"I neither know nor think that I know," as Socrates said. Perhaps that's where we must leave it.

You see knowledge of origins as the path toward deeper appreciation, an asymptotic approach to the artist's soul. I see each encounter with art as its own beginning, where meaning emerges fresh in the meeting of work and listener, never fully exhausted by what came before.

Maybe both are true in their way. The child and the adult don't cancel each other, they're different movements in the same ongoing piece. I lost something when I learned those lyrics, and I gained something too. Neither experience was false.

There is no end to this question, for there is only beginning.

The debate about where meaning lives may itself be unsolvable, which is perhaps why we've been having it for millennia.

Thank you for the exchange. It's sharpened my thinking, even where we remain apart. :)