Sinister: what's in a name?

[Youn J. Noh]

i'm tempted to give a semantic explanation for the oddness of the title.
a superficial mental perusal of their discography and of song/album
titles, in general, leads me to the conclusion that it's on account of it
being a sentence.  most song titles seem to be noun phrases, if one
accepts that titles like 'going nowhere fast' are nominal gerunds.  this
is appropriate since the title names an object, albeit an abstract one.
if the title is a sentence, especially an imperative one, the only way one
can assign it a reference is by imagining a context in which it could be
uttered.  so stuart is challenging our imaginative resources:  it's not
an object, it's an entire context!  if the rumour (please forgive me for
calling it a rumour if it really is an established fact) that stuart found
it in a bathroom stall is true, then it has the flavour of the piece of
lore about David Bowie coming up with songs by picking words (or lines?)
randomly. sort of John Cage-ish, like (here i'm pretending to be well
informed about things i don't necessarily know that much about - i saw an 
exhibit once, which was really neat, but that's about it)?  i think it's
ok to think of the titles in and of themselves.  i would never have
imagined that 'the boy with the arab strap' would be my favorite song,
the only one i really like, in fact, on that album, based on the title.
and even if you don't like felt, wouldn't you have to agree that their
song titles are amazing?  but 'judy is a dick slap' is awful, sounds
misogynistic, even though i don't know what 'dick slap' means.

on the plane i read _the rachel papers_ by martin amis, which was really
good.  don't you always find yourself liking earlier works better than
later ones, with books and with music, though in the case of music, it
might take a few releases, i guess cos it's easier to put out records than
get published?  even though it was supposed to be from the 70's, it didn't
sound that dated - only the fact that he kept on calling everyone a
hippie.  so the 60's were perpetually out of favor thereafter, i gather.
but on the sheet of 60's stamps i got, the barbie in a pillbox hat is
really cool.

cheers,
youn


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