slamming!

[gb10@gte.com (Gregory Bossert)]

a few more thoughts on _get out of my house_

- this may be most disturbing song i have ever heard, and i've heard some
really out-there stuff.  i usually have to take a walk or something to
recover from listening to it...

- best line (IMHO, of course):
        "they come with their weather hanging around them"

- i cannot find the textual evidence to disprove mr. drukman's rape
hypothesis, though in fact my original interpretation was quite different.
someone objected to jon's idea with the arguement that the narrator was
not presented in the supportive light one would desire towards a victim
of rape;  while this is certainly cause for contemplation, one should note that
Ms. Bush's approach throughout _The Dreaming_ is to present her characters
in a clear (even harsh), non-judgemental light.  Rosabel (in Houdini) may
be the only completely sympathetic character, and even then the listener
is left to figure out the context and come to an opinion.  way back in
the title track to _TKI_ KaTe gave us a woman committing suicide because
of a pregnancy resulting from incest:  at least in _GOoMH_ she has dropped
the Romantic overtones.

-  originally, i heard this song as a elderly woman hiding from death:
in the first verse she loses her spouse, and afterwards she is trying
to keep Death out.  while this idea lends a certain creepyness to the
second verse ("I hear the lift descending/I hear it hit the landing/
See the hackles on the cat standing"), i don't think it holds up quite
as well as the "reacting to trauma" theory.

-  i have tried to hear the final transformation into "the Mule" in a
positive light, but to my mind it sounds like the final descent into 
insanity.  despite the narrator's defiant claims, the male voice *does*
get in in this final section, and the narrator is forced to flee
"further than the word is heard" -- sounds like catatonia to me.  the
way the mule's "hee-haws" shift from KaTe's voice to the deeper, animal 
sound suggests to me that she loses herself in the last trasnformation.
(i am reminded of the wizards from Ursula K. LeGuin's "Earthsea" books,
who change into animals, then forget they were ever human...)

- does anyone have an idea why "the Mule" is capatalized with the definite
article?  i sometimes feel like i'm missing a reference here...

i am in no way convinced that there is a "correct" interpretation of this
song -- one of the things i love about this album is the strange mix of
clarity and uncertainty.

-greg -- gb10@gte.com -- "Am I doing it?  Can I have it all, now?"