Get Out Of My House

[Mike Weaver <72210.2035@CompuServe.COM>]

Here's a clip from a Kate book project I abandoned in '85 or thereabouts:
 
...the onslaught of Get Out of My House, a reminder of what "heavy" means
for anyone who has forgotten 'Sat In Your Lap' and 'Leave it Open' by the
end of the album.  Inspired initially by the Steven King's THE SHINING
(referenced in many interviews), this song captures the essence of
multi-characterization within a piece of music, some of the lyric lines
belonging to a woman on the run from her crazed husband, some possibly to
her husband (even using a male voice), and some actually to the spirit of
the House.
 
The interview record of the song, however, tempts the limits of such a
simple interpretation beginning with the occasional mention of 'The Alien'
film playing a part in the inspiration before going even further afield.
Speaking with Company magazine prior to the album's release, Kate remarked:
"It's all about the human as a house.  The idea is that as more experiences
actually get to you, you start learning how to defend yourself from them.
The human can be seen as a house where you start putting up shutters at the
windows and locking the doors - not letting in certain things. I think a lot
of people are like this - they don't hear what they don't want to hear,
don't see what they don't want to see.  It is like a house, where the
windows are the eyes and the ears, and you don't let people in. That's sad
because as they grow older people should open up more. But they do the
opposite because, I suppose, they do get bruised and cluttered...."
 
Thus an explanation revealing the lyrical layering of the track, one which
Kate probably dropped from post-release explantions because of its thematic
similarity to Leave it Open.  And yet there is more:  "The track kept
changing in the studio - this is something that's never happened before on
an album.  That one was maybe half the length it is now.  The guitarist got
this really nice riff going and I got this idea of two voices - a person in
the house trying to get away from this thing but it's still there. So in
order to get away they change their form - first into a bird trying to fly
away from it.  The thing can change as well, so that changes into this wind
and starts blowing all icy.  The idea is to turn around and face it. You've
got this image of something turning round and going 'aah', just to try and
scare it away." (Zig Zag 1982)
 
And so the album ends, with Kate hawing like a mule as she turns to terrify
her demon....