Back to Dreaming E. MisK
from County Waterford, Ireland
From: E Welsh <evan@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1991 03:14:04 -0800
Subject: Tel and Hanna!
Did anyone else wonder about the significance of Terry Wogan's final words before introducing the guest following KaTe?
He roughly said (paraphrased from memory!):
"I know someone who'll be particularly pleased to see KaTe and that's Hanna. She always watches the show, particularly when KaTe is on. Hello Hanna and get well soon!"
Who else could it be but KaTe's mum? Let's hope all is well at East Wickham Farm.
From: katefans@chinet.chi.il.us (Chris n Vickie)
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1992 17:27:08 -0800
Subject: Sad News :-(
Sadly, Kate's mother Hannah Bush passed away on Valentine's Day. [Febr. 14th]
The cause of death has not been released to the public. Cards and flowers may be sent to East Wickham Farm in Welling, Kent.
A suggestion (not made by the family, but by me) would be to donate a little something to your favorite charity, or to Kate's favorite charity, The Terrence Higgins Trust in London, in Hannah's name. The family is in seclusion and are not giving any interviews.
This information comes directly from Kate's friend Lisa (KBC), via Peter and Krys at Homeground.
I hope there won't be a lot of speculation about how much this might delay Kate's album and tour. Obviously, they will be delayed, but we must respect Kate's grief and mourning period and know that it is more important than any material items we might be waiting for.
It's a sad, sad day for all who care about Kate and her family.
Vickie
From: rhill@netlink.cts.com (Ron Hill)
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1992 19:16:46 -0800
Subject: Hannah Bush quotes
As usual, I find that Kate says things better then I ever could:
WHAT'S BEEN THE LOWEST POINT IN YOUR LIFE?
In my life! The worst moments are when I've lost people that have meant something to me, when people have died. They're definitely the worst moments. It's probably just the selfish feelings of why you miss a person. You want them to be with you again, you want them more and they're not there. [MAKES OK SIGN] Because probably where they've gone, they're really having a good time. It you want to look at it, death, in a way, should be looked on as the greatest thing that's ever going to happen to you. (1980, Profiles In Rock)
DO YOU COME FROM A PARTICULARLY ARTISTIC FAMILY?
Well, my mother's a dancer, she won a lot of prizes cleaning the floor with the opposition, and my father's a musician. (1981, RM)
I don't know if it was a dream or not, but I remember somebody looking over into my cot going something like "googgy wooogy woogy wooo". I might have been one, maybe two years old.
My father was a doctor and my mother a nurse. Now she works on the phone for my father, taking calls. (1982, Flexipop)
PADDY, MAYBE YOU'D GIVE A QUICK SKETCH OF YOUR CAREER AS A MUSICIAN PRIOR TO YOUR INVOLVEMENT WITH YOUR SISTER.
PADDY: Well, I suppose it all started off initially because there's always been so much music in our family. Our mother comes from a very musical family, all her brothers, i.e. our uncles, played on accordians and fiddles and stuff. So music was something we were always exposed to as young kids and we were always hearing Irish dance music, which has been very special to me ever since. (1985, Kate Bush Con)
My mother's Irish and she always had relatives popping around, the vast majority of whom were superb musicians. They'd come around and play accordions and things. (1989, Pulse)
My mother, to whom I have always been very close also, was a muse. But my eye was almost always on what my father was up to. Don't you think that, as a child, your aspirations are into the world?
You take the whole domestic situation, including your mother, for granted. Little did I know it was mum who was holding it all together. (1989, You)
An engineer we were working with picked out the line in " And Dream of Sheep " that says "Come here with me now." I asked him why he liked it so much. He said, "I don't know, I just love it. It's so moving and comforting." I don't think he even knew what was being said exactly, but the song is about someone going to sleep in the water, where they're alone and frightened. And they want to go to sleep, to get away from the situation. But at the same time it's dangerous to go to sleep in water, you could drown.
When I was little, and I'd had a bad dream, I'd go into my parents' bedroom round to my mother's side of the bed. She'd be asleep, and I wouldn't want to wake her, so I'd stand there and wait for her to sense my presence and wake up. She always did, within minutes; and sometimes I'd frighten her - standing there still, in the darkness in my nightdress. I'd say, "I've had a bad dream," and she'd lift bedclothes and say something like "Come here with me now." It's my mother saying this line in the track, and I briefed her on the ideas behind it before she said it. And I think it's the motherly comfort that this engineer picked up on. In fact, he said this was his favourite part of the album. (1987, KBC 21)
HANNAH: We always encouraged Kate to write songs, but we never thought, we never dreamed, it would all turn out like this. We're very proud of her, naturally, but hasn't it all happened very suddenly? The doorbell's ringing all the time now from fans who want autographs. I have to collect them up and give them to Kate to sign.
