I Need To Know

Information "is" difference: significant difference, improbable difference: the more improbable, the greater the information. That's information theory from the 1940s: Shannon, Wiener ... the phone company: Gregory Bateson following suit: me, pk, following suit in the 1960s, writing about it starting in 1999.
My expansion reads complex information, what I term macroinformation — art, religion, politics ... — as emerging among different differences, meta-differences. I further emphasize that meta-differences, macroinformational contrasts, frequently extend into paradox, contradiction ... conflict.

One of my line dancing groups introduced me to the polyphonic salsa song, I Need To Know, by Marc Anthony: we do a neat line cha cha to it. I introduced the song and the dance to my girl friend. She, now on her normal summer vacation in the Smokies, tells me she bought the CD, mails me first the lyrics, and now Fathers Day, I get a DVD of Marc Anthony filling Madison Square Garden for an HBO special. Sure enough, I Need To Know was a headline song on that occasion. I live under a rock, so the song was new to me; but apparently it's been very popular, around for a decade: this audience seemed intimately familiar with it. Some of the macroinformation I here interpret from the song is true in extra dimensions thanks to the venue. The information is architectural, sociological, sexological as well as musical, lyrical.

I detail a few elements:The singer is male.
The singer is tall, slender.
The singer moves, striding so that his feet strike the stage, the gangways, the extensions of the stage into the audience, on the beat, precisely synched with the rhythm. The singer's body accents the accents, what's off the beat. The singer's whole being marks the divisions of the measures, the pattern binary, his shoulders and chest coming effectively into play at the structure's natural cadences while his footfalls remain precisely on the quarter notes (and on-beat eighth notes) of the Latin common time.
The singer is alone. The stage is the width of a basketball court: an erector-set jungle-gym of a stage. This is a sports venue, folks. The musicians are spread over it: and what musicians: Tito Puente, Bobby Allende, Angel Fernandez ... (It was Tito Puente who first introduced Marc Anthony to big stages at that world-renouned venue!)
The musicians are fixed in place: by the stage manager, coordinating with the band leader. The audience, by virtue of having brought a ticket specifying a particular seat, is fixed by that seat: though members stand and sway and wave ... Salsa!
But again: the singer moves. The "stage" is distinguished from the "audience," but the "proscenium" is more like a fractal coastline, the coast of Maine, than a clear border, like the California coast, or barricaded, like the Iron Curtain.
He ripples along the border, waving at the audience, blowing kisses, and, at one point, from a particular stage promontory, actually touches finger tips with reaching fans. The audience is seething but the touches are cool, kindling feeling, not igniting conceptions amid the females.That setting reinforces what I'm about to observe about the song's lyrics:They say around the way you've asked for me.
There's even talk about you wanting me.
I must admit that's what I want to hear.
But that's just talk until you take me there.OK, What's going on? The singer is a male: tall, slender, dynamic. His movements are precise, synched with the eighth notes of the music. He strides on the beat. His body accents the structure of the measures. He's not subdividing his body into 16th notes, then smearing the edges with thirds, with triplets, the way Michael Jackson does. No, this is salsa, not funk. Down-salsa, the whole production is rehearsed within an inch of its life. There are no accidents visible, nothing of the random.

The audience is of blended gender. It's not like 1,200 pubescent girls screaming over the Beatles on stage, anchored in civilization only by one silver-templed adult male who sits like he likes the damn crap (What did the theater have to pay him?) No: Marc Anthony is performing before a capacity crowd of salsa as well as Marc Anthony aficionados, male and female, young and adult, well distributed.
Understand, song lyrics are traditionally gender specific. Either a male or a female role is assumed. Where the lyrics are familiar enough the gender implications of the singer may be violated, the female singer may sing a man's song ... But if a male singer is going to sing, "Someday he'll come along, the man I love," he'd be well advised to alter the familiar lyrics to "Someday she'll come along, the gal I love,"

Now here's Marc Anthony, marching onto projections into the audience, leaning out over the edge toward them, blowing kisses, kisses that are clearly heterosexual. The audience screams and reaches mutually, the females reaching most enthusiastically. Now, what does he say?They say around the way you've asked for me.
There's even talk about you wanting me.The girl is asking around about him? Isn't that his business? not hers? Isn't the female supposed to stay put while the male sniffs around? This is backwards: he, the male, stays put, on the stage, beyond the proscenium; SHE's been sniffing around, asking for him!I must admit that's what I want to hear.
But that's just talk until you take me there.Say, what? He likes being on display? It's up to HER to quicken potential into actuality? The normal sex roles are reversed. Beaucoup macroinformation.Oh, if it's true
Don't leave me all alone out here
Wondering if you're ever gonna
Take me there.
Tell me what you're feeling
'cause I need to know.
Girl, you gotta let me know which way to go.

'Cause I need to know
I need to know
Tell me Baby Girl
'Cause I need to know

My every thought
Is of this being true.
It's getting harder
Not to think of you.
Girl, I'm exactly
Where I want to be
The only thing's
I need you here with me.

'Cause I need to know
I need to know.
Tell me Baby Girl
'Cause I need to know.

---

I'm happy enough with the above as a first couple of drafts but check back, there's a great deal more to come: especially on the macroinformation automatically implicit in polyphony.

I love how in real time at the live concert Marc Anthony evokes the multiple voices of the recording though no double tracks are used. Linearly, he simply switches which voice or which alternate background accent he's singing. He maintains perfect balance, perfect poise the whole time. Amazing.

Actually I'm coming to love the live performance even better than the recording because at Madison Square Garden the stellar band really cuts loose while the singer strides around for curtain calls.