Submission for rec-music-gaffa

[Boss Tweed <root@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>]

Path: iuvax!silver!jburka
From: jburka@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Jeffrey C. Burka)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gaffa
Subject: KaTe on _The Ninth Wave_
Message-ID: <38012@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 6 Mar 90 16:31:39 GMT
Sender: root@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
Reply-To: jburka@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Jeffrey C. Burka)
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Lines: 66

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned something about a file I'd saved from
.gaffa in which KaTe briefly discusses each of the songs on _The
Ninth Wave_.  I had a couple of a requests to repost it to .gaffa, so
here it is!

I got this off the net about a year ago; there had been an argument as
to whether or not the protaganist dies at the end of the suite.  I believe
that IED posted this one...  I have _no_ records of where this quote
came from, when it was recorded/written, whatever.  If anybody knows,
I'd appreciate finding out.  Anyway, here we go:

     "The side is about someone who is in the water alone for the night.
_And_Dream_of... is about them fighting sleep. They're very tired and
they've been in the water waiting for someone to come and get them, and
it's starting to get dark and it doesn't look like anyone's
coming and
they want to go to sleep. They know that if they go to sleep in the
water they could turn over and drown, so they're trying to keep awake; but
they can't help it, they eventually fall asleep--which takes us into the
second song.
     "The second song is called _Under_Ice_, and is the dream that the
person has. They're skating on ice; it's a frozen river
and it's very white
everywhere and they're all alone, there doesn't appear to be anyone else
there. As they skate along they look down at the ice and they can see
something moving underneath. As they skate along with the object that's
moving under the ice they come to a crack in the ice; and as it moves
under the crack, they see that it's themselves in the water drowning, and
at that moment they wake up into the next song, which is about friends
and memories who come to wake them up to stop them drowning.
    "As they wake up and surface, they are coming out of the whole feeling of
deep subconsciousness. One of the voices tells them there's someone
there to see them, and here in the water is a witchfinder. This is a
sort of nightmare they're having. This monster figure is basically
trying to drown them, trying to see if they're innocent or guilty. If
they drown then they're innocent. If they don't drown they're guilty,
they'll be drowned anyway. It's the trial of this girl who's in the
water; and all she wants to do is survive and keep her head above water.
    "The next song is about how she wants to go home. That's really the
thing she wants most, just to be in the cosy atmosphere of her belongings all
around her, and the security of those four walls and the firm ground, and
being with the one that she loves. She finds that she's there in spirit,
and there's her loved one sitting in a chair by the fire, but she hadn't
conceived the idea that she wouldn't actually be there in real terms.
She's not real. And although she can see her man, he can't see her--she
can't communicate with him in any way. It's more of a nightmare than
anything so far, because this is the closest she's been to any kind of
comfort, and yet it's the furthest away.
 "The next song is _Jig_of_Life_. This is about the future self who comes
to her rescue, basically. She says 'Look, I'm the next part of your life
and if I am going to survive and enjoy the things that I've enjoyed--
having my children, my happy home and my husband--re
she's so weak that she relives the experience of the storm that took
her in
the water, almost from a view: looking down on the earth up in the heavens,
watching the storm start to form--the storm that eventually took her and that
has put her in this situation.
    "This takes us into _The_Morning_Fog_. 'Morning fog' is the symbol of
light and hope. It's the end of the side, and if you ever have any
control over endings they should always, I feel, have some kind of light
in there."


|Jeffrey C. Burka                | "On the outskirts of nowhere           |
|jburka@silver.ucs.indiana.edu   |  on the ringroad to somewhere,         |
|jburka@amber.ucs.indiana.edu    |  on the verge of indecision..." --Fish |