At first, I thought it was a lesbian song about a girl (i.e. Jane Siberry) desperate for another girl named Mimi who was at sea floating on a pink surfboard. I later soon found out by the song's sequel "Mimi Speaks" that pretty much explains the whole story behind the events surrounding the song Mimi on the Beach with no hints of lesbianism unlike Mimi on the Beach.
Mimi speaks does not explain the original, it replies to it. You were partly right at the outset. Jane plays with same sex desires in her early music, and a little in her life according to someone who would know. I'm not saying she "did things" -- I'm saying she dabbled in the idea of same sex eros -- not as dull and blatant as those two Russian girls in school outfits on a national tongue sicking tour to sell a one hit wonder, nor the Britney Madonna thing --something a little more subtle and...
Mimi speaks does not explain the original, it replies to it. You were partly right at the outset. Jane plays with same sex desires in her early music, and a little in her life according to someone who would know. I'm not saying she "did things" -- I'm saying she dabbled in the idea of same sex eros -- not as dull and blatant as those two Russian girls in school outfits on a national tongue sicking tour to sell a one hit wonder, nor the Britney Madonna thing --something a little more subtle and a lot earlier. Look, she is a very good writer and smart. THE SPECKLESS SKY album is very very good -- I sent a copy of it to William Irwin Thompson who was interested in studying it, and I, myself looked at it as well. As for Mimi, which is a great song and early, it's in part an outsider song and it captures the ambiguity if being an outsider -- all the dumb jocks and jockettes on the beach caught in their rituals as one community, the intellectual poet standing nearby able to disrupt their slumber with a meaningful sentence, and then also, somewhat in the distance, the sublime object of contemplation and desire: the girl on the pink surfboard. The poet is struggling to make sense of her relationship to the sublime Mimi -- why does Mimi captivate her (that way that women are captivated by Cosmo cover model images) and how can the poet be true to herself when an image like this has the ability to overwhelm her just as easily as it does these morons hooting on the shoreline. She resolves it with the "great leveler" a play on a giant wave, but it's really time or death -- what will take that body of Mimi's (does she call it a container) and make it no more interesting than anyone else's. So it's a contemplation of the way we obsess with beauty and project meaning on it. The Mimi speaks song is when Jane comes back as a grown up and realizes that her very comments about Mimi, suggesting she was spiritually empty because she was not a beach poet and such. In that song Mimi basically says, Bitch you don't know me. So it's one iteration away from the original contemplation critique. Of course, the original is the better tune because the issue is not the philosophy of desire which will not be resolved in a 26 line song, it's about the juxtaposition of contemplative forms and the subject position of the poet -- in other words, the singer does not have to be profound if she is commenting on her own subject position as a confounded adolescent. That and the tune is great of course.
At first, I thought it was a lesbian song about a girl (i.e. Jane Siberry) desperate for another girl named Mimi who was at sea floating on a pink surfboard. I later soon found out by the song's sequel "Mimi Speaks" that pretty much explains the whole story behind the events surrounding the song Mimi on the Beach with no hints of lesbianism unlike Mimi on the Beach.
Mimi speaks does not explain the original, it replies to it. You were partly right at the outset. Jane plays with same sex desires in her early music, and a little in her life according to someone who would know. I'm not saying she "did things" -- I'm saying she dabbled in the idea of same sex eros -- not as dull and blatant as those two Russian girls in school outfits on a national tongue sicking tour to sell a one hit wonder, nor the Britney Madonna thing --something a little more subtle and...
Mimi speaks does not explain the original, it replies to it. You were partly right at the outset. Jane plays with same sex desires in her early music, and a little in her life according to someone who would know. I'm not saying she "did things" -- I'm saying she dabbled in the idea of same sex eros -- not as dull and blatant as those two Russian girls in school outfits on a national tongue sicking tour to sell a one hit wonder, nor the Britney Madonna thing --something a little more subtle and a lot earlier. Look, she is a very good writer and smart. THE SPECKLESS SKY album is very very good -- I sent a copy of it to William Irwin Thompson who was interested in studying it, and I, myself looked at it as well. As for Mimi, which is a great song and early, it's in part an outsider song and it captures the ambiguity if being an outsider -- all the dumb jocks and jockettes on the beach caught in their rituals as one community, the intellectual poet standing nearby able to disrupt their slumber with a meaningful sentence, and then also, somewhat in the distance, the sublime object of contemplation and desire: the girl on the pink surfboard. The poet is struggling to make sense of her relationship to the sublime Mimi -- why does Mimi captivate her (that way that women are captivated by Cosmo cover model images) and how can the poet be true to herself when an image like this has the ability to overwhelm her just as easily as it does these morons hooting on the shoreline. She resolves it with the "great leveler" a play on a giant wave, but it's really time or death -- what will take that body of Mimi's (does she call it a container) and make it no more interesting than anyone else's. So it's a contemplation of the way we obsess with beauty and project meaning on it. The Mimi speaks song is when Jane comes back as a grown up and realizes that her very comments about Mimi, suggesting she was spiritually empty because she was not a beach poet and such. In that song Mimi basically says, Bitch you don't know me. So it's one iteration away from the original contemplation critique. Of course, the original is the better tune because the issue is not the philosophy of desire which will not be resolved in a 26 line song, it's about the juxtaposition of contemplative forms and the subject position of the poet -- in other words, the singer does not have to be profound if she is commenting on her own subject position as a confounded adolescent. That and the tune is great of course.