I worry about Kate at times, but she's a very stable girl and always seems to know what she's doing. She hasn't become affected in the slightest. (1978, Bush-Whacked!)
HANNAH BUSH: [inaudible] Oh, in the show. I like her in all of it actually, the quality, her performance, and her stamina.
HANNAH: Stamina, yes. I mean her stamina is fantastic. I mean she had to go on... We're very proud of that. [Taps Kate on the shoulder] Very professional, uh huh, isn't she? (1979, Kate Bush In Concert)
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1992 21:27:00 -0800
From: Peter Byrne Manchester <PMANCHESTER@ccmail.sunysb.edu>
Subject: Noting the occasion
Many thanks to Vickie for her gracious and thoughtful effort in passing along the sad news of Mrs. Bush's death this month. Most of the time we're fans of Kate Bush here, but now we need to be her friends too, meaning that we recognize how very distant and incidental we are to her and her family at a time like this. Vickie's suggestion about gifts to charities the family respects is an excellent one.
I would not be surprised if Ron Hill is already compiling a post from "Cloudbusting" containing Kate's remarks about her mother. We know the Bush family are very close, and as bystanders can only be grateful that they have that strength among themselves at this time.
Hannah Bush appears quite unmistakably in the video for "Suspended in Gaffa," but I believe that she is also in the video for "The Big Sky." This hypothesis was a novelty for the group of us at Larry Hernandez's place in San Jose last Katemas, and after running through the passage in question frame by frame several times from the laserdisk, Ron Hill was still uncertain but Andy Marvick seemed to agree. Having checked it again just now, I am as confident as ever.
The moment comes exactly two minutes into the video, when Kate has sidestepped forward through the ranks of hero figures, and the camera rises higher and dollies back along them. In the middle of the two files of heroes stands a short mature woman in an aviator cap, and at the instant her face (looking straight into the camera) is centered in the frame it is lit by bright light from the left, and it simply looks clear as day to me that this is Hannah Bush.
It is so characteristic of Kate Bush that she would find opportunity in her work to introduce her family to us, and us to her family.
Peter Manchester"Tell my mother...father...loved one...brothers
How much I love them"
-The Morning Fog-
From: gatech!chinet.chi.il.us!katefans@EDDIE.MIT.EDU
(Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago)
Subject: Re: Sad News :-(
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 02:04:35 -0800
I talked to IED, btw. He knows about Hannah now.
I can't help but put a personal note in here, I *don't* want to start a flame war, but I have to say this...
I hope those who hate the song "Reaching Out" will listen to it with Kate's mom in mind, and will feel a bit kinder toward it. I'm not asking you to like it, but just feel some of the mother/daughter connection, and try to understand where she's coming from. I've posted before about how much I love that song, one of the reasons being that I lost my own mother 10 years ago, and the emotions in the song hit me very deeply. Knowing, from many different sources, how close Kate and her mother were, I can imagine that Kate is absolutely devestated. I feel such sorrow and sadness for her. Songs such as RO and All the Love and others that involve her mother have become even more special in the last day. I'm so glad Kate used her mom in the videos of Suspended in Gaffa and The Big Sky, she'll always be preserved on video for those of us who never met her.
Thank you Ron, for digging up those quotes.
Vickie
From: gatech!chinet.chi.il.us!katefans@EDDIE.MIT.EDU
(Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago)
Subject: Re: Hannah Bush quotes
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 02:13:51 -0800
Great quotes Ron, thank you.
There was one you missed, but I can't think of where it's from.
Kate told a story about Hannah being ill when kate was a small child. Hannah had "died" and was having an out-of-body experience. She was up above her body, looking down on herself, when Kate came into the room. That "forced" her to re-enter her body and she was alive again. Now, even if people don't believe in that sort of thing, obviously Hannah and Kate did, or else Kate wouldn't have told the story. I wish I could remember where I read it...
Vickie
From: rhill@netlink.cts.com (Ron Hill)
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 18:28:05 -0800
Subject: Hannah Quotes #2
Due to an error on my part, and to the index to Cloudbusting not *QUITE* being finished, I neglected a few quotes. Thanks to Vickie for pointing this out.
When I was little my mother fainted for no apparent reason. My father was there and put her on the bed, but he couldn't feel any pulse so he started doing artificial respiration and so on to try to revive her. Meanwhile, according to my mum, she'd taken off like a balloon and hit the ceiling. She was looking down from there at my father pushing her body about and she was calling out "Leave me alone, I'm all right!"
