More on "There Goes a Tenner" (a LOT more!)

[IED0DXM%OAC.UCLA.EDU@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]

 > There's a universally held principle that if you have two theories,
 > and all the evidence is explained by the two theories, the simpler
 > of the two theories is to be prefered.  This principle is known as
 > Occam's razor.  With regard to "There Goes A Tenner", we have two
 > theories: mine and IED's.  Mine is significantly simpler, and
 > explains everything.  Furthermore, IED's is flawed.  Let's go over
 > them again

     1. Though such a theory may be "universally accepted" in some
cases, it is particularly unsuited to the intepretation of the works
of Kate Bush. There are innumerable instances in her work where the
"simplest" explanation is not adequate. Doug himself has often taken
advantage of that fact to generate a large number of improbably
complex (and sometimes unfounded) theories about some of her songs.
     2. Certainly, IED 's interpretation of the storyline in "TGaT" is
flawed. He is the first to admit this. However, he must say that
Doug's own interpretation does _not_ "explain everything", at least
not to this fan's satisfaction. And it should be added that although
IED's reading is flawed, Doug's summary of IED's theory is inaccurate.
This is really not Doug's fault. It's been a while since IED first
suggested his view of the story. Also, at that time IED had not yet
come to any firm reading of the song's story, and he was imprecise in
his initial summary of it.  Since that time IED has read and listened
to Kate's own words about the meaning of the song. As a result, his
current understanding incorporates a part of Doug's interpretation,
and rejects another part.

 > IED's theory is certainly more complicated.  In addition to this, it
 > has several flaws.  Even if it had no flaws, my theory would be
 > preferable, because of its simplicity, but combined with the flawed
 > nature of IED's theory, the issue should be clear.

     Doug's comment above is patently illogical. The deciding factor
in determining the preferability of one theory over another is not
their relative "simplicity", but the _seriousness_ and _number_ of
flaws each contains. IED will demonstrate below the seriousness and
number of flaws in both his own and Doug's interpretations of "TGaT".

 > My theory says that all of the song takes place in the present,
 > except at the end, beginning with "Ooh I remember".  Everything
 > after this is a reverie of better times, when the burglars lived
 > rich off of their ill-gotten gains.  Sometime in the past, Kate and
 > her bank-robber lover had pulled off a successful heist and they
 > celebrated their success by tossing their money in the air and
 > watching it float in the breeze.  Kate daydreams about the way
 > things use to be, while in the present she is probably being
 > shackled and photographed by the police.

     As current Love-Hounds will know, IED recently suffered a loss of
face in this forum over the issue of the meaning of the word (for it
seems that it is a word) "Gaffa". You will all remember that it was
through the publication of Kate's own remarks on that subject that IED
was proved wrong.
     One result of that debacle seems to be manifesting itself now, in
the form of a new campaign against another of IED's ideas about Kate's
work. This time Doug is exceptionally self-confident -- even for Doug
-- and in presenting his view of his and IED's respective
interpretations of "TGaT" he surpasses himself in zeal and dogmatism.
     Alas! this turn of events seems to have led Doug into much the
same trap that foiled his recent forensic opponent. It should
therefore be understandable to all that IED takes a certain amount of
righteous pleasure in performing the following task of exposition.
     In order to facilitate the expression of all these picky little
points (and they've never been pickier, IED warns all), IED has asked
(and received) permission from Love-Hound par excellence Jon Drukman,
with whom IED has been carrying on (more or less by coincidence) a
discussion about just these aspects of "TGaT". In the following
posting to Jon, IED set forth in as much detail as he could the many
puzzling twists in the song's lyrics and imagery, while simultaneously
trying to address Doug Alan's objections to IED's theory, as well as
IED's problems with Doug's theory. (Please excuse IED's use of the
first person in the following re-print.)

