Re: Taking interviews seriously

[rutgers!uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor (Mais, ou sont les neiges d'antan?)]

>"ROSSI J.A." <rossi@nusc.ARPA> comments on the pitfalls of interpretation

>Has it ever occurred to the people who depend on excerpts from interviews with
>pop stars that it is possible for them to lie occasionally.  One would expect
>that, most lie quite frequently, especially when ego-related issues are
>raised.  This is not to dispute the spoken word of, say, Kate about the true
>meaning of HoL, or Gabriel's explanation for the Genesis breakup, but one
>must consider that there are always explainations for verbal behavior which
>extend beyond truth-telling.

This tendency to weigh the differences between someone's own view of
what they intended and what their work "means" is one that even Doug
has stumbled across (remember his Kate Bush interview?), and I think
that Mr. Rossi has a pretty good point. One might also point out that
the same problem is present in lots of other things than Rock Journalism:
Biography, History, Textual Criticism, Fanzine publishing (right, hof?),
etc. With luck, one tempers one's views by attempting to keep the context
of one's comments in view, cross-checking that with second sources, keeping
the sharp eye out for patterns of behaviour that appear to contradict 
the presentation of a speaker's ideas, and so forth. I think that the 
insistence on the part of a writer that what someone *says* is the 
absolute and final word tends only to be an issue in those aesthetic
paradigms where "intention" is the primary currency. Even then, it is
incumbent upon the Intentionalist  to carefully consider the issues of
verification.

The key point here is that I do not believe that we're simply dealing
with a genius (person) and the product of their genius (the LP) when
we deal with art. Both of those two parties are, at best, a kind of
convenient shorthand for a very complicated set of cultural, social,
etc. transactions. We are at as great a peril when we attempt to be
Redictivists about either one as we are when we attempt to say that
they can be totally separated. Just my opine, of course.