more gay ramblings

[Brian Dillard <dillardb@pilot.msu.edu>]

"And I build each one of my songs out of glass
So you can see me inside them I suppose
Or you could just leave the image of me in the background, I guess
And look at your reflection, superimposed

If Cloudbusting can only be a linear narrative of Peter Reich's life,
then Bjork's Hyperballad is the disturbing account of a suicidal
mountain-dweller.

Texts are polysemous. If you see a book or a song or a film as a
journey, then some writers give you step by step directions to where
they want you to go. Others kind of vaguely point you in a direction and
let you find your own way, exploring all sorts of incidental scenery
during the process. Still others (later Tori stuff, Burroughs, etc.)
point vaguely and let you get wonderfully lost.

Academics refer to a continuum of "readerly" to "writerly" texts. And
I'd say Cloudbusting is smack in the middle of the continuum. It
concretely evokes themes and images of a lost boy hiding his
differences, of an adult scarred by years of hiding, of the terror of
persecution, of the liberation of emerging from hiding. Without the
background biographical information (about Kate and about Peter Reich) -
which many types of critics would argue violates the aesthetic integrity
of the text anyway - the lyrics of the song, reinforced by the music,
are revealed as widely interpretable. I disagree with the
any-interpretation-is-valid school of thought, but I'd agree that with a
piece of songwriting like Cloudbusting, _many_ interpretations are
defensible. And based on the themes I mentioned above - I think the gay
one for Cloudbusting is one of them.
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Brian J. Dillard     dillardb@pilot.msu.edu   773.348.9319
+++ "State of emergency ... that's where I want to be."  --Bjork +++
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