                    ----------------------------

 Date: Wed, 14 Sep 88  00:06:01 EDT
 To: jsd@UMASS.BITNET
      (Jonathan S. Drukman)
 Subject: there goes a tenner one more time
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)

 > Well, my flatmate says that :>oug is correct in that most of this
 > is anticipating the incipient capture.  I don't know though...
 > What I find most puzzling is this verse:

 > My excitement / turns into fright  (present tense - during the job)
 > All my words fade / what am I gonna say / mustn't give the game away

 > Now look at that verse.  The first couplet appears to be during the
 > job, right?  But the last triplet doesn't fit in with that.  Why
 > are her words fading (and what does it mean anyway)?  And if this
 > is still the job, who is she going to give the game away _to_?  My
 > flatmate suggests that Kate's belief in psychic phenomena means
 > that she's getting a vibe from the future anticipating her capture.

     My idea about the "fading" words is that it's just another aspect
of the lines "What am I gonna say?/Mustn't give the game away". As I
see it, the heroine, imagining herself in custody, is about to
confess, but at the crucial moment her "words fade", and she stops
talking -- but she worries about what story she's going to give
instead. Then she comes to a decision: "They'll get nothing from
me/Not until they let me see/My solicitor."
     Now all this is certainly awkward, and it's also made muddier by
a line from Kate's own poetic "description" of the song, which
appeared in an old Newsletter. In it Kate writes:

         "Everybody synchronize watches. Remember there's only half an
hour to do the job. We've been rehearsing for weeks, so nothing should
go wrong. Let's run through it one more time:

     "I go in and distract the guard,
     Frank's out the back in the getaway car,
     The sign on the door turns from open to shut,
     We keep them all covered, you blow the safe up,
     We grab the cash, make a hasty retreat,
     And tear across London using the backstreets.
     Remember, be careful, give nothing away,
     The arm of the Law is as long as they say."

     You notice in that last couplet: "Give nothing away"? This seems
to be the same idea (in Kate's mind) as that expressed in the line
"They'll get nothing from me." Interestingly, it also seems to imply
that the band of burglars are particularly on guard about
_not_letting_any_word_of_their_activities_leak_out_ -- perhaps not
even to others in their circle, rather than just the police? Remember
also that at least in this (unused) part of the lyrics the heroine is
telling her cohorts what they are _going_ to do, clearly before the
actual heist has begun. The similarly constructed line from the song
("You blow the safe up") might be the last of these "instructions",
though I'm not set on that idea, given the following line ("Then all I
know is I wake up"), which is obviously a description of the aftermath
of the (imagined?) gelignite explosion itself. But looking at the
verses that Kate printed in her Newsletter description, it does seem
that the "blow the safe up" line is the same sort of thing. Could it
be that Kate was trying to create, within the compressed space of a
song's lyrics, the effect of narrative surprise that is communicated
by the sudden move from the tense list of "instructions" that the
heroine is giving her gang, to the unexpected _result_ of those
instructions: an excessively large explosion that stuns the heroine?
Still, I think on balance that the events beginning either with "You
blow the safe up" or with "And all I know is I wake up" are probably
imagined. The heroine is worried about what _might_ happen.
     This is _not_ to say either that 1) there are not several time
periods in the song, both real and imaginary (because there clearly
are, as I'll try to show), or that 2) everything following "Ooh, I
remember" takes place in the same time period, whether real or
imagined.
     I can only conclude that there are _several_ different time
periods in this song. One takes place prior to the heist itself, when
the band of criminals are "waiting" around for the crime to begin
(Frank, played by Del in the video, is actually seen waiting
impatiently in the getaway car). Another obviously takes place during
the crime itself. A third (and while there is nothing in the text that
requires this scene to be read as only an anticipation of the event
itself, I do agree that the latter half of the song is probably
imagined) takes place, as you suggest, in the station-house. Finally,
if all these earlier time periods are transpiring in chronological
order (as they do), at least one and possibly _three_ more time
periods -- whether real or imaginary being quite immaterial -- follow:
first, the time spent by the heroine in prison; second, her
reminiscences, while in prison, of an apparently once-habitual
activity with her friend(s): being carried ("When you _would_ carry
me") -- pretty clearly implying that this is a memory of childhood,
_not_ adulthood, as Doug still maintains; and third, a point in time
_following_ the heroine's release from prison, when she is reunited at
last with her friends.
     If all this is correct, though, I then am faced with the
conclusion (which Doug reaches and uses, illogically, as a way of
ignoring my earlier train of thought) that the entire ending of the
song is part of that memory. But this doesn't seem to be possible (as
Doug should be able to see, but doesn't), for two reasons. First, in
the video the heroine and her accomplices in crime are obviously
racing happily through the streets with their loot. But we _know_ that
these burglars were _not_ experienced! Kate herself has said that
they'd never done any serious crimes before, _and_I_quote_ from the
1982 Baktabak CD interview about _The_Dreaming_:

