once aGaiN the maILbag is opened by youR cAntankerous olD ied

[MTARR@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU]

Greetings again... 

>    IED too! Along with "Gazing at hazy goldfish in your swimming eyes,"
> it's one of the most beautiful lines in all pop music, in IED's h.o.

This is also from "Playing Canasta In Cold Rooms", right?
  
>  > I'm lost. How could "Man..." inspire a "hot debate"? I have an inter-
>  > pretation that's off the wall but I wouldn't say it was necessarily
>  > "right", it's just what it means to me. It's such an innocent song.
>  > Could someone fill me in on the "hot debate"? My imagination is too
>  > taxed to try & figure it out.
> 
>      IED would like to hear what the hot debate is, too. But he does
> not agree with Vickie that _TMWtCiHE_ is "such an innocent song". Not
> when he recalls Kate's needle-injection-in-the-arm gesture (_SNL_
> performance) for the line "I just took a trip on my love for him". In
> fact, the subject of the song is of a young girl's first sexual love,
> or at least an imagined sexual love--not exactly "innocent", in IED's
> view.

The "hot debate" is about the whole absurd masturbation thing.  And I think
it's suppposed to come across as an innnocent song, but I'm sure KaTe wasn't as
innocent then as we'd like to think!  She was living on her own (okay, she was
in the same building as her brothers, but still) at the age of 16 in London-
don't tell me she was completely Pure and Innocent, living in a city
environment like that!  
 
>  >>Also, was it my imagination, or had she put on some weight?
> 
>  > She likes chocolate. So what? Why ask? Does it matter? Does it affect
>  > her music? Does it affect her lyrics? Does it affect her musicianship?
>  > Does it make you feel any differently toward her? WHO CARES!!??!!!!??!!!
>  > This theme seems to keep cropping up and I just don't understand why.
>  > Why is it important enough to you to post about it?
>  >
>  >-- Vickie
> 
>      As much as IED would like to agree with you, Vickie, that Kate's
> appearance is of no concern (or should be of no concern) to her fans,
> he cannot. And he thinks that you are yourself being possibly just
> a little ingenuous--IED recalls more than one occasion on which you
> yourself expressed admiration for Kate's beauty, which shows that you
> are not entirely indifferent to appearances. Certainly IED can't
> claim to be completely impervious to the power of superficial
> appearances. He is a human being, living in the late 20th century, and
> as such he has been hopelessly brainwashed into paying heed to this
> sort of thing, whether he likes himself for doing so or not.
>      But after all, Kate's weight-gain is not a matter of _complete_
> irrelevance to her work, in IED's opinion. It seems to him to be
> indicative of her shifting artistic priorities. Certainly Kate
> likes chocolate--but she has _always_ liked chocolate. The difference
> is that nowadays her propensity for chocolate-eating is not as often
> or as completely offset by her discipline for regular physical
> exercise. This is related to her relatively recent shift in interest
> away from dance and theatre in favor of film as the medium of choice
> for the visual illustration of her songs. Her weight gain may also
> have a more direct bearing on her extreme reluctance to undertake
> a Tour of Life II, and it may also play some part in her increasing
> unwillingness to appear in public--not only did she refuse to perform
> on European television in support of _TSW_, but she declined to make
> even a single personal appearance for promoting the album in England.
> Could not the weight gain have _something_ to do with this increasingly
> anti-social behavior, or could not the behavior have had something
> to do with the weight gain? IED can even conceive of the possibility
> that such a change in body-type might, at least in some degree, reflect
> or even partially influence, an artist's stylistic development (or
> lack of same). These are questions which even the most serious-minded
> and dediKated fan might reasonably ask, in IED's opinion, as long as
> they aren't allowed to assume an exaggerated importance.

AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

We've been through this before, people!!!  So, once more, with feeling:

I DON'T GIVE A FLYING F*** HOW MUCH CHOCOLATE SHE EATS, HOW MUCH CARROT CAKE
SHE DEVOURS ON A DAILY BASIS, AND HOW MUCH SHE WEIGHS!!!

I *would* like to see her dancing more, but she did quite a bit of it in her
TWS and L&A videos, so she hasn't stopped completely.  Also, in the TSW videos
(and, hence, the VH-1 Special) she certainly looked pretty damn thin to me! 
She doesn't look anorexic, and I'm not sure that she ever did, but that's
good!!!  Weight doesn't affect creative ability- she can still write, she can
still play the piano, she can still direct (_and_ star in) videos, and, most
importantly, SHE CAN STILL SING.

This whole niggling debate about her appearance and how it affects people's
liking or disliking of her music really pisses me off, and it always has. KaTe
has always made keeping her privacy intact one of her top priorities, and I
admire her for that.  If she doesn't want to make public appearances, I'm sure
that's the reason.  However, if she does feel self-conscious about people
seeing her in public, it's not her fault: it's a symptom of our society, 
which has always been dominated by males who wanted their meat to be lean and 
tender.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the true KaTeFans love her music
and her art out of a deep respect for her creative abilities.  Her exceptional
beauty is certainly a plus, but my liking for her stuff has absolutely nothing
to do with her appearance.  You can't see the person who's singing on a record,
anyway.

Sometimes I wish videos had never been invented: then we would naturally put an
artist's music first, and forget about what they look like.  What does it
matter,in the long run?  Someday KaTe will be nothing but bones in the
ground (and will therefore not weigh very much), but her music will be around
forever, and  *that's* what really counts.

(Please understand, IED, this isn't a polemic against you: I just couldn't take
it any more!!!)


********************************************************************************
Meredith Tarr			"Looking for a moment that'll never happen
mtarr@eagle.wesleyan.edu	 Living in the gap between past and future"
Wesleyan University						-KaTe Bush
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