Re: Love-Hounds digest V12 #268

["Thalia's Nix" <wraith@ndirect.co.uk>]

> ------------------------------
> 
> From: amahdavi@husc.harvard.edu (Andisheh Mahdavi)
> Date: 16 Aug 1996 22:24:16 GMT
> Subject: Talk to me about the Ninth Wave
> 
> Dear Kate Fans,
> 
>      Is there one coherent plot behind the 9th wave? People usually
> mention that it's about a drowning woman, but I've not seen a
> discussion of the individual songs with respect to this drowning
> motif.  Is there an "accepted" exegesis?
> 
>      My primary interest is what a third person, omniscent observer
> would see when watching the drowning woman. My assumption, which is
> quite open to objection, is that there IS an underlying set of
> physical events, a "timeline," along which the highly personal events
> described in the songs can be placed. This is a coarse outline:
> 
>      And Dream of Sheep  ----  In the boat, she falls asleep
>      Under Ice           ----  A dream; the storm arrives
>      Waking the Witch    ----  Wakes up, finding herself sinking
>      Watching you w/o me ----  In the face of death, 1) Grief
>      Jig of Life         ----                        2) Struggle
>      Hello Earth         ----                        3) Acceptance
>      Morning Fog         ----  The moment of her dying.
> 
>      What follows are some SPECULATIONS (not proofs) regarding these
> matters; they are thoughts that I jotted down after having read the
> "most-lyrics" file a few times. It's not my primary intention to offer
> a coherent story; it is rather to start a discussion.  Anything I have
> put in quotations is from the song itself.
> 
> AND DREAM OF SHEEP 
> - ------------------
> The woman is on a boat, and waiting for rescue, since a storm is
> approaching. "Little light shining"---this is presumably a light on her
> boat, which "will guide them [the rescuers] to"  her. Hence her "face is
> all lit up." She is afraid the the potential rescuers might "take [her]
> for a buoy," so she is "racing white horses,"  i.e., her boat is moving
> with respect to the white foam on the tip of the waves, so that she will
> not appear stationary, and be mistaken for a buoy.
> 
> She wishes to sleep out the storm, because she is afraid of it; she
> wants to be "weak" and "dream of sheep" rather than to have to go
> through the ordeal.  The radio says "Gale east," announcing the
> storm. She is worried that she might miss her rescuers, but reassures
> herself that she'll "wake up to the sound of engines." She tunes in on
> people talking to each other on their two-way radios, and wishes that
> she hadn't left hers back on the shore. Finally, sleep overcomes her.
> 
> UNDER ICE
> - ---------
> This song is very likely the dream she has while asleep on the boat.
> She talks about herself as if she is observing a past self. "I'm
> speeding past trees"---this is as detached as her first person
> narrative gets, and it is in this detached style that people usually
> recount their dreams.
> 
> Presumably, while she is having this dream, the storm overtakes her
> boat, and capsizes it. We know from personal experience that, even
> though certain dreams appear to occur over a period of hours or even
> days for the dreamer, the actual physical time that passes for an
> outside observer (say, for a neurologist monitoring the dreaming) can
> be as short as minutes or even seconds. Thus, it is entirely plausible
> that this song, as well as the beginning of the next, occur during the
> few seconds in which the woman's boat is sinking.
> 
> In the following songs, the discrepancy between "real time" (of an 
> observer watching the drowning woman) and "personal time" (of the
> woman, seeing scenes from her life go by) increases.
> 
> WAKING THE WITCH
> - ----------------
> This song does the best job of resisting any imposition of a "plot"
> onto the Ninth Wave. Even if the witch in the song is being drowned
> (see below), we are very far away from the "real world" where the
> protagonist is drowning. We have here deeply penetrated the woman's
> psyche. A further complication arises from the line, "We are of the
> going water and the gone. We are of water in the holy land of water."
> The air of mysticism in this phrase helps connect the water with the
> witch-motif of the song. However, it also removes us a little from the
> protagonist.  We can more easily identify with a woman who is
> drowning, and thinks of her loved ones; it is perhaps more difficult
> to identify with a woman who communes with water-spirits.
> 
> The song nevertheless contains important direct references to the
> drowning theme. The most clear instance is the last line, apparently
> shouted down at the ocean from a helicopter, "Get out of the waves!
> Get out of the water!" We can understand this line as reality
> "breaking into" the witch-trial world of the woman. This is consistent
> with the hypothesis that the witch trial is yet another (very 
> hallucinatory) dream---perhaps a waking dream the woman is having as
> she realizes that she is caught in the water.
> 
> A more minor examples is "There's a stone around my leg." Perhaps the
> witch is being drowned instead of being burned or stabbed; the
> distorted male voice says at one point "You won't burn... you won't
> bleed... go down!"
> 
> WATCHING YOU WITHOUT ME
> - -----------------------
> With this song we are again on firmer ground. After the initial
> struggle, the drowning woman's first thoughts turn to her loved
> ones. They are at home, waiting for her to come back from her boat
> ride; "I should have been home Hours ago, But I'm not here. But I'm
