Re: Things have a habit of repeating themselves...

[Norman Buchwald <jbuchwald@huey.csun.edu>]

"Chris Hansen" <chansen@kiva.com> wrote:
>Greetings LoveHounds:
>
>No offense intended, but I really didn't need to read about 'Stina' 
>six times... I understood it the first time.  <evil grin>
>
>Seriously (or not so), I am hoping one or two of the KaTe scholars on 
>the list can help me to understand the story line behind a song on 
>"The Dreaming".  I unfortunately don't have the disc with me but the 
>track contains the phrase "...with a kiss, I pass the key..."  or 
>"...with my spit still on your lip, you hit the water..." (I'm not 
>usually this dense; I just forgot the title!).  Anyway, I can't seem 
>to grasp the storyline behind this track, no matter how I search, 
>ponder and pray <another big grin>.  Anyone able to give me a hand 
>with this?
>
>Thanks in advance.
>
>chris
>the puzzled one




Chris, it sounds like you need to surf the net and take a look at 
Cloudbusting, Experiment IV, and The Garden to get all that you're 
puzzled about.  To help you out with this song, though.  Let's begin with 
the title, "Houdini."   The song is from Mrs. Houdini's point of view 
after Houdini's death when she was trying to find a way to communicate 
him through a medium (Just as Harry Houdini, himself, had tried to 
communicate to his mother through mediums, later revealing them as frauds 
as they were, instead).

In the past, whenever Harry Houdini was about to go through one of his 
risky magic acts, Mrs. Houdini would give him a kiss, and in that kiss, 
she would pass a key from her mouth to his, which he would use to get out 
of his death-defying acts.  The "key" in this song refers to how Mrs. 
Houdini would find out if the medium she is consulting has really 
contacted Harry Houdini, if something should happen to him.  There would 
be a code and the code was a line from a favorite song of theirs, which 
contains the line "Rosabel believe."  The legend goes that Mrs. Houdini 
found a medium that said just that, and the whole process of her finding 
that medium is like the process of preparing for one of his magic acts.  
Kate's song focuses on the legend, even though in reality while Mrs. 
Houdini did find a medium who stated the line, the medium got a tip from 
one of her servants (which she soon discovered).  But the song, itself, 
focuses on the legend.  I hope that helps.  Kate talks about this 
extensively on The Picture Interview Disk on "The Dreaming" interview, 
and you can get other comments by her on the WWW program :  Cloudbusting: 
 Kate Bush in Her Own Words."  

The URL is:   
http://scott.cogsci.ed.ac.uk~rjc/hyper_cloud/cloudbusting.html


I've noticed that some critics (including Lovehounds, themselves) have 
criticized Kate for not mentioning the fact that Mrs. Houdini was fooled, 
herself.  I don't think that's the issue.  The song takes place at the 
moment towards "belief".  It doesn't matter what happened afterwords, as 
much as the moment of the possible "miracle" itself.  It's also a great 
Love/Death story that is the apex of the album  (I think "Get Out Of My 
House" is the very breath-taking denoument or conclusion, at least.  If 
anything, now that the magic/supernatural has been 100% established, a 
woman can turn into a mule.  A big contrast from the earlier "But 
you're not a swallow," the last line of "Night Of The Swallow").


                                                       Stormin' Norman

                                         We all have a dream . . . maybe?

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