First Encounter

[apple.com!well!rickt (Rick Thompson)]

    This is my first attempt at a post here, so please accept my 
 apologies in advance if I've somehow fouled it up so that it's 
 landed somewhere it shouldn't have, or if this is the second time 
 you've had to see it, or who knows what else. I already had the 
 story typed up, so I just couldn't resist posting it, especially 
 when IED started urging silent people to speak up. 
    My first encounter with Kate was late one Sunday night in, oh, I 
 guess early 1979. I was in college at the time, busily failing at a 
 math major. (Yes, yes, I eventually graduated - _not_ in 
 mathematics.) Like most late weekend nights, I was, ahem, somewhat 
 detached from reality, and I was sitting around with a friend 
 drinking beer in a ratty apartment that more or less defined "cheap 
 student housing." We were half watching some sort of video show. (In 
 1978-79? I wonder what it was? Don Kirshner, maybe?) 
    I slowly became aware that there was something different about 
 whatever was on the TV. The conversation stopped as I started to 
 stare at the video for "Wuthering Heights." I was absolutely 
 transfixed. (Almost, to borrow a phrase, like a victim charmed by a 
 cobra.) As the video ended, I looked over to my friend, my mouth 
 hanging open. 
    "Was that..." I trailed off. I was not entirely sure that I 
 hadn't imagined a large part of it. It seemed that I must have, but 
 surely I wasn't _that_ detached from reality. 
    "She was --" He shook his head. "A _ghost_? Wasn't she?" he 
 asked, looking sort of shell-shocked. 
    "Yeah," I answered. "But did she... Look, who _was_ that? Did you 
 get her name?" 
    "Kate something. From England." 
    I went out the next day and looked all over town until I finally 
 found a record store clerk who could hear "Kate something. From 
 England." and hand me a copy of _The Kick Inside_. It's worn out, 
 now, full of scratches and pops and really can't be listened to, but 
 it's one of the few pieces of vinyl that I haven't tossed out when I 
 got the CD. 
    Of course, while that was a few years ago, it's only been a few 
 months since I ran into Richard Caldwell over on GEnie, and found 
 out that yes, there really were people who didn't ask "You've got 
 all these albums, who is this Kate Bush person?" I'm still sort of 
 in (pleasant) culture shock.

   ================================================================= 
   | rickt@well.sf.ca.us         | "And I don't know when          | 
   | J. R. Thompson (Rick)       |  But just saying it could       | 
   | Upstate NY                  |         even make it happen..." |