Re: Houdini

[scasterg@cd.columbus.oh.us (Stuart Castergine)]

>Aaron says:
>
>> It seems quite romantic... until you realize that she hated him. And (I
>> don't think) she was all that sad when they pulled him out of the water
>> dead.
>
>> Is this the impression everyone else has?
>
>No, I don't think so, Aaron.  Houdini, despite the myths, did not die
>during one of his acts. 

I read a biography of him once, and while he was not pronounced dead in the
bottle, so to speak, the burst appendix did become acute during his last
poerforman e and he had to be hauled out of the bottle. I believe he was
unconscious and did die a short time later. I dont' think that's a myth. If
it is I'd be interested in hearing the real story.

 Kate's song is a fairly straightforward 
>account of Mrs. Houdini's attempts to contact his spirit after his
>death.  For several decades, on the anniversary of Houdini's death,
>she would get a prominent "psychic" to attempt to contact Houdini.
>Houdini had vowed to attempt to return, and had a code phrase arranged
>with his wife prior to his death.  If the psychic could relay this code,
>it would "prove" the existance of the afterlife, and the ability of
>deceased spirits to communicate past it.
>After many years, with psychics failing universally to "receive" the
>code phrase, Mrs. Houdini declared that she was satisfied that noone
>could communicate from beyond the grave.  She at last revealed the code
>phrase that none of the "psychics" could divine:
>
>"Rosabelle, believe."
>
>Hence, the final line of Kate's song.  Rosabelle Houdini's efforts don't
>seem consistent with a hateful wife now, do they?

Houdini's wife isn't Rosabel. I forget her name, but "Rosabel Believe" was
the name of their favorite song or something like that. That's how it got
chosen as the code.

I think the hateful part came from a mis-attribution I made myself at first:

"I catch the queues watching you, hoping you'll do something wrong."

 Queues, as in crowds, is an uncommon expression in American English. So,
when I first heard the song, I heard:

I catch the cues, watching you, hoping you'll do something wrong.

So instead of the common macabre desire crowds have to see the daredevil
die, we have Mrs. Houdini with some kind of death wish for her husband. It
took me a while to realize that the first interpretation is what was meant.


--
scasterg@delphi.com == Stuart Castergine                          ---
"And maybe I ain't used to maybes smashing in a cold room, cutting |/
my hands up everytime I touch you. Maybe..." -- Tori Amos          |\