Kate-echism XXII.7.xv: "Wake up! Pay attention!"

[IED0DXM%OAC.UCLA.EDU@mitvma.mit.edu]

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
 Subject: Kate-echism XXII.7.xv: "Wake up! Pay attention!"

     First, thanks to Larry Hernandez for posting the _Goldmine_ article,
and to Steve Williams for forwarding it. Also thanks to
Glen Clark for his information about the ravens.

 >Yeah, its pretty clear that the person does not survive. Otherwise
 >you have to make all sorts of out-of-body experience hypotheses to
 >account for her being a ghost watching her loved one in "Watching you
 >Without Me" and her ability to play peek-a-boo with the earth in
 >"Hello Earth".

     The above statement is ignorant and poorly considered. IED quotes Kate:
"Not many people consider that cruel side of the sea, and how...ultimate it
is. And also the whole thing of almost...like--sensory deprivation, where
you've been in the water a while, you start losing all sense of where you
are, who you are, whether you're upside down or whatever. And I just found
the whole thing terribly fascinating. Although _The_Ninth_Wave_ is about a
very physical event, it's very much a mental event as well in that you are
travelling in your head, even though your body is just floating in water."

     Frankly, IED can't believe that this nonsense about the heroine "dying"
at the end of _The_Ninth_Wave_ is being bandied about yet again. Did
no-one learn _anything_ from IED's last posting on this subject? It's
just not a matter of debate, folks. There are lots of things in Kate's
work that are ambiguous and which may never be resolved, but the fact
of the heroine's being alive at the end of _The_Ninth_Wave_ is not one of
them. Kate has said so herself!
     Besides which, the whole suite would make no sense at all if
the character were dead at the end. First of all, Kate has several
times  explained that _Watching_You_Without_Me_ is based on
the idea of sensory deprivation, and the experience of leaving one's
body (while alive). The song describes an illusion, a
hallucination, that the heroine experiences while drifting in the
water overnight. This is not debatable. Kate has said so flatly
more than once.
     Kate has also said that _WYWM_ is the low-point of the
suite. She has said that _Jig_of_Life_ introduces the first note
of "hope" into _The_Ninth_Wave_, by telling the story
of the heroine's encounter with her own future self. The
old woman is the heroine scolding the girl in the water, and
admonishing her not to die because she still has to get married
and have children, etc. It would have been totally antithetical to Kate's
theme and artistic purposes to have made this song the emotional and
ideological turning-point of the entire suite (as Kate has more than
once said it is), if the heroine had then gone ahead and died before
the end of the suite.
     _Hello_Earth_ continues the sensory deprivation theme, sending
the heroine's consciousness into space. When Kate explained the song
_Blow_Away_ from _Never_for_Ever_ she often talked about stories
she had read about people who had survived near-death experiences.
She associated those descriptions with the idea of leaving one's body,
and this is a theme which she explores further in _The_Ninth_Wave_. It
does not indicate that the heroine actually dies, however! In fact,
knowing what we know about Kate's associations with this theme, it
implies exactly the opposite.
     Finally, _The_Morning_Fog_. First, no one here has said that
because the music sounds "happy" (which it doesn't, in IED's opinion
--of all the silly stereotypical ways of describing the rich and complex
mood of that music, "happy" has got to be one the silliest), it
must mean the heroine survives. But the lyrics certainly don't give
any evidence that the heroine does _not_ survive. Let's look again
at the comments Kevin Gurney made, with his examples from the text:

 >1. Is she physically "falling like a stone"?  Couldn't have been a very
 >successful rescue if she is. How about emotionally "falling like a stone"?
 >Doesn't really fit with the rest of the song, does it?  What if she's
 >"falling" through this world into another?  That makes sense to me.

     It makes no more sense than the former idea, that she is falling
like a stone back into her life. The image suggests the fall back to
earth, to gravity, to reality. It's a very straightforward
and appropriate mataphor.
     Kevin makes the mistake of assuming that anyone
here has been arguing that an actual "rescue" takes place
in _The_Ninth_Wave_. IED sees no evidence that a rescue has already
been effected before the piece ends. His only claim--and it is
an indisputable one--is that the heroine has not actually died in
the water before the piece ends. Why does the obviously poetic, meta-
phorical "stone" image not "fit" with the rest of the song, or with
the idea that she is coming to a new understanding of the value
of life? Clearly the heroine has gone through a cathartic experience
during the night, and now that the dawn has come she appreciates
her life and her loved ones more. This is not a matter of debate.
     If the character were dead at this point, then her new-found
appreciation of her loved ones would be without purpose, which
is diametrically opposed to the avowed "hopeful, upbeat" ending
Kate has herself described _The_Morning_Fog_ to be. How anyone could
consider that Kate would conclude _The_Ninth_Wave_ with such a cruel,
heavily ironic and bitter joke as that--allowing her heroine to
appreciate her loved ones only when she has died--is beyond IED. It
is just plain wrong, there's no two ways about it. Obviously the
heroine has gone through the night, learned a great deal about the
value of her life and her future, and--at least at the time when the
piece ends--is still alive. If she had died by this time, her
newfound appreciation of her own future as a wife and mother, and
of her friends still on Earth, would be nothing but a nasty, downbeat
irony--something which is quite impossible in Kate Bush, and which
she has herself said is not the final message of _The_Ninth_Wave_.

 >2. Why does she sing "I'd (I _would_) love to hold you now."?  Why not simply
 >"I'll hold you now."? Unless she can't BECAUSE SHE'S DEAD!