     "It's about amateur robbers who've only done small things,
     and this is now quite a big robbery that they've been
     planning for months."

They could hardly, therefore, have had that "rain" of money seen in
the ending of the video during any period _prior_ to the failed heist.
Doug is therefore definitely wrong when he insists upon the following:

> a reverie of better times, when the burglars lived rich off of their
> ill-gotten gains.  Sometime in the past, Kate and her bank-robber
> lover had pulled off a successful heist and they celebrated their
> success by tossing their money in the air and watching it float in
> the breeze.  Kate daydreams about the way things use to be...

     Further, the pointed reference to the fact that the currency is
obsolete -- not described as though it were a memory, but rather as
though the currency were _actually_being_held_and_appreciated_ --
doesn't synch with the idea that the entire ending section of the
song's lyrics describes a simple nostalgic "memory" of an "earlier
successful burglary", as Doug claims.
     Now, I don't see how the question of whether this section is
imagined or real in any way alters the effect of _real_experience_
which is produced by the manner in which it is _told_. In other words,
whether all that takes place after the safe-blowing is real or
imagined, that final scene of beholding a rain of money is _still_
only explainable when interpreted as a scene (real or imagined)
_following_ the heroine's release from prison. Doug's idea that all
that is a memory of an _earlier_ heist just doesn't "sit well" with
the few facts we have. I'd be happy to accept Doug's idea if it really
fit all the facts, because after all I've never been very comfortable
with my own admittedly complicated reading of the time-shifts. But the
truth is that Doug's idea that _everything_ from "Ooh, I remember" on
is a recollection of an earlier bank heist just doesn't hold water.
     I'm therefore stuck in a new bind: if the heroine is in prison
(or imagines it) when she says "Ooh, I remember," but is _no_longer_
remembering (since there is no earlier such crime to remember) when
she says "Ooh, there goes a Tenner!" then the final scene which begins
with _that_ line (in the song) _must_ be describing some _other_ time
period. We _know_ from Kate's own statement that that other time
period was not from the gang's earlier career, since these gangsters
were essentially amateurs, not professionals, and since they had never
done any "big jobs" before. (Doug may attempt to argue that we don't
know whether they might not have had _one_ success which brought down
a shower of currency, but that was obviously not what Kate had in mind
when she pointed out that this job is their first "big" one. There
really can't be any doubt that the rain of money in the end,
therefore, comes from either an imagined or a real present or future
period in the song's story.)
     Furthermore, time in this song has moved -- generally speaking --
in a forward direction. On the one occasion when it moved backwards
instead of forwards, Kate indicated that shift explicitly by beginning
the section with the statement "Ooh, I _remember_."  But, since the
lines from "Ooh, there goes a Tenner!" on _cannot_ still be from the
character's memories, the only sensible conclusion to be reached is
that the story has returned to its original, chronological formula,
taking up at the next and final step in the story (real or imagined)
of these criminals: namely their reunion following the heroine's
completion of her prison-term.
     Now I don't like this sudden shift any more than Doug and Ranjit
does.  But Doug's not correct in saying that there's no structural
marker in the song itself to make clear that such a distinction of
time is to be drawn between the "Ooh, I remember" section and the
"Ooh, there goes a Tenner!" section. The _tense_ shifts: from past
imperfect to present! If that's not a structural marker I don't know
what is.
     Doug does make a good point about the sepia section of the video,
which begins with the "Ooh, I remember" section, and doesn't switch
back to "present" colour with the "Ooh, there goes a Tenner!" section.
I certainly don't want to deny this anomaly. It's there, and I would
love to be able to explain it. That's why I introduced this topic
months back in Love-Hounds.
     But think again about those final moments in the song, and
remember that you just can't ignore the facts that the gang are seen
in the video as happy adults, and that they _could_not_ have made all
the money seen floating in the breeze from an _earlier_ heist, because
Kate has _said_ that they had never had such a "big" success prior to
the job which went wrong. Therefore, they must be celebrating their
acquisition of the money _from_that_job_.  (A third possibility, that
the scene shows the results of a third, future heist, is belied by the
obsolescence of the currency.)
     This introduces the last big mystery about the story. If they
have got their hands on the loot, are we to understand that 1.) they
_got_away_ after all -- in which case the heroine never actually _did_
get caught, but was only imagining that she might be?  (This is the
interpretation that Ranjit has given us.)  Or 2.) that all the members
who were caught have _served_ their time, been released, and come home
to meet up with someone in the gang who had got away with the money
during the confusion and had kept his partners' shares in safe
keeping? Or 3.) that she is merely imagining the second development in
order to provide a happy end to her _imaginary_ scenario?  It pretty
much has to be one of these three possibilities, because the idea that
all of the last section is a mere recollection of an earlier job which
went right is just not correct, as I've shown.
     Well, if the first possibility is correct, then the problems I
mentioned earlier, about how to reconcile the lines about not talking
to the police without a solicitor, etc., rear their ugly heads once
again. Only if all of those lines about the scene in the station-house
are mere fantasy in the heroine's eyes, can the theory that they got
away after all hold up. And even _if_ they got away after all, then
why the sepia tinting in that section? Doug has said himself that the
sepia is an indication of "nostalgia" and of sadness at the knowledge
of inevitable "karma", so he cannot accept the idea that the criminals
have got away with the loot from this big heist after all. So Doug
_must_ stick with his theory that the final scenes represent a memory
of an _earlier_ heist which went stunningly, wonderfully _right_ --
something which Kate has said never happened.
     Ranjit, however, not having saddled himself with the silly idea
that Kate's "belief in Karma" must require some kind of retribution
for the criminals, may still ask why the final scenes cannot represent
the _present_, rather than an event many years later.
     Ranjit makes the case (again) for the obvious and most attractive
"simple" reading of the song's lyrics. I (and virtually all other
listeners) had at one time the same view of the story that Ranjit
described. The problem is that if all of what follows is merely
imagined, then -- according to what Kate herself has said -- the huge
gelignite explosion is _imagined_, as well. Kate has said (in words
that seem to imply but do not confirm, unfortunately, that the whole
second half is in fact imagined):

