, there must be something important to all the
images of the person in the water yelling "Over here!  Over
here!"

Well, I had thought long ago, "white horses" suggests unicorns. 
Unicorns are commonly a symbol of women, of femininity and all
that.  More generally, the image of "racing white horses," in
addition to the way it's put in the song, is a distinctly
feminine one.  It also occurred to me, somewhat emptily at the
time, that "buoy" had the dual meaning "boy" just as "bird" had
the dual meaning "bard".  

Well, standing there on this slippery grey deck, it suddenly
occurred to me... "Women and children first!"  There would be a
distinct advantage to be recognized as female, maybe, especially
if you were floating with some other people.  And "Can't you see
that little light out there?"  "Where?"  "Over there!" "No, over
here!  Over here!"  also suggests a search party spotting
someone else besides the protagonist instead.

This leaves only a much wider "open question" though, as to why
she would put this in the album.  If it does have meaning, I
think maybe it is like the "What's all this, then?" on "There
goes a tenner;" I have often thought that maybe that phrase has
special associations for Kate, since it certainly doesn't mean a
whole lot to me...