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From: rhill@netrun.cts.com (ronald hill)
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 92 20:59:59
PST
Subject: CLOUDBUSTING ANNOTATED LYRICS
- CLOUDBUSTING ANNOTATED LYRICS -
by Ron Hill, Henry Chai, Doug Alan, David Hsu, and Peter Manchester.
Compiled by Ron Hill
Last Update: November 5, 1993
VERSIONS
Including the album version, there are three released versions of this song:
"Cloudbusting (The Orgonon Mix). " An extended remix of the original recording, featured on the twelve-inch single. It's misidentified on the US twelve inch as the "Meteorological mix"! That, as you all know, was the name of the twelve-inch mix for "The Big Sky", NOT "Cloudbusting"
The video uses an extended version of the original recording, with a brief insert of new music.
QUOTES FROM KATE
The following quotes are more or less reflective of the quotes from Kate on this song. For more detailed quotes see the book Cloudbusting.
KATE: The last song is called "Cloudbusting," and this was inspired by a book that I first found on a shelf nearly nine years ago. It was just calling me from the shelf, and when I read it I was very moved by the magic of it. It's about a special relationship between a young son and his father. The book was written from a child's point of view. His father is everything to him; he is the magic in his life, and he teaches him everything, teaching him to be open-minded and not to build up barriers. His father has built a machine that can make it rain, a "cloudbuster"; and the son and his father go out together cloudbusting. They point big pipes up into the sky, and they make it rain. The song is very much taking a comparison with a yo-yo that glowed in the dark and which was given to the boy by a best friend. It was really special to him; he loved it. But his father believed in things having positive and negative energy, and that fluorescent light was a very negative energy - as was the material they used to make glow-in-the-dark toys then - and his father told him he had to get rid of it, he wasn't allowed to keep it. But the boy, rather than throwing it away, buried it in the garden, so that he would placate his father but could also go and dig it up occasionally and play with it. It's a parallel in some ways between how much he loved the yo-yo - how special it was - and yet how dangerous it was considered to be. He loved his father (who was perhaps considered dangerous by some people); and he loved how he could bury his yo-yo and retrieve it whenever he wanted to play with it. But there's nothing he can do about his father being taken away, he is completely helpless. But it's very much more to do with how the son does begin to cope with the whole loneliness and pain of being without his father. It is the magic moments of a relationship through a child's eyes, but told by a sad adult. (1985, KBC 18)
ANNOTATED LYRICS
Peter Reich was known as Peeps to his Dad, which is why the 7 inch single has "For Peeps" engraved into the runoff groove. He was close to his parents. When he was 10, his mother left them because she was a rather independent person and also because she got fed up with Wilhem's work. Thus Peter was very close to his dad after that.
The "march" music of the song could have been inspired by the "Corps of the Comsic Engineers", in which Wilheim was the general, Peter was both lieutenant and sergeant, and their followers were soldiers and scouts. (It is with powerful irony, therefore, that the footsteps of the government agents in Kate's film for "Cloudbusting" are shown keeping time with the music.) They believed they were soldiers fighting against UFO's.
In the following analysis, quotes from A Book of Dreams are given in quotation marks.
I still dream of Orgonon.
This should actually be spelled "Organon" (see seperate section below).
I wake up crying.
You're making rain,
And you're just in reach,
When you and sleep escape me.
KATE: All of us tend to live in our heads. In "Cloudbusting," the idea was of starting this song with a person waking up from this dream, "I wake up crying." It's like setting a scene that immediately suggests to you that this person is no longer with someone they dearly love.
It puts a pungent note on the song. Life is a loss, isn't it? It's learning to cope with loss. I think in a lot of ways, that's what all of us have to cope with. (1989, AP)
You're like my yo-yo
That glowed in the dark.
What made it
special
Made it dangerous,
So I bury it
And forget.
Fluorescent lights and glow-in-the-dark yoyos are very very bad for one's "Orgone Energy", so Wilhelm made Peter bury his yoyo. But every now and then Peter would want to play with it anyway, even though he knew it was bad for him. So he would dig it up, play with it for a while, and then bury it again.
"What made it special, Made it dangerous" also refers to Peter's father, who was considered "dangerous" by the government.
But every time it rains,
You're here in my head,
Like the sun
coming out--
Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen.
And I don't know when,
But just saying it could even make it happen.
KATE: And the song is really using the rain as something the reminds the son of his father. Every time it rains instead of it being very sad and lonely, it's a very happy moment for him, it's like his father is with him again. (1985, MTV)
The phrase "...something good is going to happen..." stems from a recurrent foreboding, in the book, that "something bad was going to happen."
On top of the world,
Looking over the edge,
You could see them
coming.