Then I walked in asking "Where's my mum?" and when she saw me she dropped down into her body, she says, anyway she did come back to life. (????, Secret History)
AND DID THIS BEGIN TO ASSUME ALMOST PATHOLOGICAL PROPORTIONS AND START ALARMING THE FAMILY?
PADDY: Absolutely!
KATE: Pathological!
PADDY: Yeah! But no! Because of the heavy Irish tradition in the family, I think it was escapism on her part. Our mother is Irish and I think Kate maybe felt, you know, that there was a slight obligation to appease the Irish spirit. And somewhere out of my mother's imagination came the idea that Kate should learn the violin. It seems to be a tradition that the violin is forced upon people. I mean, there are few who take it up of their own volition! And Kate was certainly one of those who only took it up under pressure, she didn't really like it very much. So the piano was a kind of way of exploring music in dimensions diametrically opposite to what the violin must have represented to her.
Escapism, pure escapism! You know, the command would be, "go and practise on that violin, Kate," but the piano music came out instead! I think perhaps we Bushes are a bit like that... So yes, her piano playing was in the first place a direct reaction to straight music as we knew it, or as she knew it, at the time. The sort of style which she evolved in her piano playing and singing were direct opposites of all the kinds of straight music which she was being fed right then. Pure escapism, and very beautiful! (1985, Musician)
I stay round my parents for a few hours - after all, you can't just go round, take all the clothes you want and rush off - drink lots of tea and eat chocolate eclairs and sandwiches, the sort of things that mothers like to fill you up with. I feel absolutely delightful after that, and I go back to start work on my routines for Tuesday. (1980, Flexipop Diary)
The video of " Suspended in Gaffa " was to be done as simply and quickly as possible; as always with very little time to complete it in, the simpler the better.
I saw it as being the return to simplicity, a light-hearted dance routine, no extras, no complicated special effects. [IN FACT, HOWEVER, THERE ARE MANY VERY SOPHISTICATED AND SUBTLE TECHNICAL EFFECTS IN THIS VIDEO, AND THE PRODUCTION DESIGN IS VERY IMPRESSIVE.] As we were all so pleased with the previous sets - put together under the supervision of a very clever man, Steve Hopkins - we asked him to build another, this time an old barn with large gaps in the walls where we could allow the light to streak through. We used a combination of natural and artificial light, and everyone was thrilled with the sense of realism that the set achieved.
Steve brought in huge branches of trees that were behind the gaps in the set, and a dedicated helper called "Podge" sat up on a piece of scaffolding for six hours and enthusiastically shook a piece of tree to make the light move and dance as if motivated by a furtive wind. The video did remain uncomplicated - just a few effects and just one extra: but a very special one. There is one section where a child's voice says, "Mother, where are the angels? I'm scared of the changes." And there was only one person that could be addressed to - my mother.
When I asked her to appear in the section, contrary to my concern about her nerves, she was more than obliging and said, "Yes." She was definitely the star of the day, and waited patiently hour after hour as we slowly moved through the bulk of the shooting to eventually reach her debut. I was amazed at her grace and stamina: as all of us began to wane and wilt, my mother continued to blossom and glow, and her only worries were getting back home in time to get dinner and hoping she would not succumb to an attack of giggles during the vital moments of being on screen.
She needn't have worried, for she is a natural professional, a real star and my favourite mum. (You can see us together in action on the back page.) (1983, KBC 13)
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1992 02:59:58 -0800
From: Clive Backham <mcdd1!clive@EDDIE.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Hannah Bush quotes
I think the it went along these lines:
Hannah collapsed one day, and found herself at the ceiling looking down at Kate's father trying to resuscitate(sp?) her. She called out, "Leave me alone, I'm OK" (but nobody heard her, of course). When Kate came into the room, she returned to her body. Apparently this incident influenced "Watching You Without Me".
The question that springs to my mind is what did Hannah mean when she said she was ok? Did she mean that she knew it was only temporary, and she would be back, or did she mean that death wasn't a problem for her? If it was the latter, that thought may be of some comfort to Kate and her family right now.
- Clive
From: rhill@netlink.cts.com (Ron Hill)
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1992 01:35:14 -0800
Subject: Thoughts on Hannah
What I've always found most inspiring about Kate has been that she is someone with great potential - that was realized. Whereas there are so many people out there with all types of potential that never is realized. No doubt one of the main reasons, perhaps the single greatest reason outside herself, that Kate was able to realize this potential so early and so powerfully was the influence and support of her mother.