     "And when it <the burglary> actually starts happening
     they, um, start freaking out. They're really scared, so
     aware of the fact that something _could_ go wrong, that
     they're _paranoid_..." <my italics>

and again:

     "...and the second time they're just waiting for the
     guy to blow the safe up, because when he blows it up
     there's so much that _could_ go wrong." <my italics>

     Now these comments of Kate's don't actually disprove Ranjit's
simple reading, but they do make it seem _unlikely_ that that's what
Kate had in mind.
     Also remember that in the video, the film slows to slow-mo as
Kate mouths the words "All my words fade/What am I gonna say?/ Mustn't
give the game away." If one makes a case for the latter part being the
heroine's imagination, it's pretty clear that _this_ is where her
imaginings would start, _not_ _after_ the explosion. This is, again,
no real confirmation that _any_ part of the story is indeed imagined,
but it does increase the possibility. But it _doesn't_ help much with
a theory about the last scenes with money floating in the air being a
return to the present, since it indicates that the huge explosion
didn't take place at all, but was only dreaded by the heroine.
     As for the "nostalgia" implied by the sepia tinting, I don't want
to deny that. It's true that the sepia is not fully synchronised with
my theory, as I've already willingly admitted. But after all, what are
these ex-cons in the final scene doing? They're celebrating their
acquisition of some very old money. In fact, they are struck by the
obsolescence of the currency enough to exclaim in _nostalgic_wonder_,
"Hey, look! There's a Fiver!", etc. Given this remarkable
_symbol_of_the_passage_of_time_ -- of the _theme_of_waiting_ which is
a dominant motif of the song -- is it really so implausible to
conclude (if only for the time being, and without the benefit of a
definitive statement from Kate) that the sepia tinting forms an
appropriate counterpoint to the main thrust of the final section:
namely, that years have passed (whether in fact or only in her mind
seems immaterial, and is not determinable from the text) and the
heroine is happily, nostalgically enjoying her long-postponed wealth?
I don't see why such a scene is implausible.
     I agree with Doug that all this is a house of cards, but facts
are facts, and so far, my house accounts for a larger number of the
details in the song, video and official explanations than Doug's does.

