RE: L&A

[cbullard@HiWAAY.net (Len Bullard)]

Hi Wieland:

It's weird that you bring that song up now.
One trick of songwriting, or any art I
guess, is to reply to another person's work,
of course.  Not copy, but reply to their theme.
L&A got under my skin so deep I did.
I decided against using it on the last album.
Last December, one of my mates dug out the
old rhythm track.  Tonight we put the last
track on it.  Quaint old bit; The Byrds meet
Samantha Stevens.  Marimba and 12 string
electric Rickenbacher.  Very Retro!

Love and Anger... personal.  For me.
It came at the time when the KateMadWays
were worst for me.  Kate has a quality
in her music.  I always feel like she's
singing to me and that is probably how
we all feel. Deeply.  L&A was the first
MTV release for The Sensual World and
the first new Kate I'd heard.

I was starved for her voice.

She didn't let me down.  Love and Anger
touched me in so many ways that I fell
in love with her all over again.  Wonderful!

Cathy's mind, who knows? L&A to me
is Kate singing to her fans and friends,
even the ones like you or me who
wrote and poured out their deepest emotions
to her, the fount of our lives.   She seems
to me to be an empath, and maybe that is
why she writes as she does and stays in
her own world.  All of those emotions aimed
at you, with all the best intent, but so much
power that a sympathetic soul withers in
flames of desire, sorrow, and our need
to be held, loved and made happy.  Maybe
she replies to us all in that song and tells us
what she believes is important about love:

How fragile it is.

But Love AND Anger. The sympathy
of souls is both and that is the strength.
That is why souls spread across space
and eternity know the feelings of the
other.  However our courses differ, whatever
we make of our affairs, it pulls on us and
puts our souls in motion and makes us.

"Two strings speak in sympathy..."

She reminds us that love is tender when tended.
She says we are special to her for "what would we do without
you".  We do come "walking into [her] room
like we're walking into [her] arms", but Kate cares.
To have her own life she hides the person and keeps
to her own thoughts and paths.  As she wills.

She gives herself up to us in the only way she can
and still live; she sings to us her love...

... and blows us a bit of her magic.  "Yeah!"

len