fragments

[agent99!hsu@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (Dave Hsu)]

Greetings again, my brothers in ears.  So many tasks, so little time.
Almost as though the entire Order of Our Kate of Perennial Warmth had
taken a vow of silence...but lest we forget:

In old news, if you haven't found the answer yet, Delius' debilitating
disease (i.e. the cause of his crippled and blinded state) was in fact
syphilis, contracted in the 1890's.  This from Osborne's "Dictionary of
Composers".

> Date:    Sat, 24 Oct 87 18:20 PDT
> From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu
> Subject: misK., and KT NEWS

> IED has a tiny bit more concrete information to give you all as a
> guideline for this topic, through the courtesy of the new issue
> (#28) of _Homeground_, "The International Kate Bush Fanzine".  It
> says that according to people "close" to Kate (i.e., probably Del or
> Paddy, with whom the _HG_ crew are quite chummy now, IED thinks),
> there are now seven tracks in a "nearly complete state", and "many"
> of these seven are "'up-tempo'".  So now, folks -- give your
> imaginations free reign. IED is waiting to read your ideas: What's
> _KBVI_ going to be like?

_KBVI_ had better be a surprise, or Dave will be somewhat disappointed.
Also, I don't know quite what to make of this report of "up-tempo"-ness.
Maybe it's too much Beethoven and Baudelaire, but I've always thought that
Kate was at her best (or at least, most effective) when writing songs that
were "eerie", narrated from the first person, and in a minor key.  Perhaps
we should read "up-tempo" in a literal sense, a la GOoMH, rather than
"up-tempo" in a colloquial sense, a la HoL.  Not to denigrate HoL, but I
never liked it quite as much as RuTH or Cloudbusting.

>     There's also an interesting new article by Peter
> Fitzgerald-Morris arguing that there is a mini-suite, ...  in _The
> Dreaming_, which is comprised of "Night of the Swallow", "All the
> Love" and "Houdini".  ... This article is based on a very intriguing
> (though in IED's opinion far-fetched) thesis, to the effect that
> _TD_ is actually extremely auto-biographical, and is in fact an
> album about a traumatic break-up of a romantic relationship, which
> is "mended" in "Houdini". Peter makes the clear implication that
> Kate had a big break-up with Del in '80, and then apparently they
> made up later. And that consequently Kate used this experience as
> the foundation for the songs on _TD_.  He says this interpretation
> is clear if you "listen with an open heart"! But he may also have
> some inside information which he chooses to keep from us. IED is
> dubious, frankly. What do you folks think?

> -- Andrew Marvick

I don't have the L-H archives by me now, but barring further evidence,
I have to be skeptical of the value of the esteemed Mr. F-M's theory.
The themes in those three songs are simple enough; so are the origins.
Memory says that Kate describes AtL as an exposition constructed
around the answering-machine snippet; is Del's the last voice?  To
wit, where are the subtle, personalized references one would expect?
One could also make the argument that the three pieces reflect Kate's
fear of airplanes and flight; the obvious theme of NotS, the
claustrophobic fear of drowning from Houdini, possibly AtL could be
construed to be a song about a terminal convalescence.  The
possibilities are endless.  The autobiographical angle has been
covered countless times also; Kate's fans may never be satisfied until
she pens an eponymous album someday.

I would close by reminding all you Bushologists of the single most
important law of analysis, the Harvard Law of Animal Behavior:

	Under precisely controlled test conditions, a laboratory
	animal will behave as it damn well pleases

back to work,

-dave
-- 
David Hsu, resident axe grinder			hsu@wedge.com
another anonymous byte shop, Cambridge MA	(hsu%wedge.com@eddie.mit.edu)

"And why should she not be transfixed?  It happened to the Goths"