                      ----------------------

     Finally, IED will answer as quickly as possible Doug's
criticisms of IED's theory:

 >  (1) There is nothing to indicate the passage of time into the
 >      future.  Furthermore, it seems counterintuitive,
 >      considering that it makes perfect sense that we are still
 >      in the reverie.

     At this point IED has already made it amply clear that there
_are_ indications that the final sections of the song reflect a shift
in time: first, the heroine's memory of habitually having been carried
is an image that is very hard to ascribe to an adult, but which well
describes the play of children; and second, the video's imagery of the
section immediately succeeding that line clearly shows the gang as
_adults_, presenting a dichotomy that can _only_ be explained by a
shift from past to present or future -- however abrupt.
     IED might further point out that there is an attendant shift in
the _tenses_ used in the former as opposed to the latter verse: in the
former, which IED argues is a recollection of the heroine's childhood,
Kate uses the conditional form of the past imperfect: "when you
_would_ carry me"; whereas in the next verse, which IED argues is a
series of exclamations made by the heroine in the company of her
fellow gangmembers in a period some time following her release from
prison, Kate uses the present tense. If this is not an indication of a
time shift between the two verses, IED would like to ask what Doug's
requirements for such a shift are.
     Third, IED doesn't deny the very real possibility that the
heroine is "still in a reverie" throughout the entire latter half of
the song. IED's reading accomodates either interpretation in this
regard, and can scarcely, therefore, be called "counter-intuitive".
     Fourth, IED would like to quote Kate once more, again in
connection with "There Goes a Tenner", and again from the Baktabak
interview. She has just been talking about how in the first part of
the song the criminals are worried that something might go wrong.
Kate then says:

     "It's something that's perhaps not worth the effort
     because you could end up in jail for thirty years."

     Now IED doesn't wish to put words into Kate's mouth, so he won't
say Kate was definitely referring to the events as they occur (or are
imagined) in the song. But Kate's comment sure makes it a damn sight
_harder_ for Doug to argue that the heroine of the song _didn't_ have
a thirty-year prison term in mind when she either lived or imagined
the latter half of the song's story.

 >  (2) IED maintains that my theory can't be true because this is
 >      Kate's first bank robery.  However, there is nothing in
 >      the song to indicate that this is Kate's first bank
 >      robbery.

     First, it's by now clear from IED's re-posting of Kate's own
comments about this song that the gang in "TGaT" were more or less
amateurs who had _not_ committed any serious crimes before.  The whole
point, as Kate clearly sees the song, is to show that this crime is
the first "big" one the gang has committed. Beyond that, however, the
gangmembers' silly behaviour in the early part of the song (acting
like 30s gangster-picture actors) had always seemed to IED to be a way
of indicating that these burglars were inexperienced and had a
romantic, unrealistic view of the crime of burglary.
     And in fact, precisely this point is expressed by Kate in the
recently released Baktabak CD interview.  In it she says that she had
always been in disagreement with the popular notion that committing a
crime is romantic and glamourous, and that on the contrary, she
thought it must be extremely frightening when one actually got down to
committing it.  This, she said, was a major element in the song
"TGaT".

 >      Furthermore, the line "Pockets floating in the
 >      breeze" shows that Kate has been witness to money floating
 >      in the wind in the past.  This is true in either my or
 >      IED's theory.  Now if IED's theory is correct, why is
 >      there money floating in the wind when Kate was a child?
 >      Clearly, Kate has burgled in the past.

