HI Jim,

re.the meaning of songs, you say: "It's a sign of a good song when you really have to chew over the intention of a the writer."

I agree with you here - and it's something I've always liked in Jim Boyes' songs, those layers of different meanings in the same song. But I wonder if meaning always lies with "the intention of the writer."

I remember reading a Chinese cracker which said: "What I say, what I mean and what you hear and three different things."

I heard David Hare once talking about his play Pravda which he wrote as a satire on the newspaper industry, and when it was performed in English it was generaly done like that, as a dark comedy. But he said that when he was in Holland he went to see a production of the play in Dutch and it was produced as a very serious political and philosophical work. At the end the audience gave it a standing ovation, and he was amazed that something he had written could be so completely misunderstood and yet appreciated so greatly. He concluded that once he had published a work it took on a life of its own and developed meanings which were no longer his.

Maybe Sting's song is like that - and that in our choir there are 80 different meanings to what those lines are about.

I am sometimes surprised that while many people won't sing songs in other languages if they don't know what the words mean, few people seem to question or ponder the meanings of the words in songs in their own language - though I could understand one or two people saying that they didn't want to think too deeply about the meaning of the words in Amazing Love in case they found that they couldn't sing it!

I've so enjoyed learning these songs from Hearts of Coal and it's a real pleasure to sing them with so many fine voices, and so much sincerity in the singing. And I'm really looking forward to hearing the other bits which we've not heard yet with Barry and the others.