by: Scott Cohen; pages 20-22

Although she's seen hundreds of films, and they all have influenced her in some way, there's not one Natalie Merchant wishes she could have starred in, because, she says, films are artificial. There is, however, one she wishes she had made: Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire, which is about a couple of angels who hover above Berlin, a bleak, divided city where joy has gone astray. She liked the dreamlike quality of the film and the way it was revealed, especially when the angels go up to strangers and eavesdrop on their thoughts.

If an angel were to drop in on Natalie's dream, this is what he would overhear: "I entered a room in which there was a man who I thought was a surgeon. There were about 10 marble tables with people lying on them, whom I thought he was operating on. Actually, he was cutting off their limbs. Then I turned around and rubbed against a plastic bag, similar to a garment bag. Inside was the head and torso of a man, all bandaged, and his lips were saying 'Help me!'" Unfortunately, the bag wasn't biodegradable.

Some of Natalie's songs come to her in dreams, but mostly they come from the New York Times. Natalie reads the international news and sometimes the Arts & Leisure and Metropolitan sections, but never Sports or Business. She just recycles them. One of her songs, Poison in the Well, about toxic waste, was written a year before the Alaskan oil spill. It came from an article she read about the Love Canal, a big issue in Jamestown, New York, where she and the 10,000 Maniacs live.

Natalie Merchant is a New Age Emily Dickinson. While not the only poet around trying to save the planet, she is one of the few who puts it ahead of her career. There's nothing artificial about her. Natalie's part of a new breed of maniac who doesn't keep a wicker duck filled with complimentary shampoo on her dresser. Perfect pink, a tender and tempting peach, and morning-misted heathers are not her colors. Her nights don't belong to Michelob. While others have dropped out of school to join a rock band, Natalie joined a rock band to earn money to go to school. Yet she's more at ease on stage before 12,000 people than having dinner with her parents.

The Maniacs' new album, Blind Man's Zoo (Elektra), is fiercely vegetarian. Its symbol, in both title and artwork, is the elephant, the world's largest land animal. Despite its enormous bulk, the elephant is remarkably agile and light on its feet.

The elephant also represents the colonial conquest of Africa. Its only enemy is man, who hunts it for its valuable ivory tusks, which is what Hateful Hate is about. The song was inspired by the photographs in Peter Beard's book, The End of the Game. In one photo, an elephant is standing near a clearing in the jungle thinking about a girl from upstate New York reading the New York Times.

In the elephant's dream, there was a big clank, then his dream boat docked. Natalie Merchant came down the same gangplank as the captain. Later, sitting in the cafeteria of the old age home, they ate tofu and vegetables, then she had to leave. The lights along the Love Canal dimmed as a taxi took her to the airport. She went up the same ramp the pilot did. She promised she would be back in a moment, but the loudspeaker said Berlin and the pilot had a jumbo container of coffee. After that, the elephant didn't see her again until the following morning, while peering into a book.

In another lifetime, Natalie could have been in the Seekers who sang, Hey There Georgie Girl and I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing, two big hits of the '60s. But Natalie doesn't believe in reincarnation. "In another lifetime, I was, if anything, tissue in my mother's body, and she was tissue in her mother's body, and so it goes on and on. In a way, my flesh and blood lived thousands of year ago. Sometimes I try to think who these ancestors were. My grandmother insists that we descended from Lord Byron, because her mother's name was Annie Byron; otherwise we have no clue where we came from. My family is from Ireland and Italy, and when I'm in Europe, I look in the faces of Irish and Italian people and try to imagine if I'm connected to them." This could be the lyrics to a 10,000 Maniacs song.

The Maniacs' songs are not what pop songs are usually about. "No, they're not. I love Etta James, but I could never write a song like the songs Etta James used to sing. They have been pretty valid to her, but I don't have no man who treats me bad, and I don't go rock n' rolling all night long. I'd have a hard time singing those songs."

She has, an easier time singing: "Detroit to D.C. night train. Capitol. Parts East. Lone young man takes a seat. And by the rhythm of the rails, reading all his mother's mail from a city boy in a jungle town postmarked Saigon."

The three biggest issues of the world, according to Natalie, are: "The environment, because if we don't have a stable environment, there's no stability in any other facet of our lives; the dormant spirit in America, which needs to be reawakened; and the fact that we're ignoring what's essential. On a political level, we're not feeding and housing people, and we don't seem to understand that there aren't any more rivers to dump poison into and isn't enough land to buy and bury our solid waste in."

And the three big issues in her personal life? "I don't think I have any personal problems other than I'd like to become more than just a spokesperson through my music. I prefer to do something to make the immediate world around me more bearable, like maybe adopt a child some day, or build a community center, or shovel my neighbor's walk.

If Natalie could have lived in another period in history, she would choose one of the more romantic ones. But when she thinks about the medical conditions - what it must have been like to have your wisdom teeth pulled without Novocaine - she's happy to be living now. "A friend of mine and I were looking at some stained-glass windows in St. Mark's Church in New York, and the colors were so brilliant. We were wondering if there was a time long ago when the atmosphere was different and there was more color, and whether the world was once more peaceful and quiet and people didn't have as many distractions and had more time to notice things like flowers and leaves and the faces of children. Looking at the difference between the new windows at St. Mark's and the old windows made us think there must have been a time for more craftsmanship and artistry. There may be some people today who are trained like that, but there aren't many. You can't even buy a hair dryer any more that's not going to self-destruct in a year's time."

Her favorite invention in history is the bicycle.