Re: Something Kate related, anyone interested?

[mailrus!gatech!mit-eddie!media.mit.edu!nessus@uunet.uu.net (Douglas Alan)]

The issue being discussed is whether or not Kate purposely mispelled
the word "Orgonon" on the lyrics sheet for *Hounds of Love*.
"Orgonon" (as it should have been spelled) is an estate in Maine where
Wilhelm and Peter Reich lived for a time.  "Organon", in contrast, is
a real word, and means (according to the dictionary) "a body of
scientific or philosophic investigation".  Some people have speculated
that Kate made this mispelling intentionally -- that her mispelling is
some kind of pun or double reference.  I've heard one person go so far
as to maintain that it is a pun for "organ on": a reference to a
sexual erection.  This is not the case.  Kate did not make a pun --
she made a mistake.

The only pun here was made by Wilhelm Reich when he named his estate.
He mixed together the word "organon", which is a word one might use to
describe Reich's body of work if one were foolish enough to think of
Reich's work as scientific or philosophic, with the word "Orgone",
which is a nonexistent form of energy that Reich claimed was
responsible for rain, orgasms, and all sorts of other things.  Kate
clearly missed this pun.  Thus, she spelled the word "organon" as it
appears in the dictionary, rather than the modified spelling Reich
used.

In article <117512@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> ed@wente.llnl.GOV (Ed Suranyi)
writes: 

>   Kate has stated in at least one interview that this was a simple
>   spelling error that they didn't catch.  Was this in Doug Alan's
>   interview?  It seems vaguely like it might be.

I *did* ask Kate whether the mispelling was intentional, but it wasn't
during my interview with her.  I asked her the following day when she
was signing records at Tower Records.  She gave my a look of amusement
that said "my fans sure are cute coming up with all these ridiculous
questions" and said that no, the mispelling was not intentional at
all.

|>oug

"I had a cat named snowball
 He died
 He died
 My mom said he was sleeping
 She lied
 She lied"

 	-- Lisa Simpson