> not here."  Note that the "You" in this song could be either singular
> or plural.  Perhaps it is her lover; really any loved one could be
> substituted here.
> 
> Some of my favorite Kate lines are in this song. "Can't let you know
> What's been happening. There's a ghost in our home, Just watching you
> without me." She is drowning and almost dead; she is the ghost that
> occupies the home of her loved ones. She haunts their home because she
> is thinking of the home; her thoughts occupy it. She is there in
> thought, but ultimately not in reality.
> 
> THE JIG OF LIFE
> - ---------------
> Part of her wants to give up the struggle---and dream of sheep, I
> presume, i.e., let herself drown. Then she has a vision of her
> future---an "old lady," the lady she could be if she survives the
> accident.  This vision of a possible future takes life in her mind as
> the waters begin to overwhelm her, and begins to beg for its right
> to exist---"C'mon and let me live, girl!"
> 
> The second part of this song is puzzling to most of us, I'm sure.  It
> can perhaps be argued that the male voice in this song is a call to
> the woman to resign her life, i.e., the voice of death. This is the
> evidence as far as I see it. He says "Catch us now for I AM your
> future." Earlier in this song, we saw one possible future for the
> drowning woman---the future where she would survive, have children,
> and grow old. The most obvious other alternative, is the future where
> she drowns and therefore is dead.  The female voice thus comes to
> represent life, the male voice its antithesis. Also, his proposal to
> wait for the time "when the lifespray cools" in an "empty world" seems
> to point to this interpretation. However the solution is not a very
> attractive one, and I hope someone can come up with a better one.
> 
> HELLO EARTH
> - -----------
> Once again we seem to be in trouble. What is she doing on the Space
> Shuttle?  Perhaps she is imagining things she would like to do, but no
> longer can. "With just my heart and my mind I can be driving, Driving
> home, And you asleep On the seat." Obviously, she is drowning, so she
> can't >actually< drive home; but instead she settles for doing it with
> just her heart and her mind, settles for being with her loved ones in
> her imagination.
> 
> Similarly, then, she is orbiting the earth in her imagination, and
> in her imagination blotting it out of sight. I am reminded of 
> "In Search of Peter Pan," on _Lionheart_: "When I am a man I will
> be an astronaut, and find Peter Pan."
> 
> She is resigned to her fate. She calls the tempest "Murderer!" and
> asks herself "Why did I go?"---why did she leave her loved ones
> behind.  The choruses signal the approaching moment of her death. The
> last lines in German, "Deeper, deeper, somewhere in the depths there
> is a light..." also point to the idea that she is sinking.
> 
> THE MORNING FOG
> - ---------------
> Does she drown or is she rescued? The value of this song to me 
> increased dramatically when I began to consider the possibility that
> she does not make it, that this song is an expression of her last
> state of consciousness before she breathes out her spirit. Let's 
> look at lyrics for the evidence in either direction.
> 
>           SHE LIVES                          SHE DROWNS
>   -------------------------------------------------------------
>                                           Begin to bleed,
>       Begin to breathe,
>       begin to speak.
>       D'you know what?
>       I love you better now.
>                                           I am falling
>                                           Like a stone,
>                                           Like a storm,
>                                           Being born again
>                                            Into the sweet morning fog.
> 
>                                           I am falling,
>                                           And I'd love to hold you now.
> 
>                        I___   kiss the ground
>                        I___   tell my mother,
>                        I___   tell my father,
>                        I___   tell my brothers,
>                        How much I love them.
> 
> I feel that a lot depends on what contraction is used after the "I" in
> the last five lines. If she is falling, and would love to hold her
> loved one, that means that she can't do it---she is drowning, and her
> imminent death has sparked this enormous love for everyone she is
> close to.
> 
> The "most-lyrics" file has the last few lines listed as "I'll kiss...
> I'll tell I'll tell, etc..." However, when I listen to the song, it
> sounds ambiguous to me. It could well be "I'd kiss the ground, I'd
> tell my brothers, How much I love them." The "would"-form goes towards
> supporting the theory that she does in fact drown; the "will"-form
> perhaps supports the other extreme.
> 
> To me, The Ninth Wave has a lot more aesthetic value if the woman does
> drown. This is not because I hate her or anything, but simply because
> in this context the last song grows in emotional power. She looks
> death in the face, and her last thought is that she is a richer person
> for her ordeal---that she loves more, and loves better.
> 
> - ---------------------------------------------------------------
> In any case, even if you completely disagree with everything I've
> said here, please let me know your feelings towards the Ninth Wave
> as a story.
> 
> 
> ------------------------------

                 "What was the question ?"   ;^D