Mary, What you wrote describes the creative process so well. I make work all of the time that isn't overtly autobiographical, yet resonates with events in my life, or what I happen to be reading or listening to when I make a piece, etc.
I can understand Joni revealing her 'source material' sometimes and leaving the listener to figure it out other times. I do the same thing. It's been my experience that once you speak about one work as bering autobiographical, people asume they all are (which again, might be true to an extent). I tend to speak about major themes in my work, but leave the nuances for people to figure out for themselves. I think the other thing that inspired my question about truth vs. fiction is that I've been listening to Elvis Costello a bit lately. Whenever he talks about one of his songs, he seems to be describing a charecter, or even a scene from an imaginary novel or play. This makes me assume that the majority of his songs are fictional, whichactually makes me feel better about Elvis C, as a person. When Painted From Memory, his excellant collaboration with Burt Bachrach came out a couple of years ago, my partner was listening to it and commented "I'm glad I'm not in a relationship with Elvis Costello!" --- "Mary E. Pitassi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't doubt for a moment that Joni is capable of > writing "fictional" songs, or at the very least, > basing her work on composites in her life. And I'm > sure she's done both. But it also seems to me that > an artist's own life can make him or her more > sensitive to certain nuances or issues, so that > his/her work may end up having a distinct > autobiographical slant to it, even if no such thing > was intended. It's all a matter of the prism > through which one sees the world. Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more http://games.yahoo.com/