     Doug makes the obvious error of assuming the validity of his
premises before they are proved. IED has shown that the description of
"pockets floating in the breeze" is distinct in time from the image of
money floating in the air (as described in the stanza immediately
following, and as seen in the video with the _adult_ gangmembers
seeing the currency in the wind). Furthermore, the image of "pockets"
floating in the breeze makes no reference to money that IED has ever
been able to see! Rather, it seems much like the kind of wondering
observation that a child might make as he/she is being carried around
by her friend(s) -- which is the scene in which the image of floating
pockets appears. The fact that the line is heard simultaneous with the
scene of the adults running down a street in the video is perfectly in
keeping with the feeling of "nostalgia" which Doug himself agrees is
implied by the sepia tinting. There is, therefore, absolutely no
contradiction in IED's interpretation, but there _is_ a contradiction
in Doug's.

 >  (3) IED maintains that the ending is happy.  This would be
 >      very uncharacteristic of Kate.  Kate is not one to tell a
 >      story where someone does something bad and ends up winning
 >      because of it.  Kate seems to be a definite believer in
 >      the notion of Karma.  Furthermore, the very ending of the
 >      song, "Remember them?  That's when we used to vote for
 >      him?", is nostalgic.  Why would Kate suddenly get
 >      nostalgic if at the moment, everything is better than
 >      ever.  She wouldn't get nostalgic.  The only explanation
 >      for this is that the ending is not all that happy.

     So Kate just _doesn't_deal_ with subjects where the fate of a
character is not somehow part of some great moral, or at least Karmic,
plan? Aside from the fact that Kate has shown us time and time again
that what she has done in the past is _no_ indication that she will
only do the same thing in the future, it's possible that Kate
considers that a completed prison term is retribution enough for the
crime, and that it's not too much to allow her amateur thieves to
enjoy their money after paying such a high price. Besides, if the
scene is imagined, the point is academic. So this objection really
doesn't have much merit.
     Doug's assumptions about what "messages" or "morals" Kate will or
will not allow herself to make in her songs are quite unsuited to
Kate, given the one consistent characteristic of her art: its
essential unpredictibility. IED has also pointed out that since
(according to IED's interpretation) the heroine (in fact or in
imagination) has already served her sentence, it is not unreasonable
for her to be seen in a sympathetic light enjoying the loot after the
fact. That doesn't seem such a terrible "sin", or "breach of Karmic
law", or whatever.
     Next, IED can see no inconsistency between the remark about
"voting for him" and the upbeat mood of the conclusion as IED
interprets it. The final remark is an apparent outgrowth of the
heroine's excited observation that the currency is now out-of-date.
How does this in any way upset IED's interpretation?  It doesn't.
     Doug's last challenge, that IED explain the sepia
in terms of his reading of the song, has already been faced. IED
admits that the use of sepia for both the "Ooh, I remember" section
and the "Ooh, there goes a Tenner!" section is a small (though not
entirely inexplicable) inconsistency. It is the _only_ one. As
for the general phenomenon of the sepia in the last section, this
fact is perfectly consistent with IED's reading of the song, as
he has already shown above.

 > It should be pretty clear by now that IED's theory is untennable.

     Perhaps it should be, but in fact all that is clear is that IED
is even more fussy about details than ever, and that it's Doug's
fatally "simple" explanation that needs some work. IED did appreciate
Doug's no doubt intentionally punny misspelling of the word
"untenable", though.

 > Add to all this the fact that the video to "The Dreaming" is creditted
 > to "Golden Dawn Productions" (or something like that), and I start to
 > wonder if my first conclusion about the "golden light" line was
 > unfounded.

 > -- Zaphod

     Golden Dawn Productions, Zaphod, is the name of the production
company that undertook the production of the video for "The Dreaming".
The video's director, whom Kate identifies as "a guy called Harry" in
the Baktabak CD interview, worked for Golden Dawn. So if the name has
any significance, it could only be because Kate chose them simply for
their name, which doesn't sound very likely.
     The other points you make, however, sound very interesting, and
worth following up.

