Ooops (not a song by 808 State)

[MTARR@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU]

Hi!

Whoops.  Wrong mailing list!  Thanks for pointing that out, Vickie- what
with all the .gaffa and Ecto overlap as far as personnel and even topics
of conversation, it was an easy, if not idiotic, mistake to make... :)

Anyway, I did post something about "Marlene On The Wall" (by Suzanne Vega,
for those lurkers not in the know) to Ecto that is relevant here.  I don't
have an exact copy of it, but this is the gist of it:

An interpretation of a song is a highly personal matter.  Sometimes it happens
that you will hear a song, develop your own personal interpretation based
on what the song says to you and how it makes you feel, and then be disappointed
when you hear what the artist says the song "really means".  This happened
to a friend of mine last year, and her ultimate reaction was quite interesting.

This friend and I were discussing songs we liked (she would be a Love-Hound,
btw, if she got off her butt and got an account at Northwestern- anybody
at Northwestern want to bug her for me?  I'll e-mail her address to anyone
who wants to bother her personally :), and Suzanne came up.  My friend told
me about how much she loved "Marlene on the Wall" because of what she thought
the story in it was: a woman who had had a string of unsuccessful relationships
with men, and was finally coming to terms with the lesbian aspect of her
sexuality.  This woman is herself bisexual, so the song obviously struck
a deeply personal chord within her- and listening to the song with that in
mind, I can see where it would do just that, if you thought of it in that
context.

I then opened my big mouth and told her the story behind it according to
Suzanne in an interview I had read: Suzanne took down a Sting poster in her
dorm roon one day, and replaced it with one of Marlene Dietrich.  She then
thought, Whoa, this must be a sign of something, and wrote a song about it.
Certainly nothing having to do with deep inner revelation!

My friend couldn't believe it- "But I like my interpretation so much better!
Damn- the song just won't be the same now."  I told her she could believe
what she wanted to believe, it's still a great song, right?  A few days later
she came back and said that she just couldn't get her own interpretation
out of her mind, for her the song would always mean what she'd thought it
to mean, Suzanne could just keep her opinions to herself.

Bravo!  As I've said before, in a work of art the amount of interpretations
will about equal the number of people regarding it.  Picasso claimed some
of his paintings looked like women playing guitars, but *I* think they're
just jagged geometric figures having group sex- so what?!?  What a song says
to you is the most important thing in your appreciation of it, whether or
not that interpretation is commensurate with that of the artist.

I hope this sheds more light on that mess of a L&A posting of yesterday...
(Again, thanks Vickie for letting me in on my little goof- goddess, I've
never f*cked up before, what oh what shall I do???  :) :) :)
================================================================================
Meredith Tarr			"Oh yes I know I'm always falling,
mtarr@eagle.wesleyan.edu	 Gazing at hazy goldfish in your swimming eyes"
Wesleyan University						-Kate Bush
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