     This is ridiculous. She's in the ocean, for chrissake! She's
talking about how she'd like to be able to hold her loved one at that
moment if she could. If you're going to make a fuss about the use
of the conditional mode in this spot, and claim it as "proof" that
the character is dead, then how are you going to explain the very
next lines, all of which are in the simple future tense? They read:
       "I'll kiss the ground
        I'll tell my mother
        I'll tell my father
        I'll tell my loved one
        I'll tell my brothers
        How much I love them."
     There's just no way of interpreting these lines as anything
but a clear and unequivocal statement of the heroine's intention
to do just those very things when she gets out of the water. It
is quite beyond debate, therefore, that (at least at this point
in the story, i.e. the end of the story as far as the public knows),
the heroine is alive. Also, if you have a CD of _Hounds_of_Love_, you
will be able to hear a sound effect in the very last half-second of
_The_Ninth_Wave_: the momentary sound of a clock ticking. This nearly
buried but very real sound (it is not equipment noise, and has
even cryptically been affirmed by John Carder Bush) is another
clear sign that the girl's life is continuing at the end of the piece.

 >3. The couplet "Being born again/Into the sweet morning fog" just sounds
 >too much like she's passed on to the next world. I can't think of any other
 >_plausible_ interpretation. Oh she could be saying, "Now that I'm out of
 >e water, I feel so young again. My, look how foggy it is this morning. What's
 >that smell? Does someone have candy?", but that's just way to clumsy for me
 >to believe.

     Of course there is another "plausible" explanation! You trivialize
the alternative way of reading this line, but if you think about it, it's
actually the only truly plausible reading. The clear and undeniable theme
of _The_Ninth_Wave_ is the cathartic re-awakening of the heroine's
attitude toward her life. That's what _Jig_of_Life_ is all about, that's
what _Watching_You_Without_Me_ is the preface to. There's no question
about this, Kate has said so herself. Therefore, the heroine's feeling
that she's "being born again into the sweet morning fog" is a completely
consistent, natural way of describing her catharsis--the epiphanous
experience she has undergone through her traumatic night in the water.
To say that the simple expression "being born again" must mean
that she has actually died is to deny not only a perfectly valid
alternative interpretation of those words in their own right, but also
to deny everything that has gone before it in _The_Ninth_Wave_.
     IED started off this posting by saying that Kate has
herself said that the heroine does not die. He posted relevant
quotations in Love-Hounds only a few short months ago. For this reason
he feels compelled to express again the wish that you folks would work
on improving your memories, or at least that you'd review the archives
once or twice before spouting off ill-informed, weakly supported theories
without doing the necessary research. Here are Kate's own words: "Well,
as part of the concept of the second side, _The_Ninth_Wave_, the
last song had to be very positive, very much the idea of everything
bursting into light so it's all suddenly reborn, rather than that every-
thing dies." And, again, Kate's own words (and this ought to put an end
once and for all to the ridiculous notion of dying): "A lot of people
have said that _The_Ninth_Wave_ is about the girl dying, but it's
much more about the girl _not_ dying." (Kate's own italics.)

 > By the way, exactly who is IED?

     IED is Andrew Marvick's verbose alter ego in Love-Hounds.

 > Now for a real controversial question: Why do people on this net worship
 > this woman. I'll grant that she writes interesting music and poetry, and
 > that she is attractive, but seriously, why all the dedication?
 >
 >-- kurtzman@pollux.usc.edu   ke"

     Dedication and worship are two very different things. There are
very few people in this group who would seriously describe their interest
in Kate Bush as "worship", though quite a few might say they are
"dedicated" to her work, whatever that means. The fact that she is
physically attractive to some people is greatly overplayed by those who
haven't (for a variety of reasons) come to appreciate fully the scope
of her artistic talent and achievement.
     As for IED personally, "worship" is a word which he has often used
in Love-Hounds, but he has always tried to make it at least a little
clear that he did not mean to use the term literally. Actually, though,
his zealous defenses of Kate's art and ideas in this and other fora
do seem to indicate that he is at least partly smitten by a kind of
quasi-religious conviction about the supreme value of Kate's work.
If that is so, IED will not apologize for it.
     Mark Anderson asks whether it is true that Kate "believes in"
astral projection, and quotes :>oug's reply of months ago:

 >Yeah, astral projection.  Listen to "Watching You Without Me" and "Hello
 >Earth".  She's admited to believing in most of these things at some
 >point or another, but doesn't seemed to be particularly obsessed with
 >any of them.

     :>oug's reply above is false and misleading. Kate Bush has _never_
actually said that she "believed" in any supernatural phenomena
outright. Even in the early interviews, when she was far more vocal and
innocent in her enthusiasm for the paranormal (and everything else)
than she is these days, she did _not_ say "Yes, I believe in super-
natural phenomena." And although she did come close to saying as
much in some of the very early interviews (ca. 1978-79), she
_certainly_ doesn't say any such thing these days. In fact, she
goes out of her way to answer, in most situations, that she finds
the _idea_ of these phenomena very interesting ("fascinating" is her
usual word). Her position has always been that supernatural phenomena
_might_ exist, and that her mind remains completely open to the
possibility. She does _not_, however, say that she "believes" that
such phenomena actually exist. Note a typical example above, in the
quote IED includes above about sensory deprivation ("the whole thing
of sensory deprivation...And I just found the whole idea fascinating.")
     Also, remember the line from her own song of 1978, _Them_Heavy_
People_, which she has described as a kind of personal anthem:
"Don't need no crystal ball/No need for a magic wand/We humans got
it all/We perform the miracles."

-- Andrew Marvick