Interpretation has been on my mind a lot lately. In part due to the music I’ve been listening to, as well as my latest creative endeavors and my usual musings.
The act of interpretation yields art as much as the act of creation, or reactionary dialogue. And with interpretation comes misinterpretation. I believe that a lot of what I write, be it academically oriented or personal, is born from misinterpreting source work. At times, many times actually, I will mishear lyrics and the song will still manage to make sense, just a different one. Quite often these misinterpretations inspire my own songwriting. This troubles me ethically sometimes as, though it is essentially not plagiarism as I am not copying from the source, in my mind there was an initial belief that a particular line or verse had been penned by someone else already. However, by the time it finds its way into my repertoire, it’s already shown to not be a copy. And yet I am unable to rid the niggling doubts of the originality of my work from my mind.
As far as academics are concerned, I may read a text and pull something completely obscure from it and be accused of taking things out of context by my peers. But what’s so wrong with that? I am not taking it out of context and attempting to use a statement or study as evidence; rather, the text has provided the inspiration for my own bizarre thoughts and rightfully so I call it an influential document.
It’s this abstraction that I think provides the key to the art that lies in interpretation.
One project that I would like to take on is to go beyond judging a book by its cover and create my own story based on the appearance of the book. This may have been done before? I’d be interested in other experiments similar to my idea.
I think it would be much like a musician covering a song by an artist they are unfamiliar with or do not care about at all. I did an experiment with this once before: I covered Kelly Clarkson songs using a formulaic pop-punk structure. The result was a dreadful, but intriguing experience. I hope someone with more musical talent might take on a similar experiment and then the result may be legitimate and worthy of exhibition, regardless of how small on audience may be for avant-garde sound and cultural experiments.
The intent at the start of this note was to discuss interpretation in regard to covers. In particular Patti Smith’s covers album. And Scarlett Johannson’s impending [doom] album release of Tom Waits covers. But now I leave it up to you, dear reader, to extrapolate on my words and take a stab at what I might have had to say on the matter as the time has come to shut the fuck up as this post seems more and more unfit for this blog.
And Patti Smith is apparently already starting work on a new album of original work. Sweet.
