Re: Sat In Your Lap - revisited

[Doug Alan <nessus@athena.mit.edu>]

I think that Jon's comments on "Sat in Your Lap" are all good.  I
think that there is also a more metaphysical component to them.

     Some say knowledge is something sat in your lap
     Some say that knowledge is something that you never have

This refers, of course, to the millenia-old philosophical debate on
just what knowledge is.  Some philosophers think that you can't really
know anything at all.  Some philosophers think that every human is a
well-spring of knowledge.

     Just when I think I'm king, I must admit (I just begin)

Kate wants knowledge, and she works for it.  She works to climb to the
top of an intellectual mountain, but when she gets there, she finds
that there's an even taller mountain behind it.

     I've been doing it for years, my goal is moving near
     It says "Look I'm over here" then it up and disappears

Kate works hard to achieve something and finally when she's learned
enough to do it, she finally knows enough to see that this goal is not
the one she really wanted.  But to achieve what she really wants, she
will have to start from the beginning again.

     I hold a cup of wisdom, but there is nothing within.

When Kate was younger and more naive, she looked up to people with
more knowledge than her -- thinking of them as wiser.  Now that she's
learned what they know, but she feels no wiser than before.  All this
knowledge has done her no good.

I think that it is this pattern of becoming disillusioned through
gaining knowledge -- of climbing mountains only to find even taller
mountains -- that has made the character in the song lazy:

     I see the people working and see it working for them,
     And so I want to join in, but then I find it hurts me.

|>oug

"C is for CHRIS who's VCR failed"