well i was going to stay out of it but

*** this is my interpretation/opinion ***

i have to wonder if, when one reaches a certain peak of fame, one starts to question oneself... one's motives... there's the contracts... the money does come in...

some of Cat's music is whimsical... and not so deep. but some is deep and has always been.

regardless if he said it, i DO NOT BELIEVE he never felt his music... perhaps after much time in the industry, he lost touch with that feeling, as many musicians do. and when he lost that, he perhaps began to think, hey, i'm only doing this for money any more. at the peak of fame he may not have felt like he was a "real" musician... by the standard that music was not the reward in its own right any more... it by then being drowned in obligations and many material rewards. perhaps he realized he had always had his share of ambition, and because of that judged himself not to have been really into his music. there may be some part of truth to that if he thought it. but i think he could not reconcile that the two - ambition, and passion, could coexist. especially if he had lost touch with the passion at that point. he may have thought that what he thought was "passion" was really an expression of ambition. i don't think so.

remember this is just my speculation.

but, how many of us, when we are in a different state, or further along in life, question our past actions, our motives for them, interpret them different ways. then, we reinterpret them again, and again... depending on our conditions and overall perspective.

we all know how altered states (like depression) can change how we feel about ourselves and the worth of what we do... and even what we think of it... our entire perspective. growth can do that too. a rise to fame can do that easily as it represents a huge change in conditions and perspective.

i can definitely see Cat reaching a point of feeling empty with his career to the extent of needing to find himself, regain touch with his spirit, his essence... hence his pilgrimage and conversion, and now re-emergence. and not surprisingly... with music... because i personally do believe he really is a musician. i truly think he might have got blindsighted to his own essence by his success.

i kinda doubt he feels stupid about anything he said... it probably felt true to him at the time. and he is probably mature enough now to understand and accept that about himself.

this is all speculation. i've never met Cat. before or after his conversion and reemergence. so how would i really *know*?

but i wanted to share the way i see it... how things could have gone.

and now something on his music, per se. it is not a purely mechanical process.

there is a visceral aspect to music. spiritual also. actually, i find the song posted more spiritual. his earlier works powerfully visceral and sometimes spiritual also. but neither is something one can easily fake. perhaps with difficulty in lyrics and composition, and certainly not in performance, not consistently.

an artist that performs mechanically without being "into the music" him/herself is unlikely to convey feeling to the audience. the audience's feeling is product of the audience, not the artist, not the music. but i believe it takes both sides, that little feeling will be evoked in the audience by purely mechanical music... an exercise in reproducing notes.

Cat's music, to me, and also to sooooo many others i have met, is explosive in its ability to evoke powerful emotion. So he may have come to believe, at some point, that he was never into his music, for itself... but i don't believe that. it just doesn't fly with my experience with music, much less his music.

if this post was too long, you can partly blame philosophy of art professor at university (then you can ask me what i was doing in the class )

~ waves ~