once aGaiN the maILbag is opened by youR cAntankerous olD ied

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

 To: Love-Hounds
 From: Andrew Marvick (IED)
 Subject: once aGaiN the maILbag is opened by youR cAntankerous olD ied

     The following summation of the narrative in _The_Ninth_Wave_ is
grossly incorrect:

 >Here is a quick reply. The story basically is of a person (most likely a man)
 >who is somehow thrown off of the ship he was traveling on.  He is now in
 >the water trying to stay alive.  The longer he is in the water, the more
 >tired he gets.  He soon falls asleep and has a variety of dreams showing
 >his longing for being rescued and safe.  He returns home and visits
 >his home "after dying".  Later, he leaves his body entirely and floats
 >away, to look at the Earth from orbit.  The story ends on a happy note
 >with the song Morning Fog but I think this is his last dream, as he
 >dreams of being safe, he really dies.  The lyrics are opaque enough to
 >really derive many interpretations.  Mine comes from interviews with
 >Kate as she explains the thing.

 >-- Richard Fox                            | fox-r@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu

     _The_Ninth_Wave_ certainly affords a variety of interpretations,
insofar as its larger symbolic and general thematic content is concerned.
Its surface narrative, however, does _not_ admit of much variety of
interpretation. Kate has herself described the story in very precise
terms. For one thing, she has been quite explicit about the fact that
the protagonist is a _woman_, not a man. IED quotes from Kate's own
KBC _Newsletter_ article about the meaning of _The_Ninth_Wave_ (this
section begins with her comments about _Waking_the_Witch_):

     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--then you've got to keep
it together, you've got to stay alive, you musn't drown or I will drown
with you." It's the future begging her, pleading with her to let her,
the future lady, live.
     The song after that is _Hello_Earth_, and this is the point where
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.

     Love-Hounds will see from these words of Kate's not only that
the protagonist of _The_Ninth_Wave_ is female (the song _Jig_of_Life_
can permit no other condition anyway, so Kate's confirmation isn't
even necessary), but also that the heroine is _not_ "dead"! Kate
has said in interviews that her concept for _Watching_You_Without_Me_
came out of her interest in the idea of sensory deprivation tanks,
and the experience of feeling separated from one's body. (It's
also very similar in concept to the earlier song _Blow_Away_.)  But
the heroine is _not_dead_ in _WYWM_; rather, her consciousness
has simply traveled away from her body--much as it does in _Hello_
_Earth_. There is no doubt about this: read Kate's description of
_Jig_of_Life_ above, and you will see that the very premise of that
song requires that the heroine still be living at that point in the
story. And since it is the struggle to remain alive that is the
dominant dramatic issue in _The_Ninth_Wave_, it follows that the
heroine must still be living as the last song ends--else Kate would
not have said that there was still hope at the conclusion of the
side.
     IED doesn't know where Mr. Fox got his information, but he
definitely didn't get it from interviews with Kate Bush herself.

 > Vickie here. Jorn, I admire you're willingness to annotate lyrics. (Richard,
 > that applies to you too! How's it coming with "The Saxophone Song?)

    IED seconds Vickie's expression of admiration, Jorn. And thanks very much
for the transcription of the _Lizzie_Wan_ lyrics.

 > I could be wrong, but I've always heard that line as "...lover's * room *"

   IED agrees with you, Vickie. He doesn't actually _hear_ the "r" or the
"m", but "room" seems the only logical word here.

 >>I'm in awe of the line "The sheets are soaked by your tiny fish."
 > Me too!

   IED too! Along with "Gazing at hazy goldfish in your swimming eyes,"
it's one of the most beautiful lines in all pop music, in IED's h.o.

 > Does anyone think "You're Soft/ So Soft" can reasonably be heard as
 > a woman singing to a man?

   Why on Earth not?

 > I'm lost. How could "Man..." inspire a "hot debate"? I have an inter-
 > pretation that's off the wall but I wouldn't say it was necessarily
 > "right", it's just what it means to me. It's such an innocent song.
 > Could someone fill me in on the "hot debate"? My imagination is too
 > taxed to try & figure it out.

     IED would like to hear what the hot debate is, too. But he does
not agree with Vickie that _TMWtCiHE_ is "such an innocent song". Not
when he recalls Kate's needle-injection-in-the-arm gesture (_SNL_
performance) for the line "I just took a trip on my love for him". In
fact, the subject of the song is of a young girl's first sexual love,
or at least an imagined sexual love--not exactly "innocent", in IED's
view.

 > ...and we don't like that performance <live Amnesty _RUTH_> on record
 > anyway...

   Don't like it? Don't _like_ it?!

 >>Also, was it my imagination, or had she put on some weight?

 > She likes chocolate. So what? Why ask? Does it matter? Does it affect
 > her music? Does it affect her lyrics? Does it affect her musicianship?
 > Does it make you feel any differently toward her? WHO CARES!!??!!!!??!!!
 > This theme seems to keep cropping up and I just don't understand why.
 > Why is it important enough to you to post about it?
 >
 >-- Vickie

     As much as IED would like to agree with you, Vickie, that Kate's
appearance is of no concern (or should be of no concern) to her fans,
he cannot. And he thinks that you are yourself being possibly just
a little ingenuous--IED recalls more than one occasion on which you
yourself expressed admiration for Kate's beauty, which shows that you
are not entirely indifferent to appearances. Certainly IED can't
claim to be completely impervious to the power of superficial
appearances. He is a human being, living in the late 20th century, and
as such he has been hopelessly brainwashed into paying heed to this
sort of thing, whether he likes himself for doing so or not.
     But after all, Kate's weight-gain is not a matter of _complete_
irrelevance to her work, in IED's opinion. It seems to him to be
indicative of her shifting artistic priorities. Certainly Kate
likes chocolate--but she has _always_ liked chocolate. The difference
is that nowadays her propensity for chocolate-eating is not as often
or as completely offset by her discipline for regular physical
exercise. This is related to her relatively recent shift in interest
away from dance and theatre in favor of film as the medium of choice
for the visual illustration of her songs. Her weight gain may also
have a more direct bearing on her extreme reluctance to undertake
a Tour of Life II, and it may also play some part in her increasing
unwillingness to appear in public--not only did she refuse to perform
on European television in support of _TSW_, but she declined to make
even a single personal appearance for promoting the album in England.
Could not the weight gain have _something_ to do with this increasingly
anti-social behavior, or could not the behavior have had something
to do with the weight gain? IED can even conceive of the possibility
that such a change in body-type might, at least in some degree, reflect
or even partially influence, an artist's stylistic development (or
lack of same). These are questions which even the most serious-minded
and dediKated fan might reasonably ask, in IED's opinion, as long as
they aren't allowed to assume an exaggerated importance.

-- ANdrew marvIck, who no lonGer has to play canasta in cold rooms