"He was like a man who was standing on top of the world looking over into a new world. That is what Daddy was like. He had lifted himself so he was looking the horizon to a new world, a free and happy world. He stood there on the edge of the universe looking into the future. [...] They pulled the ladder out from under him and killed him."
You looked too small
In their big, black car,
To be a threat to
the men in power.
The government people came and took Wilhem away when Peter was 13 (Wilhem also died in the same year). With regards to the line "I can't hide you from the government", I quote a passage that describe what happened when the government people FDA agents and a US marshal came in "a shiny black car". To get to the Reichs' estate, Orgonon, visitors have to pass the abandoned laboratory at the foot of the hill. Wilhem instructed Peter to keep the government people at the lab by asking them to wait, and then to call him on the phone, so that Wilhem can be prepared. Peter did as he was told, and as he called Wilhem, who was in his study, the government people sneaked up the hill:
"Daddy! They didn't wait"
Tears tangled my words making the reciever wet and shiny. The car disappered around around the lab up the hill.
"Daddy! They're coming up! OH DADDY OH GOD THEY DIDN'T WAIT. THEY'RE COMING UP DADDY THEY'RE COMING UP!"
The screen door slammed before the receiver hit the floor. Grass was already whipping my legs as I ran up the hill. [...]
Everett Quimbly said if you run with your hands open you could go faster so my hands were wide open going back and forth like a train all the way up to the hill like a train running. Because if I run fast enough maybe I could beat them to he top of the hill and warn Daddy. What did they want? What did they want? Why did they always make us unhappy?
Actually that time the FDA people just wanted the orgone accumulators destroyed. The actual "capturing" of Wilhem was not described.
I hid my yo-yo
In the garden.
I can't hide you
From the
government.
Oh, God, Daddy--
I won't forget,
'Cause every time it rains,
You're here in my head,
Like the
sun coming out-- Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen.
And I don't know when,
But just saying it could even make it happen.
The sun's coming out.
Your son's coming out.
When Peter was about 26, he saw the movie "The Fly" (you know, the one about the scientist who did an experiment which caused his own body to be mixed up with a fly's so that he has the head and an arm of the fly's). It had a most profound effect on him:
In the last scene, a benevolent uncle comforts the scientist's widow and son. He tells the son that his father had "touched on knowledge of the future," and, "Maybe someday, in many years, the world will understand his contribution," and, "he was ahead of his time". [..] Right there in the movie, people were laughing at how incredible The Fly was when sitting right there in the middle of the crowd was someone who had been through something like that and it was real. It was just more believable in a movie.
And:
The first thirteen years of my life always seemed most real to me, more real than anything that happened afterwards. And now, suddenly, with the infant soldier fading away in the bright lights after the movie, I felt afraid that my life would be empty and lost.
The last thirteen years were lost and unhappy. The infant was frozen inside me, unable to live. [..] It took a movie to break my shell, maybe because movies are so close to dreams and I love my dreams more than reality. There had been too much sadness; not enough laughter.
(The song ends with the sound of a steam train)
"(See above for full quote) Everett Quimbly said if you run with your hands open you could go faster so my hands were wide open going back and forth like a train all the way up to the hill like a train running. Because if I run fast enough maybe I could beat them to he top of the hill and warn Daddy."
KATE: That did all fall apart over a period of about ten bars. And everything just started falling apart, 'cause it didn't end properly, and, you know, the drummer would stop and then the strings would just sorta start wiggling around and talking. And I felt it needed an ending, and I didn't really know what to do. And then I thought maybe decoy tactics were the way, and we covered the whole thing over with the sound of a steam engine slowing down so that you had the sense of the journey coming to an end. And it worked, it covered up all the falling apart and actually made it sound very complete in a way. And we had terrible trouble getting a sound effect of steam train so we actually made up the sound effect out of various sounds, and Del was the steam. [Laughs] And we got a whistle on the Fairlight for the "poo poop." (1991, Classic Albums)
KATE: We got so many tapes of steam trains, and they don't sound anything like what you'd expect steam trains to sound like. They sounded so pathetic. So we had to build up all this steam sound and big wheels and brakes, you know, coming to a halt and everything. We had to totally exaggerate what the real thing sounded like, so that people would realize what we meant. (1985, BAM)
BOOK
A Book of Dreams was re-issued as a Dutton-Obelisk oversize paperback book in the United States in 1989. The domestic retail price is $7.95. And get this: Kate is on the cover! Unfortunately, as of 1992, this book appears to again be out of print in the USA.
It's highly cool! The cover design features a photo by John Carder Bush (one of the shots he took at the end of one of the shooting-days, with Kate's figure at the cloudbuster, in silhouette against an orange sky). The design is credited to some other woman, and there is no I.D. of the photo itself, nor of its photographer.
