Re: FW: Talk to me about the Ninth Wave

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

Robert Matthews wrote:
> 
> In article <3219F484@msmail.acgs.qld.edu.au>, BIRCK@msmail.acgs.qld.edu.au
> ("Birch, Keith") wrote:
> 
> >      Waking the Witch    ----  Wakes up, finding herself sinking
> > KFB - another stream-of-consciousness thought association, where her mind
> > flashes back to the treatment of witches, which includes drowing them.
> 
>      I'm listening to "Hounds of Love" *at this very moment* (with the
> headphones on, 'cause it's not even 6 a.m. yet).
> 
>      "Waking the witch" is an actual term that was used during the witch
> terrors in Europe. It referred to keeping a suspected witch awake for
> long, long periods of time (like a week or two). You know what you're like
> after a thirty-six-hour bout with a term paper or whatever? Imagine how
> fucked-up and hallucinating you get after a week of being prodded,
> grilled, shouted at, and kept from sleeping. You'll confess to anything.
> 
>      And that, I think, is what the song is trying to get at. The song
> sounds very hallucinatory to me, with voices coming at the woman from all
> angles, the voice of a stern judge telling her she'll pay, and the woman
> herself begging her child to somehow exonerate her (the irony being that,
> as in "The Crucible", it might well have been the child herself who
> pointed the finger).
> 
>      Of course, what any of this has to do with drowning is beyond me,
> apart from the obvious reference to the ducking stool, another technique
> used by witch-hunters; if the victim floated, she was obviously a witch,
> and if she sank (and therefore drowned), then she was innocent--talk about
> a lose-lose situation.
> I always thought, even before HoL was released, that *this* was 
the process to which "waking a witch" referred. I'd never heard 
about keeping the suspected witch awake for days and weeks on 
end. This imagery certainly lends itself to how hallucinatory 
WtW seems -- as well as the idea of the person adrift on the 
water throughout the whole of TNW. She or he would have to stay 
awake in order to survive.

BtW, has anyone ever seen a picture of (forgive me if I get the 
names wrong) Person Lost At Sea Waiting For Someone To Come 
Rescue Them/Plane Searching For A Person Lost At Sea? Whoever 
has these pieces certainly scored a coup!

Robb