Just Say NO to Artistic Secrecy

["Andy Gough, x4-2906, pager 513, CH2-59" <AGOUGH%FAB6@sc.intel.com>]

>     Anyway, IED has begun to question the very premise of Love-Hounds.
>Just exactly why is it such a great idea to make information about Kate
>Bush's work so easy to obtain? A very large part of Kate's own aesthetic
>has to do with aspects of _secrecy_, and the _concealment_ of the
>message. That being so, shouldn't IED be encouraging these newer Love-
>Hounds to _dig_up_the_information_ on their own? Isn't it fundamentally
>contrary to Kate's own designs and plans for IED to be exposing all
>the hidden information all the time? Yes, it really is. It's about time
>IED re-considered his role in this group, and whether his long-held
>policy of unlimited free access to pre-digested information about KT
>is a wise one.

I disagree.  If an artist (be it a writer, a painter, or a singer) wants to
keep secrets, why doesn't he just not produce any _art_?  No.  They want
to put some message across.  There is no value in concealing and
disguising that message.  Instead, it must be communicated in the clearest
way the artist can.

Yet the "secrecy" idea still appears among artists.  The worst example I
ever heard was U2 (I believe--might have been Blue Oyster Cult) interviewed
on "Rockline" and a caller said he often had trouble understanding (i.e, 
hearing) the lyrics and why don't they publish them on the record sleeve?  
The answer was, "Well, it takes a lot of work to write them, so it seems right 
that it should take a lot of work to understand them.  That seems right in
some way."  Did he consider, though, that all of his hard work was for
nothing if the audience can't make out the lyrics?  No message gets
across.  It's very immature for an artist to want to keep his art understandable
only to himself.

That's not to say that the message should be _easy_ to understand--it means
that all of the information should be there (in some way) so that it can
be understood.  For example, the messages' in James Joyce's works or 
T.S. Eliot's works aren't particularly easy to find and understand.  But it
can be done.  If, however, one can't even make out a line in a song because
the word is slurred and covered by music, how can the message ever get
across?  What value is that?

So how does Kate fare in the secrecy department?  Pretty good.  It is often
hard to tell what words she is singing, but the lyrics are printed with
the album (or CD).  So one can find out.  The messages aren't particularly
easy to find or understand, but it can be done.  And for the inside jokes
and obscure references--it really doesn't get in the way of the message.

So should IED keep his interpretations secret so that others have to
work to find the messages?  No.  I, for one, would have never figured
out some of the things in various Kate songs without IED.  I'm not that
much of a fanatic to go the library and search all over to understand
a song--I have other things I'd rather do, and I can enjoy the music
without understanding it.  So IED's comments give to me I would never
acquire by myself.  I don't know German, so I didn't know what the 
German words at the end of "Hello Earth" meant--and I would have never
looked it up--but I now know because IED told me what the meant!  Basically
it comes down to:  I'm lazy and so are many others, and keeping Kate
interpretations secret wouldn't stimulate us to search for the answers 
ourselves.  Instead, we'd just never know the answers.