Also, there is a mention of Kate on the back-cover blurb: she is listed among several pop-culture figures who have acknowledged the book's inspiring influence upon them. She is not identified in the photo, nor is John Carder Bush credited for his photograph. The brief new preface by Peter Reich is a wonderfully concise explanation of his reasons for remaining vague about his "stand" on WR's theories-- words which also serve as justification for Kate's own evasiveness.
CLOUDBUSTING VIDEO QUOTES
KATE: "Cloudbusting" was really exciting to make. I really wanted it to be like a short film. The song was inspired by the book A Book of Dreams by Peter Reich, which was such a strong, magical story that the plot was there and the most difficult areas were trying to do the story and the characters justice, and deciding how to "distill" all the information.
I worked with Julian Doyle as director. He was suggested to me by Terry Gilliam. Terry is one of my favourite film-makers, and I was so honoured that he got involved; and we worked very hard for about five-six weeks. It seemed to make sense to treat it like a film and cast actors, and I had this initial crazy idea of using a very tall actor who would play the father, and myself to appear as the small boy. It continually astounds me that I have the nerve to publicly announce these crazes, and I'm even more surprised when they work. It seems to be connected to a kind of faith?
The first move was to check that I'd be able to look boy-like or tom-boyish, so we pulled "The Team" together. This consists of Tina Earnshaw on make-up - she set about with foundation and stick-on freckles; Anthony Yacomine, who designed and cut a short wig which my hair was bundled up inside of; and Pamela Keats, who had brought a variety of dungarees, cardigans and wellies [rubber rainboots] that completed the character; and Del gave options. I looked a bit like Coco the clown, and someone mentioned Harpo, but we all felt with fine adjustments we could get away with it, especially when we took a polaroid with Anthony standing on the chair to look tall next to me.
We were all trying to think of a tall actor who would be perfect for the part, and who else, really? We thought Donald Sutherland would be superb, and it's still hard to believe that he actually said "Yes."
"Cloudbusting" is one of the few videos we've made that has the right visual content within the subject matter. It is a story, and could easily be treated as such.
One of the things that needed a lot of work was the Cloudbuster machine. It came out of our heads, based on vague information from the book. It had to look larger than life - elegant, strange, aimed at the sky. And when I went to see it in its early stages I really wondered: four cardboard tubes on wheels - eek!! But by the last stages it looked great, and on screen it looked superb.
Another thing that needed a lot of work was the weather. We needed so much luck to complete the shoot. We had only three days, and we demanded the weather to change for different scenes; and somehow - we still don't know how - it did; even to the moment when it began to rain just as the light and the film in the camera was running out. (1986, KBC 19)
You mentioned earlier that one of your favorite movies was Don't Look Now, which stars Donald Sutherland. Is that the reason you picked him for your new video?
KATE: I don't know if it's the reason. I mean Don't Look Now is a totally brilliant film and everyone in it was wonderful. but, this was a very different piece. And it was quite coincidental, I suppose, that we thought of Donald. And I think at that time the only references to Don't Look Now that there couldn't have been anyone better and we were so lucky because he was our first choice. And through a friend we managed to find a way of contacting him. And um, it was quite incredible really to think that he did it. I still find it hard to believe.
He's been quite a fan of your for years, hasn't he?
Um. well, if he was, I certainly didn't know that. I don't, I don't think so. (1985, Profile 6)
And in the video, was it easy for you to portray a child?
KATE: I think it's something I'd obviously worried about. When you're not a child there are lots of things that could be a problem. Like I could look old and not young. And we were also [coughs] - excuse me - trying to take away the feminine edge so that in a way I could be a tomboy rather than a little girl. Trying to keep the thing as innocent as possible. And I think rather than being that worried about playing a child, I was just worried about the whole process of acting, because it's something I've not really done, in a true sense. I've preformed in lots of ways, but not really acted. And it was something that I was wary of and I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed it. (1985, MTV)
Who directed the video and where was it shot? I think the setting of its really beautiful.
It is a beautiful place. It's the Veil of The White Horse, in England. And the director was Julien Doyle.
And tell us more about Julien Doyle.
I'm a big fan of Terry Gilliam, I don't know if you know him, suburb director. And I was interested in working with him and he put me in touch will Julien, who works with Terry on his movies. He's a cameraman and this was really his first role as director. Terry was involved with the storyboard as well, and this is how I met Julien.
We spent a lot of time on this video and what was nice was the way that everyone became so concerned with the story and also concerned with giving justice to it. You know everyone wanted it to be something special.
Why is it set in the fifties?
It's because A Book Of Dreams, that it's based on, was actually at that time, in the fifties, that his father was taken from him. He was about twelve.
And that's really it, you just took the exact time from the book?
Yes, I think also it made it more interesting. It's not totally accurate to the fifties and I think that in itself is important. We wanted to create a sense of - no certain time. I think it's more interesting in way when it could be any time. But also by not making it contemporary time you get a big sense of nostalgia, of something that has happened in the past. So I think visually it was a very good combination.