What is so sad to me about the passing of Kate's mother is that a large part of what made Kate what she is, and hence her music what it is, is now gone. Of course, the positive side of it is that that will live on, both in Kate and her music. And living on, in a positive way, through your children and those you know is, ultimately, the best legacy one can leave. And the fact that the circle of people that Kate's mother has influenced, through her influence on Kate's music, is so large is an indication of how special she must have been.
I think that perhaps what Kate's mother gave her that was most important (as an artist, and no doubt in other areas of her life) was that image of home, of having a stable place to return to, not just in a literal sense, but also in giving Kate a stable place inside herself.
In The Ninth Wave, for example, you have the image of her mother and others trying to wake her up so she won't drown, then (in Watching You Without Me ) of desiring to be home, then (in The Jig of Life ) the image of the future self, perhaps an image similar to that of her mother, coming to give her hope, and then (in The Morning Fog ) of finally escaping and running home to mother and family.
To me, this is one of Kate's main strengths as an artist, she's always been brave enough to delve deep into difficult emotions, perhaps because of having that solid base to return to, whereas some artists don't have the courage to do this and want to stay in "safe" areas, and others stay in the "difficult" areas and don't seem to have the desire or ability to fight their way out of them. The fact that the difficult sides of life are seen from the strength of someone who also can see the more positive sides, is one of the more powerful facets of Kate's music. And, to a great extent, we have her mother to thank for this.
From: gatech!chinet.chi.il.us!katefans@EDDIE.MIT.EDU
(Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago)
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1992 03:39:49 -0800
Subject: Re: Contributions in Hannah's name...
Peter was right, that is Hannah in the Big Sky video. Center stage.
Poor, poor Kate...and Paddy and Jay and Robert. <sniff>
Vickie
From: caen!bsbbs!mdc@harvard.harvard.edu (Melissa D. Caldwell)
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1992 18:46:25 -0800
Subject: Re: Contributions in Hannah's name...
I guess since it was my idea, and since I still think that it could work, I'm willing to take over.
If you'd like to contribute to the Terrance Higgins Trust in Hannah's memory as part of a Love-hounds group effort, please mail your donation to the following address by Monday, March 9.
For Hannah c/o Melissa Caldwell 2785 Stavely Court Columbus, Ohio 43232
Please make any checks payable to me so that I can combine them all into a single check. I plan to mail the donation on Thursday March 12 and will include a list of all contributors. Most charities notify the family that a contribution was made and also acknowledge the donor. I'll post any acknowledgement right away.
From: jondr@sco.COM (Karen Silkwood's car)
Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1992 20:30:28 GMT
Subject: Re: Sad News : -(
Steve Berlin writes:
> A couple of questions: What is the Terrence Higgins Trust? Judging from Kate's past political stances, it's probably a very good cause; I'm just curious...
The Terence Higgins Trust is an AIDS research foundation.
By a strange coincidence, I just got to see the COIL Tainted Love video, which is a striking piece about a man dying of AIDS. There is a text frame at the end which says that all profits from the song go to the Terence Higgins Trust.
Jon Drukman
From: Scott Telford <s.telford@ed.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 1992 07:10:58 -0800
Subject: Homeground 44 and Record Collector
Homeground 44 arrived this morning. As you might expect, there's an obituary for Hannah. It seems the Homegrinders knew KaTe's family quite well and were especially close to Hannah.
Date: Febr. 1993
From: GRAHAM.G.R.DOMBKINS@BHPMELMSM.BHP.bhpmel04.telememo.au
Subject: Thoughts
Hi all,
I just got back from an interesting lunch. We were talking about Valentines' Day coming up soon and I said that it would be a sad day since it'll be the first anniversary of Hanna Bush's death. I told my mate that it'll be a sad day for KT. He said that I ought to send her a white rose. I was dumbfounded since I didn't think he knew much about KT, especially about a song like 'Under The Ivy'. You know what I mean, most of her fans who know her songs well will send her white roses if they send any kind of flowers.
He then explained that the traditional meaning of a white rose is death. Sort of throws a new slant on 'Under the Ivy' doesn't it (or have I just missed that all these years).
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 94 00:14 CDT
From: chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (chris williams)
Subject: Wogan?
> Why does (or did) she go on Wogan so much, and not a more music-oriented program?
She liked him, and it was one of her Mom's favorite shows. Kate made a special point of appearing on his show between albums. She knew that her Mom would be watching, and he made a special point of asking Hannah to "get well soon." Sadly, she didn't.
written by Love-Hounds
compiled and edited
by
Wieland Willker
Sept 1995 June 1996