 > Well, I'm sure if you asked Kate about all this symbolism mumbo
 > jumbo, she'd say it was all balderdash.  I'm sure it's all there,
 > but it may be just because Kate tends to use words that are rich
 > with symbolism, or it may be unconscious, or it may be as John
 > Carder Bush says, that Kate speaks with the voice of the Oneness
 > because she is just a little bit closer to God than the rest of us,
 > or it may be that Kate puts all these things into her songs, and
 > refuses to tell anyone about it, because that would be giving it
 > away.

     IED agrees 100% with Doug here -- the symbolism is unquestionably
present in some songs, and Kate would almost certainly deny it if the
interviewer couldn't devise some way to present the evidence so
cunningly that she couldn't evade the subject (an impossible task).
IED thinks it _must_ be that she "refuses to tell anyone about it,
because that would be giving it away." But one thing's for certain,
and that is that at least some of her songs have a very deliberate,
very specific symbolic significance that is so personal that no one
outside the Bush family and immediate circle of friends could detect
its presence.

 > I, for example, thought I found all sorts of symbolism in "Under
 > The Ivy".  There's ivy.  There's a garden.  There's a white rose.
 > I ask Kate about all this wonderful, deep, rich, lush, layered
 > symbolism, and what does Kate say?  She says basically, "No, it's
 > just a song about two people sneaking into the back yard to fuck".
 > Well, IED, I think that you have to face the fact that if you asked
 > her any questions about your notions of symbolism, she'd probably
 > say the same thing.

     Oh, IED thinks you're probably right. He'd never get the truth
out of her. As a matter of fact, it's this very song that IED knows
contains at least one tiny bit of _confirmed_ secret symbolism, so
Doug is without a doubt on the money here. The only thing that isn't
certain is whether the manner in which such questions are asked, and
the atmosphere in which they are asked, might not affect the frankness
and seriousness of her replies, at least in some degree.

 >     In any case, now I look for the fucking first, and save the deep
 > symbolism for later.

     Certainly the wisest course.

 > (1) If this turns out to be true, you can't really gloat, because I
 >    haven't said it isn't true.

     No argument. Anyway, IED isn't gloating about anything these
days, he feels so down about that "Gaffa" quote from Kate. By the way,
IED agrees with Doug that the protozoa angle is not promising.

 > (2) I think you'll have to provide some more concrete evidence than
 >  "a friend of mine told me a rumor that 'Gaffa' might be a Japanese
 >  word.  ...do the legwork yourself. If you find such a Japanese
 >  word, I'll be more than happy to agree with you, and will be happy
 >  to have learned something new. I'm not holding my breath, however.

     Oh, neither is IED. He could see the flimsiness of the evidence
as well as Doug -- but it's still a remarkable angle insofar as the
video's imagery goes. IED will indeed try to do some legwork to track
down this lead at some point, but in the meantime is not holding his
breath, either -- having had most of it knocked out of him from the
last round of that stupid "Gaffa" debate, and smelling impending
disaster over the present "TGaT" issue...

 > Well, I certainly wouldn't claim that everyone at MIT is stamped in
 > the exact same intellectual mold.  However, it *is* indeed the case
 > that they just don't let people into MIT who aren't a bit smarter
 > than the average bear.  And they don't give them degrees either.

       IED, who as Love-Hounds already know is an alumnus of another
"great" Eastern institution, disputes all parts of your claim, Doug.
The fact is, MIT lets people in for all kinds of reasons. And the
ability to do well in school and on exams is not necessarily a sign of
anything other than "average bear" intelligence mixed with varying
degrees of opportunity, diligence, and luck. There are certainly
_plenty_ of "average bears" at MIT.  IED knew several during his
tenure in Cambridge.

 > Kate says she's a bit busy this week, what with the deadline for
 > her new album pressing down and all, and asks if she can get back
 > to you next week?

     Ooh! You mean the album's coming out NEXT WEEK???

-- Andrew Marvick