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From: Johanna Shafer <jshafer@truman.edu>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 10:51:02 -0600
Subject: Paradox
To: Love-Hounds@gryphon.com
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Following the INTERPRETATION thread, I pose this question to the group, cos it's something I wrestle with on a daily basis. The consensus seems to be that "Whatever the listener hears in the music is there for him, intentions of the singer/songwriter be damned." Those of you who feel that way, is the same true when you read literature? Can you read Euripides or Dickens or Shakespeare or Peter Reich without consideration of what the writer intended? And if you believe that literature can be read in a vacuum, without consideration of context, with only your own interpretation in your head, then whose art is it? Is it the writer's work, or is it your interpretation that becomes the art? It's a sticky situation, the stuff deconstruction is made of. But before I set off a firestorm of flames, I think that music (and its counterpart, poetry) is emotive in a different way from literature: it is the combination of sound, words, rhythm, and thoughts. The pictures that pop into my head when I listen to "Never Be Mine" are very different from the ones that pop into yours, and very different from those that inspired its creation. Frankly, I don't necessarily want to know "why" a song was created, because then it will lose meaning for *me.* But certain images that the writer uses inform the reader or listener are important. Them Heavy People is a nice song, but can you fully (stress, fully) appreciate it without knowing who Gudjieff and Jesu are? Haven't you, at least once, logged onto Gaffaweb to find out "What the heck does Kate mean when she sings ____"? Just seems to me an interesting paradox for a Monday morning! J. Shafer