Re: The Ninth Wave: Protagonist's name...

[Robb McCaffree <nsrjm@nursepo.medctr.ucla.edu>]

satyrnband@aol.com (SatyrnBand) wrote:
>
> A recent inquiry on r.m.g asked about the name of the protagonist of
> The Ninth Wave, which I had claimed to know quite a while back.  In
> order to help the requester discover, I've reviewed the CD, and determined
> that the name I was hearing occurs at 0:21 and at ~0:27 in Waking the
> Witch.
> 
	I can't really hear anything in 'Waking the Witch' that
resembles a name other than "a good morning, (girl?) this is your
early morning call" spoken by a telephone operator in the prelude.
The word I guess as 'girl,' however, could very well be a name. And
there could be a name in the background vocals that sound like "see
who's here to see you." But I'd like to hear what you think it is:
Lily? Hannah? Yanka, Eva or Stoyanka? Or, if she were REALLY
clairvoyant, Miranda?

	I do hear a name called in the middle of 'And Dream of Sheep'
and this one is most DEFINITELY meant as a name -- the intonation is
unmistakeable. A man's voice calls it after she sings "only me skating
fast" and it sounds vaguely like 'Carol' or 'Sheryl' (Crow, maybe?),
but, as is with all Kate's message b-vocals, it's not entirely clear.



> On a related note, I've noticed that some interpreters of The Ninth Wave,
> including (presumably) the author of the movie script version that was
> posted several weeks ago, think that the story is about a *man*
> lost at sea.  I asssumed, based largely on the fact that a woman sang it,
> that it was about a woman.


I agree, from the passages of 'Waking The Witch' and 'Jig of Life'
that it is a woman who is 'speaking.' I don't think that the author of
the script necessarily thinks Kate intended for the lead character to
be a man -- he just wrote his script that way. Obviously, had Kate
filmed 'The Ninth Wave' as she'd originally intended, she would've
played the lead character herself as she has in all of her videos.

I wish she'd go back and film 'The Ninth Wave' even now...what else do
you suppose she's doing at this moment?



Robb