MoP and L&A - comments of a newbie

[ACAHILL@ccmail.sunysb.edu]

Hello you crazy Hounds.

	I've only been reading the list for a few weeks, so I am an emphatic
newbie.  But I did want to throw my two cents in about MoP - which I also tend
to skip when listening to TRS.  Lyrically, it just isn't up to Kate's usual
standards.  The images are not particularly evocative ("I think about us lying,
lying on a beach somewhere" just does not conjure up a particularly interesting
scenario), and so they leave the desperately sad tone somewhat ungrounded.  The
only line I do like is "And he isn't well at all", only because the way she
sings it somehow manages to evoke (for me, anyway) the painful slowness of
AIDS.  The song as a whole leads me to think that it's probably very meaningful
for Kate herself, but doesn't give us as listeners enough to go on.

	L&A is another story entirely, and is not only my favorite Kate song,
but I think my favorite song period.  Here's one interesting theory about it,
put forth by my housemate: she suggests that it's actually a response to some
French feminist theorists, namely Luce Irigaray et al, who seek to construct a new
world through the destruction of masculinist language.  Okay, this might be
stretching it a bit, but the whole idea of something "unspeakable" whose
articulation might "build a house of the future" seems to make sense.

	We're philosophy grad students.  Sometimes it shows.

Annie Cahill
acahill@ccmail.sunysb.edu