Re: the magic that is KaTe...

[Dances With Voles <jondr@sco.COM>]

No one yet knows why gravende@epas.utoronto.ca (David Gravender) said:
>What i think we want once we've 'agreed' that "magic" in Art has
>somthing to do with being a "reminder... of the possibility of God"
>(as  IED quoted peter manchester as writing) is a way to measure the
>extent to which any given art or artist achieves such a state. In

Much as I hate to rain on anyone's parade (all you who know me of old can
stop snickering now)...  What are you talking about?  Where does "God" enter
into the equation?  As a devout atheist, I am offended that you should even
mention a fictional deity in conjunction with musical brilliance.  "The
possibility of God"!?  What about the possibility that certain human beings
have found a way to stimulate my neural cortex in just the right way?  A way
that makes my eyes glow and my teeth revolve, I might add.

>other words, i think we are wanting some basic (as in fundamental)
>aesthetic criteria, or at least aesthetic notions. There seems to me a
>quite distinct difference between Kate and, say, the New Kids on the
>Block which makes me think that the "experience of Kate" is and can be
>shown to be different in quality from the "experience of the New
>Kids"--that is, to be perhaps more clear about it, that there exist
>_objective_ critical (i.e. aesthetic) standards which can show the one
>"magic"  true (i.e. well-grounded) and the other a delusion (insofar
>as it purports or is purported to be a "magic" of the first-order,
>which is the kind we are concerned with here).

Forget it, you've gone right off the map.  My darling sister, six years my
junior, is absolutely gonzo over the New Kids.  Much as it pains me to admit
it, I was obviously the only one in my family to get the looks, brains AND
taste.  She likes Kate, but doesn't consider her to be that special magical
thing that we all do.  She gets much more excited over the thought of the
New Kids touring than Kate and has spent plenty of money in proving that
proposition.  You'll never get anywhere trying to show that one is the
victim of a delusion; she's just as insane about the Nude Dweebs as I am
about any of the things that I devote my days to.

>What we have all responded to then in our first encounter(s) with Kate
>and her music, if i am right, is, beneath the CONSIDERABLE stylistic
>felicities of her art--her voice, the instrumentation, etc--the
>presence of True Art, the awareness of Beauty in something approaching
>its timeless aspect. It is a music that while as entertaining in tune
>or beat as anyone's has yet something more, the certain HEFT or weight
>of something that will last by virtue of exceptional craft and
>spirit--it creates its own world which can & does to some degree
>transform our own.

I think you're making this stuff up.  Kate's stuff doesn't do it in and of
itself, obviously, or the entire world would be knocking down her door
looking for the Cathy Demos.  Most of the music that really pumps my nads
"creates its own world."  The best stuff operates on a totally subliminal
level.  Cocteau Twins' gibberish-punctuated soundscapes convey worlds of
emotion.  I don't know what she's SAYING, but I sure as hell know what she
MEANS.  Ditto Kate.  When I was but a naive innocent, Suspended In Gaffa was
greek to me, but it still made me want to weep.  The best music talks to you
in a totally different way.  Sure, you like the words.  Yeah, you can hum
the melody.  But there's plenty of dumb songs that I like just as much as
anything Kate's ever done.  The appeal of music is timeless, unquantifiable
and bizarrely unique from person to person.  Stop trying to generalize, and
stop trying to "prove" the unprovable.

-- 
Jon Drukman  (zappa for president)           uunet!sco!jondr      jondr@sco.com
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