Re: Deeper Understanding

["Xenu's Sister" <vickie@miso.wwa.com>]

On Thu, 1 Aug 1996, Gonzalo Balerdi wrote:

>
> Hi all,
>
> C'on guys... don't try to defend the undefendable. IMHO, DU is by far her
> worst song.

Your opinion doesn't make it true, of course. I happen to love DU
for many reasons, not least of which is the Trio Bulgarka.

> The melody is quite good, but she spoiled it with all the beeps
> beeps and the silly lyrics. It's the one Kate song I just can't listen to.
>
> Again, that's IMHO.

Certainly.

I wish I had time to write an essay on this, but my time is extremely
limited right now (I shouldn't even be reading this thread, but I
needed a break). By "this" I mean my feeling that Kate put a bit
of herself in this song. Sure, it's fictional, but Kate says she
only writes songs about subjects that she feels connected to
emotionally, so everything she does has a whiff of the "real"
Kate in some way or another, be it a movie she was blown away by,
a book she was fascinated by, subjects that she's interested
in, ideas that got her creative juices flowing, etc..

This is *PURE CONJECTURE* on my part, not based on *ANYTHING*
concrete, such as interviews, but I can imagine a scenario
such as...

Kate's a perfectionist, which is one aspect of an obvsessive
personality. Kate's a musician, who takes her work seriously.
Kate learned everything she could about producing, and she
knows her way around the studio far more than most other
artists. She was immediately taken with the Fairlight,
fascinated with it. She got bothered by having to use a
borrowed Fairlight, and went out and bought her own.

Now, when someone gets something new, something that's
complex, and something that they're going to be using
extensively in their work, work that they're a perfectionist
about, what would they do? They'd learn how to use it.
They'd spend *hours*, *days*, *weeks*, however long it
takes, to learn how to use it, learn what it does,
learn how to make it do exactly what they want it to
do. It's not too hard to picture Kate spending massive
amounts of time just fiddling with the Fairlight until
she knew what every single knob, button, key did. Until
she knew all the sounds it could make, and what to do
to get it to make the sounds *she* wanted. It's not too
hard to imagine Kate being in a "Fairlight obsessed"
mode until she was satisfied with her knowledge of it.

Given that first part of the scenario, it's not too
hard to imagine Kate, years later, pulling up the
memory of that obsession to incorporate it into the
fictional fantasy of the obesssed character in DU.

As I said, all that is pure conjecture, but the
feelings that Kate expresses in DU ring true
to me, so I *don't* think the lyrics are silly.
It's a fantasy, as are many of Kate's songs, but
there's enough reality-based emotions within the
song to make it interesting, give it an edge, and
(for me at least) hit home.

Just some thoughts.

Vickie (who *knows* about being unnaturally obessed about
computer stuff)