Re: Catchup Stuff

[Peter Byrne Manchester <PMANCHESTER@ccmail.sunysb.edu>]

Chris Williams (chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu) pushed the GO button:

>   I, for one, am anxious to hear Peter's comments on Henry Burdett
> Messenger's theory about the genesis of  The Ninth Wave .

       Well it's an absolutely brilliant theory, masterfully presented and 
full of inherent plausibility--especially in the lyrics for "Hello Earth."

       (In this it differs from my own private theory, which was shaped by 
the fact that HoL released late afternoon on Thursday, September 26, 1985, 
the day before Hurricane Gloria came *right here*--I mean directly bang-on 
across this part of Suffolk County, Long Island--which was so torn up that we 
didn't have electricity for eight days afterward.  However, I got my copy in 
time to tape it that night, while battening down the hatches, and listened to 
it endlessly on my little cassette headphones the following week.  To this 
day I still get the willies when I hear the line "watching storms start to 
form over America"--as also on the new line in "Song of Solomon," "I'll come 
in a hurricane for ya."  However, this is in the domain of Meaningful 
Coincidences and other Strange Phenomena.  Now that Chris has admitted that 
he's had some of these too, I will gladly stipulate that there is *no* 
explanatory plausibility in these kinds of thing!)

       On the other hand, nothing in the interviews that Ron Hill compiled 
from that period corroborates the Fastnet Theory.  It is not specifically 
*dis-corroborated* however, as was for example the suggestion that maybe Kate 
had heard about the `man in the water' in the Washington DC airline crash.  
Where does that leave us?

       Well, pending further concrete information concerning Kate's level of 
attention to the morning papers or the evening news, I would make the 
following generalization.  Even in what Kate says about old war movies and 
newsreels, etc., she is clear that there is no specific influence, just a 
general `feel' for the circumstance of being suddenly thrown into deep water. 
She is explicit enough about not claiming any particular influence that it 
certainly leaves room for some role in her imagination to have been played by 
the Fastnet disaster, if she happened to have seen or read a compelling 
account of it.

       Moreover, Kate has long made clear that even when some particular film 
or song *has* influenced her, it was always reshaped and reconfigured by her 
own imagination--and in that area she has been notably willing to admit to 
*unconscious* associations playing a role in her work.  For example, in the 
material I posted from "Cloudbusting" about The Ninth Wave, she was asked 
about the association between drowning in water and drugs--the phrase about 
"little lines," to which she answered:

           Yes, absolutely.  But really it wasn't conscious when I was 
       writing it, and it was only a few weeks before we finished the album 
       that people said, "God, have you looked at this: `Cutting little 
       lines,' and I had really not consciously considered that at all.

       I ran into this firsthand in 1986.  I had written to her presenting 
some observations that struck me about the video for "Cloudbusting."  Anyone 
who's read  A Book of Dreams  will remember how in the weeks before his 
father's FDA bust, Peter Reich would be walking home across a field and think 
to himself, "I just know that something bad is going to happen!"  I suggested 
that the reversal of standpoint in Kate's lyrics might have also been carried 
out in the video itself in the key scene.  In the book, Peter Reich's 
agonized discovery that the feds in their big black car were not going to 
stop led to an agonizing run *up* the hill to warn his father, whereas in the 
video the kid's realization they are coming for his father is dramatized as a 
tumble *down* the hill.  And in the same reversal, the departing father's 
indication that the kid should run *up* the hill <nb RUTH> leads to success 
and elation.  Anyway, be all that as it may, Kate wrote back, and in this 
connection said:

       I really enjoyed your observations on the "Cloudbusting" video--many 
       of which I was unaware of, consciously.

The implication is that she accepts that she *was* (or may have been) aware 
of them *unconsciously*.

       Pressed to an extreme, this could sound like the imperialistic 
principle of claiming as one's own creation everything the audience discovers 
in the work.  I am absolutely certain that this is the opposite of what she 
means to imply.  Whereas Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend, and John Lennon have 
often spoken dismissively about meanings fans find in their work, Kate Bush 
is inherently more generous about the *shared* dimension of the unconscious, 
where images and archetypes <ok let's get Jungian for a moment> have a more-
than-personal/individual vitality.  I think she is quite ready to discover 
things about her own songs in some of the things her audience find in them, 
and to share her delight in that.

       Whether she *did* actually read or hear about the Fastnet disaster is 
a simple matter of fact.  But until we learn otherwise, I for one am happy to 
subscribe to the Fastnet Theory, with this proviso:  it is not *the* genesis 
of The Ninth Wave, but it could have (and certainly should have!) colored her 
`feel' for the situation.

............................................................................
                                                            Peter Manchester
       "Get out of the water!"                 pmanchester@ccmail.sunysb.edu
                                                    72020.366@compuserve.com