On Katemas 1996: TSW & TRS

[IEDSRI@aol.com]

Alan Stonebridge very wisely points out:

 > I just don't get how so many of you don't like TSW and TRS... they're 
 > wonderful... Apart from maybe "Between a Man and a Woman" I love these 
 > two albums, and I still like that track anyway... there's nothing 
 > really bad about it. What do you guys want? It seems like most of you are 
 > obsessed with the innovation she put across on TD and HOL, but can you 
 > really expect her to keep doing music like that?

Indeed, why should one WANT her to keep making music like the music
she has already made?  and:   why should one accept only a certain definition
of 
the term "innovation", such that only those kinds found in The Dreaming or in

Hounds of Love may be deemed acceptable?  and:  why must one even agree
that the criterion of "innovation", however some fans (which?) may define it,
is 
a crucial, or even a central ingredient in the successful Kate Bush
recording, or
even in any work of art?   

Surely there are many other attributes of equal value to some of us than mere
novelty? 
Isn't the expectation that a new work of art that should bear the trappings
of a novelty
already made familiar by its presentation in earlier works a manifestly
self-contradictory 
expectation?  The difference of TSW and TRS from TD and HOL is not one of
quality 
but of style, attitude and intention.  That the nature of this difference
should produce 
music that does not meet pre-conceived criteria for the definition of
innovation is 
irrelevant to the ineluctable recognition of the new music's own supernal
beauty and 
radiant intelligence.  

In the recent discussion about the relative "rank" of  the albums of Kate
Bush, 
the above remark by Alan is virtually the first sensible one to have
appeared.  
Trying to devise an artificial hierarchy of quality based on a simplistic 
tally of ill-perceived virtues and blemishes in the work of an artist of Kate
Bush's 
caliber is like trying to find flaws in the Word of God:  the very enterprise
is either 
a disproof of the merit of the entire subject under review or a proof of the
inanity 
of the enterprise itself.  Inasmuch as all of the creations of Kate Bush are
inevitably 
imbued with the grace of her personality, they are all of equal "value" --
one 
equivalent to the assessed "value" of Kate Bush herself.  And since such an  
assessment is manifestly absurd, not to say inherently disrespectful, it
follows that 
this valuation of the woman by means of the valuation of an inevaluable
cypher 
OF the woman (namely, her art), is childish, useless, and doomed to failure.

The fact is, of course, that The Sensual World and The Red Shoes are NOT
inferior to any of their predecessors -- they are equal to them in the only
meaningful
way they can be:  that is, in their authorship.  Should any of us find him-
or herself 
incapable of perceiving this central and undeniable faKt, he or she can only
be 
encouraged  to do some more listening.

A sincere Merry Katemas to all!

-- Andrew Marvick (IED)
   S                  R               I