No Subject

> Many times throughout Andrew's response he used phrases like:

>> It's just not a matter of debate, folks. 

> Well it's not about debate, Andrew. It's about interpretation! As I see it,
> there are few Absolutes Rights and Wrongs when it comes to artistic 
> intrepretation.  An artist may certainly say, "Well, that's not what I was 
> aiming for", but that doesn't mean others can't explore other interpretations
> of the art. In fact sometimes artists themselves don't even know the 
> intrepretation of the art they create. (This is general comment about art, 
> and is not meant to suggest that I think Kate doesn't know what she's doing).

> If you have some personal problem with intrepretations of Kate's songs that
> in any fashion contradict what Kate herself has said they might mean, that's
> fine. But it's a far leap from "This is what Kate says" to "This is what is 
> must mean for all people, for all time!" 

> I would think Kate must see the oppurtunity that re-intrepretation and 
> re-examination provide to keep great works of art alive and breathing. I 
> think you really must examine whether you're doing Kate's music a service
> by insisting on rigid, dogmatic dedication to the (mostly ambiguous) remarks
> Kate has made about the deeper meaning of her songs. 

Thank you, Kevin, for putting this in the proper framework.  For as
long as I can remember, I have been incensed by anyone who said of a
work of art, "this is what the artist intended."  I don't think anyone
would be . . . . uh, stupid . . . enough to say that the creation of
music (or any other art form, for that matter) was entirely a concious
intellecutual process.  Why is it then, that people interpret it that
way?  I have listened to the Ninth Wave many times and, thought I did
have a general sense of the "plot" from reading interviews with Kate,
I have never worried about the fate of heroine.  To me, the experience
of listening to the music (as a whole, not just the lyrics), is a
reward in itself.  While I certainly don't mean to criticize anyone
for spending some time analyzing music, I think that people need to
take William Hurt's advice (from "The Big Chill") and just "let art
flow over you."  There is a reason that Kate Bush's chosen form is
music not the printed word.

Kevin also brought up the issue of whether the artist actually has an
"intention" (as opposed to the listener/viewer attaching one to them).
I think many artists are afraid of appearing to not know what they are
doing and so later (in interviews for example) come up with reasons
for why something is a certain way, even though that was not the focus
of the work at the time of its creation.  I've always admired David
Byrne in particular because he's quite willing to say "Oh, I don't
know why that word is there, or rather, I do know intuitively why it's
there, but I couldn't explain it."  While I wouldn't presume to know
what's going thru KaTe's mind when she's writing a song, I wouldn't be
surprised at all to discover that it is NOT the linear, "not a matter
of debate" stuff that we hear in interviews.  In fact, I've noticed
that many of her videos (done, quite often, many months after the
original inspiration) seem to be, to me, overly literal - a graphic
depiction of the "story" - and lose much of the ambiguous, evocative
nature of her musical work.  Perhaps I'm too much the gestaltist, but
that is what drew me to her work in the first place, how it spoke to
ME.  I guess I find that too much analysis spoils this for me.
-- 
#dan

Clever:         dbk@mimsy.umd.edu | "For I was rolled in water,
Not-so-clever:  uunet!mimsy!dbk   |  I was rolled out past the pier" - MoB