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Date: Tue, 2 Oct 90 04:29:38 -0400
From: katefans@world.std.com (Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago)
Subject: Kate on Gurdjieff
[re KaTe and Gurdjieff:]
She's indicated in many interviews that she was never really a serious student of his. I have one radio interview made the day TD was released. Kate took live phone calls and she was asked about Gurdjieff.
She says: "Gurdjieff was an influence in that I read some of his books, really no more than that. I found a lot of what he said interesting and that's really as far as it goes"
The interviewer asks Kate to elaborate about who G is.
Kate says "Yes, well, Gurdjieff was, um, well he was considered a leader of a religious movement I think, but as far as I know he just had a lot of ideas about creating a way that would make people stronger and more together. And it's just a different way of doing it. And it was also trying to go for a more Western way of doing it, but I do know very little about it so I really wouldn't like to say very much because it's a subject that I feel, if I'm going to speak about, I should know what I'm talking about."
The interviewer asks the caller about his interest in G and he says that he was curious about Kate's mentioning him in a few of her songs. The interviewer says "well,, the influence was minimal by the sound of it" and Kate says "yes, yes it was" and laughs. I have this on audio, not transcript. To hear Kate actually saying the above is enough for me to believe that she did not "follow" Gurdjieff.
Kate wrote "Sat In Your Lap" and it's at least partially autobiographical. She loves to learn about lots of different things and incorporates bits and pieces of knowledge into her songs. My Kateness, just take a good, long and hard look at the cover of NFE. That's what it's all about!
By the way, IMHO the "G" in the song "Strange Phenomena" is David Gilmour, though I admit that I could be wrong.
Vickie (one of Vickie'n'Chris)
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 91 15:13:52 CST
From: barger@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Jorn Barger)
Subject: Kate and Gurdjieff
Okay, folks... here's the skinny on Kate and Gurdjieff, from a friend of a friend who seems to know (and who is not entirely comfortable with our prying):
> Kate, they tell me, is less deeply involved with the ideas and I even got the impression that she asked her brother to lay off "evangelizing" to her (if you've heard "Them Heavy People", it bears this out).
I thought THP was an expression of reluctant gratitude...?
Date: Fri, 1 Mar 91 10:52:12 EST
From: nrc@cbema.att.com (Neal R Caldwell, Ii)
Subject: Re: Kate and Gurdjieff
From: Jorn Barger
> I thought THP was an expression of reluctant gratitude...?
I think so, but I think it's gratitude for opening her mind up to the possibilities, not selling her on any particular philosophy. We went through a similar debate around last fall. Vickie objected to the tendency of people to assume that Kate is "into" everything she mentions in her music, Gurdjieff and Moon Cheese worship were mentioned specifically, in caps with exclamation marks. Some folks objected to this while I agreed with everything but the Moon Cheese part and provided some interview quotes that I felt supported that position. Finally, Vickie produced what I feel the to be a fairly definitive quote on Kate's feelings about Gurdjieff.
Vickie wrote:
She's indicated in many interviews that she was never really a serious student of his. I have one radio interview made the day TD was released. Kate took live phone calls and she was asked about Gurdjieff.
She says: "Gurdjieff was an influence in that I read some of his books, really no more than that. I found a lot of what he said interesting and that's really as far as it goes"
The interviewer asks Kate to elaborate about who G is.
Kate says "Yes, well, Gurdjieff was, um, well he was considered a leader of a religious movement I think, but as far as I know he just had a lot of ideas about creating a way that would make people stronger and more together. And it's just a different way of doing it. And it was also trying to go for a more Western way of doing it, but I do know very little about it so I really wouldn't like to say very much because it's a subject that I feel, if I'm going to speak about, I should know what I'm talking about."
The interviewer asks the caller about his interest in G and he says that he was curious about Kate's mentioning him in a few of her songs. The interviewer says "well,, the influence was minimal by the sound of it" and Kate says "yes, yes it was" and laughs.
I have this on audio, not transcript. To hear Kate actually saying the above is enough for me to believe that she did not "follow" Gurdjieff.
Kate wrote "Sat In Your Lap" and it's at least partially autobiograph- ical. She loves to learn about lots of different things and incorpor- ates bits and pieces of knowledge into her songs. My Kateness, just take a good, long and hard look at the cover of NFE. That's what it's all about!
So if your friend means that she "is less deeply involved with the ideas" than her brothers, yes, there's no question about that. If your friend has some reason to believe that Kate was actually irritated about her brother's "evangelizing" beyond his own impression of Them Heavy People I'd be fascinated to hear about it.
From: barger@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (Jorn Barger)
Subject: New age rag links guru, diva
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1991 19:46:50 -0700
Gnosis magazine #21, Fall 1991 (not really a rag). Letters column.
NUDGES FROM KATE
To the Editor:
Your otherwise comprehensive Gurdjieff issue neglected to mention one valuable source of dissemination of information on Gurdjieff: the music of Kate Bush.
Kate was apparently first exposed to the teachings of Gurdjieff through her two older brothers, and while she herself is not deeply involved in the Work (indeed she has often, in interviews and in her lyrics, admitted to her own 'laziness' and resistance to such things), she has sparked an interest in many of her fans which has led them to further explore the Gurdjieff material.
Some examples of these references in her music include "Them Heavy People," a song about the initial "inconvenience" and frequent discomfort of spiritual transformation, from her first album, "The Kick Inside". In it she sings, "They opened doorways that I thought were stuck for good/ They read me Gurdjieff and Jesu/ They build up my body/ Break me emotion-ally, it's nearly killing me/ But what a lovely feeling!"
The song "Strange Phenomena" talks about clairvoyance, prescience, and synchronicity: "'G' arrives, funny, had a feeling he was on his way." And a third song on the album, "Kite," begins with the line, "Beelzebub is aching in my belly-o." In "Fullhouse," from the "Lionheart" album, the refrain is "remember yourself." (Kate also had this phrase stamped into the vinyl on British pressings of "The Kick Inside.")
Granted, these are all brief references that, taken alone, hardly shed any light on Gurdjieff or the Fourth Way. But they have served as an impetus for quite a few people to explore further on their own. Through her music and video images, Kate has also inspired many seekers to investigate such curious topics as Sufi dancing, Wilhelm Reich, the aboriginal Dreamtime, near-death experiences, the music of Frederick Delius, European witch-hunts, the writings of Emily Bronte, Henry James, and James Joyce. Any artist who can nudge her listeners into opening their hearts and minds, hopefully bettering themselves and their world, deserves recognition in GNOSIS.
--Miriam Imblum, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania
[Gurdjieff's central teaching was 'self-remembering'-- the theory that to attain spiritual growth you had to learn to notice when your thoughts were wandering blindly. One of his books was called "Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson". In "In Search of the Miraculous" (the most popular introduction to G's thought), Ouspensky always refers to Gurjieff as "G." "The Fourth Way" and "the Work" are names for the Gurdieff approach.]
From: CLBECKWITH@aol.com
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 09:55:14 -0400
Subject: Remember Yourself!
> LP The Kick Inside: Remember Yourself!
That's interesting--either "Fullhouse" was written before TKI was mastered or Kate was mindful of the phrase (and perhaps both, but almost certainly the latter.) Mike Weaver's brilliant "Undercurrents" essay in Break-Through #11 is the most authoritative writing I've read on Gurdjieffian influence in Kate's early lyrics.
written by Love-Hounds
compiled and edited
by
Wieland Willker
Sept 1995 June 1996