From: owner-hotcakes-digest@smoe.org (hotcakes-digest) To: hotcakes-digest@smoe.org Subject: hotcakes-digest V3 #45 Reply-To: hotcakes@smoe.org Sender: owner-hotcakes-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-hotcakes-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk hotcakes-digest Friday, August 11 2000 Volume 03 : Number 045 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Wise woman [SOTO ARES Gustavo ] Re: Wise woman [catman ] Wise woman [SOTO ARES Gustavo ] A Great London Paper Carly Article--"These Songs Saved My Life" [B4INSF@a] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 14:07:07 +0200 From: SOTO ARES Gustavo Subject: Wise woman "Scar" : For you, who is that "wise woman" ? Gus. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 13:54:02 +0100 From: catman Subject: Re: Wise woman I think she is referring to the 'higher self' in all of us. SOTO ARES Gustavo wrote: > "Scar" : > For you, who is that "wise woman" ? > Gus. - -- why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together? http://www.geocities.com/tantra_apso/index.html http://www.tantra.fsbusiness.co.uk ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 14:53:20 +0200 From: SOTO ARES Gustavo Subject: Wise woman "The 'higher-self' in all of us". Maybe.... That's very nice. Others suggetions...? Gus. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 11:36:05 EDT From: B4INSF@aol.com Subject: A Great London Paper Carly Article--"These Songs Saved My Life" Don't be surprised to find Carly Simon's new album, The Bedroom Tapes, prominently displayed in clinics, hospitals and doctors' waiting rooms over the next few months. Her first album of original material for six years is a punchy, compelling journey through Simon's own recent battle with breast cancer - though not the kind of ponderous, self-indulgent fare usually associated with troubled singersongwriters. Instead, it's illuminating and witty, oozing truth and optimism. As therapy, it blows most of the exploitative, sub-literate self-help manuals right out of the water. The title alludes to the circumstances in which Simon, diagnosed with cancer in October 1997, made the disc. The bedroom is her daughter Sally's old room in the house on Martha's Vineyard where Simon wrote and recorded the album, producing it herself, and playing almost all of the instruments. "I had no other choice but to make the music that way," says 55-year-old Simon. "When you're going through chemotherapy you have to avoid germs, which meant staying inside all the time, pretty much alone. I didn't have a record deal, so I was just playing about, thinking that none of the music would ever be released. I sat in the bedroom surrounded by keyboards, recorders, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, bass guitars, shakers, Indian congas - a playground of musical instruments. It was an incredibly therapeutic experience." Simon was suffering the aftershock of a mastectomy, as well as reconstructive surgery and chemotherapy. "Losing a breast is shocking, no doubt about it," she says. "Fortu-nately, I've been been able to be really positive; I look at my scar, and I can honestly say that I don't think it's compromised my sexuality at all." As if to emphasise this point, Simon - who still resembles the archetypal 1970s leggy blonde - launches into a brief monologue about sex, before declaring that "the period of titillation in a relationship is so much more enthralling than the actual act of consummation, which can altogether be over too fast for my liking". Simon claims that cancer stirred her creative juices after a long period of writer's block. "I came out of the slump during chemo. Since I felt my life was threatened, I knew I had to fight, and music was my logical weapon - I used it as a kind of soldier against the cancer." Simon considers it foolhardy to declare herself "recovered", but so far it seems that surgery and treatment have been successful. Not only that, they've left her with a more radical outlook on mastectomy. "People seem to think that going through something as awful as cancer or any serious disease shouldn't be talked about. But I can't begin to tell you what a silver lining it's had for me. I actually like my scar - it's so elegantly poised, in just the perfect place, and it points right at my heart. The way I see it, that scar is now my permanent reminder to look to my heart for all the most important decisions in life." Simon explores this idea further in the song Scar. "The key line is 'A really big man/ loves a really good scar'. If you've had this operation, the last thing you want is a partner who's afraid of your scar, or repulsed by it. You want someone who thinks the scar is beautiful, and doesn't want you to hide it. I wear mine like a badge of honour." Clearly, Simon's husband, businessman and poet Jim Hart, passes muster. But this serene acceptance of her changed body wasn't acquired overnight. "One day I was in my bathtub, looking at the snow through the window, and I started thinking about my scar, and how it's something that should make a loved person even more lovable. If you love somebody, you should want to kiss and protect the things about them that make them vulnerable, such as their scars, and that's how I came to see mine in a new way." Others, though, took a different view: Simon reveals that more than one friend abandoned her in the middle of the disease. "A lot of people avoided me. I think they were frightened of their own mortality. They didn't want to talk to anybody fighting a dis-ease. Some have since come through, others have fallen away. But I have a lot of compassion for people who don't know what to say. Not everybody has strengths in the same area." The Bedroom Tapes came to Simon's rescue when friends wouldn't, and in a fabulously savage cri de coeur, We, Your Dearest Friends, she gives a final kiss-off to one particularly toxic, fickle pal who let her down. Simon's recovery was also under-mined by a long bout of soul-deadening depression. "For nearly eight months, I'd wait for the sun to go down every night, just so I could go back to bed. I couldn't stand to see anybody, and felt I had to hide the awfulness of what had happened to me. "What I didn't realise until later was that the chemotherapy was responsible - - it creates a chemical imbalance. They don't tell you that before you start, in case you bring on depression simply by expecting it. Since the chemo had wiped out various chemicals from my system, I took treatments to replenish them, and felt better almost as soon as I did. But even now, I don't think the situation was handled optimally - I could have avoided so much anguish if I'd known more about what was happening to my body." Simon elaborates movingly on this experience in I Forget. "I really hope that if anyone listening to the song recognises the things I'm singing about - particularly the way depression tricks you into forgetting that life was ever good - they'll go and get treatment." It's unlikely that The Bedroom Tapes will restore Simon to the top 40. The music is challenging, eccentric and at odds with the commercially astute, lush pop of her earlier work, including such evergreen favourites as You're So Vain and Coming Around Again. "Besides, I'm not a Backstreet Boy," she adds, with a dry laugh. But those who listen are likely to draw comfort from her warmth and candour. "Usually, if you're writing for a commercial audience, you think about all the ways you're going to make the music accessible. But I didn't think about that; I thought, 'What do I want to say and how do I want to say it?' "There are more songs on this album that I connect with than anything I've ever done. All kinds of really positive things are happen-ing," she says. "I feel as if I've been rejuvenated. This music has saved me." ------------------------------ End of hotcakes-digest V3 #45 *****************************