Sometimes you hear a phrase for the thousandth time, and something suddenly clicks, and you see a particular song in a new light. And sometimes that causes everything around it to fall into place as well, and you think you've got a grand unified theory that explains a whole album.
That was my experience this morning. Maybe my interpretation of the album, in light of Scott's life at the time it was recorded, is correct. Maybe it's not. I have no hard evidence outside of the lyrics to back up my interpretation, nothing from Scott's public writings to solidly confirm it. It hasn't been raised in album reviews or in discussions that I've seen.
I want to share my minor epiphany, to discuss it with others, but I'm finding that I can't do it. No matter how respectfully and sensitively I might be able to write, something is telling me not to try.
Maybe Scott wouldn't have minded, himself. I recall that in Where They Walk Over Sainte Therese, he wrote of the dead, "I don't absolve them, I won't speak well." But that's not me.
My speculation is nothing terrible, no absolution is required, and it's not exactly speaking ill of him. Besides, it's apparent (at least to me) that he alluded to it in one album, even if nobody necessarily caught on. Perhaps others have seen what I've seen, but kept it to themselves. It just doesn't feel right to keep engaging in speculation about Scott's state of mind, not where there's some remote possibility of stigma or embarrassment to the living.
Part of me would like to find a way around this. It's just a dry academic exegesis of lyrics, from a work recorded in a previous century. It could be hedged with lawyerly disclaimers that my theories are mere speculation. But it still would smell, to me, like celebrity gossip.
Now I've got a V-chip. Despite that, I hope I'll still find that I've got something to say, and will know when and how to get out of its way.
