Re: Red Shoes

[braffet@hawaii.edu (Elizabeth Braffet)]

In article <332710D6.2C54@tiac.net>, rao@tiac.net (Liquid Fire) wrote:

> D.Plaister wrote:
> > 
> > I'm interested to hear what people's favourite track is on The Red
> > Shoes.  I think mine is Song of Solomon but it is quite hard to pick
> > just one.  I think the one I dislike most is Big Stripey Lie.
> 
> Big Stripey Lie is one of the most brialliant songs ever made - 
> BSL and Lily are the two most brilliant tracks on the album.
> 
> I think I like them because they're about demons and angels, and
> manage to convey us to those other realms.
> 
> SRI

In defence of 'Big Stripey Lie' this kind of highly charged emotional song
really relies on the kind of experience the listener brings to the song.  
For me the wild emotions of Big Stripey Lie fit so perfectly with what was
happening in my life the first time I heard it, that it instantly became a
personal treasure.  Let me tell the story, though I must warn you, it is a
long one.
   About two weeks before the first singles from 'The Red Shoes' were
released I received a phone call from my father.  It was one of those
phone calls you dread in life, my mother was in the hospital dying and my
anguished father wanted me there, he wanted all his children there. 
Within hours I was on a plane with my sister and niece winging our way to
Vancouver, where my mother lay in a coma in the Leukemia ward of a
hospital.  The Specialists had pronounced her condition terminal, a person
doesn't live long when their body stops producing blood cells, and that it
was just a matter of time before she was dead.
         Quickly the family gathered.  My brother, my sisters, my Aunts,
my Uncle, my Grandmother, all arrived to keep a vigil at my mothers
bedside, and to provide the mutual support we all, and especially my
father, needed to cope with our impending loss.  My mother's condition was
not good, she was unconscious but dreaming.  Sometimes she spoke in her
sleep, she was trapped somewhere and trying to get out, trying to get back
home, she didn't want to leave us.  We all knew it was hopeless, but we
also knew what a strong willed person she was and collectively wished for
a miracle.  Well, my mother was never one to disappoint the ones she loved
and ten days after that dreadful phone call she awoke to that hoard of
loving but worried faces.  The doctors were impressed but still not
optimistic, however _we_ were overjoyed!  They released my mother from the
hospital the following week, allowing her to return to Victoria to spend
her final days at home.  Her condition was still pretty bad, but that
sharp wit, that beautiful laugh, that vibrant gentle soul was returned to
us, albeit temporarily, and we were overwhelmingly grateful.  My mother
was very much loved.
      The next couple of weeks I stayed with my parents in their home. 
Slowly the family disbanded, obligations took them reluctantly away one by
one.  Before long it was just myself and my Grandmother staying with my
parents.  My mother kept me busy running errands for her.  She wanted her
affairs in order, friends contacted, farewells said, parting gifts for the
Grandchildren, all the sorts of things a person feels they need to take
care of before they die.   It was at this time that 'Rubberband Girl' was
released as one of the first singles for 'The Red Shoes'.  I picked it up
but had little opportunity to listen to it.
         Mom was steadily improving so having taken five weeks of family
leave already, I decided it was time to return to the islands.  I flew
back to Honolulu and to the solitude of my apartment.  Work was insane, of
course, so coming home in the evenings to an empty apartment and a host of
worries it was only natural that Kate Bush should be played on the
stereo.  I finally got the chance to listen to 'Rubberband Girl', a song
about surviving, but it was a little too soon for me appreciate that
message, I was still in the midst of emotional turmoil.  When I heard 'Big
Stripey Lie' I found, suddenly articulated in words and music, the battle
of will and emotion that was raging inside me.  The emotion was of the
most powerful kind, a mad jumble of despair, anger, frustration,
helplessness, sadness, hope, yearning, and profound love tinged with total
fear and anguish.  On top of that lay reason, the mental effort of trying
to cope with life and trying to control a raging torrent of emotion.  'Big
Stripey Lie' was all that and hearing it was a catharsis that I really,
really needed.
     Two weeks after I had returned to Honolulu my mother died.  I cried
and cried.  I flew back to Victoria, this time alone, to comfort my
father, who despite knowing the inevitability of the loss, was completely
heartbroken. She died a comfortable death in the arms of her lover, a
poetically pleasing end she would have liked had she been able to choose
it (she was a true aesthete), but my poor Dad was utterly devastated.  I
took my copy of 'Big Stripey Lie' with me.  It definitely helped, it was
an anchor to hang onto 'while drowning in a sea of grief' to paraphrase
the song.   I have often wondered about when Kate wrote the song. Was it
after her own mother had died too young?  It expresses that loss so well
for me that I like to fancy that it was a similar experience that released
that song from her.  Of course, that is idle curiosity, it really isn't
important nor relevant to my experience of the song.  So finally I ask
myself, is 'Big Stripey Lie' my favorite song off that album?  No, years
later my favorite is 'Song of Solomon', like many I prefer Kate when her
music is soft, sweet and sexy.  Do I think 'Big Stripey Lie' is
brilliant?  That I don't know, I'm too illiterate musically to know
genius.  What I do know is that song was singularly effective in
expressing an extremely traumatic period in my life, and that alone makes
it special.  My least favorite song from 'The Red Shoes' is 'You're the
One'.  Why?  Don't know, I just can't relate.  I guess I have never found
the One... but _that_ is another story.
Aloha,
Elizabeth
braffet@hawaii.edu

-- 
-Elizabeth
braffet@hawaii.edu