How did you make that machine?
Well the book very little details of what the actual machine looked like. But from what I could gather the reality of the machine wouldn't look right. On screen it's got to be exaggerated. So it was trying to design something that would look powerful and possible of doing it but that wouldn't be comical, because we didn't people to laugh at it, we wanted people to be astounded by the machine. So it was really designing something that was a cross between an Ack-Ack gun and a pipe organ. I just felt that it had to have these huge funnels that would reach to the sky and could be moved around. And the whole thing should be rotatable. And so we worked with some designers that worked on the Alien and I think it looked pretty good.
It looks great. Is this the first video where you're not dancing?
No, but it's quite a departure. I have done a couple of others that again we were trying to treat like piece of film, but we were using lip sync or something like that. And we were working on video as well, which makes it quite different. (1985, MTV)
* You see the book in the video if you're clever.
KATE: Yes! Don't blink or you'll miss it. [Both laugh] (1985, The Old Grey Whistle Test)
The machine that features in the video - what's become of that now?
KATE: Well, it's at the moment resting in a garage not far from here. [LAUGHS] (1985, Picture Disk)
NOTES ON CLOUDBUSTING VIDEO
So people question whether or not Peter does sees Wilhelm pointing at the hill from within the car. I think so, as he begins gesturing even as Peter runs into the road not 5 feet after the car passes, and continues as it disappears around the bend.
In one time-lapse scene you can see a rapid jet contrail. A partial excuse for this can be found on page 20 of the Obelisk edition "Book of Dreams". Peter describes how the Air Force would fly overhead to indicate where there were high concentrations of DOR to be found, and that DOR caused their exhaust streams to dissipate rapidly. However, the long, wide, straight cloud farther to the right looks like a second, older contrail and it dissipates only slightly. Perhaps the cloudbuster has already been applied there.
In a rare lapse of continuity, we see the sun overhead in the path of the cloudbuster. Both before and after, we see the sun near the horizon.
Note that Kate is actually wearing women's clothing throughout the video; the shirts and sweaters all button on the left side.
Reich's office contains an unusual assortment of paraphenalia for a psychoanalyst, but consistent with his interest in pseudo-biochemistry. The glassware is typical for a chemist, but he also has two microscopes and a small centrifuge on the bench. The walls sport anatomical diagrams, and he is growing at least one vine-like plant in a long glass column (but not hydroponically...it grows in dirt).
There are two old (non-glowing) yo-yo's in the in tray on his desk.
Reich picks up a paper from the lower right of his desk, studies it, then crumples and discards it. There are only three words on it, barely visible; viewed with a mirror I think they say "My Final Paper".
Although the car leaving the farmhouse is clearly right-hand-drive, later we see that it sports a license plate the correct size and shape for an American one.
IED would only add that although Sutherland looks absolutely nothing like the real Wilhelm Reich, he does (perhaps co-incidentally, it's true) rather resemble Kate's own father--at any rate, when IED made Dr. Bush's acquaintance, his hair and mustache (though certainly not his height or body type) seemed quite like Sutherland's in the video.
Apparently also there was a problem with obtaining a work visa on such short notice, so Sutherland agreed to do the work on Cloudbusting for free.
The newspaper is "Oregon Times", which is apparently a blooper as the events in the book take place in Portland, Maine NOT Portland, Oregon. Aparently they either confused the states or perhaps used "Oregon" since it is simular to "Orgonon".
The first paragraph of the paper actually contains words that relate to the story, the rest of the words do not. The words can barely be made out if you have the laser-disk version.
ORGANON?
"Orgonon" was the name used by Wilhelm Reich when he named his estate. He mixed together the word "organon", which is a word one might use to describe Reich's body of work if one were foolish enough to think of Reich's work as scientific or philosophic, with the word "Orgone",which is a nonexistent form of energy that Reich claimed was responsible for rain, orgasms, and all sorts of other things.
In the lyrics to the song say "Organon" and Kate's 12 inch version of the song was sub-titled "The Organon Remix." Which was incorrect since Reich's ranch in Maine was called "Orgonon," based on "Orgone" energy, with an o. This error was corrected in the lyrics (but not music) section of the book Kate Bush Complete. Tracing whether or not this was intentional has lead to much research on the subject.
Kate was asked by love-hound Doug Alan the day after he interviewed her, while she was signing records at Tower Records. "She gave my a look of amusement that said 'my fans sure are cute coming up with all these ridiculous questions' and said that no, the mispelling was not intentional at all."
However, John Carder Bush, when later asked directly about the spelling, replied, "It could be intentional."
Andrew Marvick came up with these (apparently tongue-in-cheek) explaination in a 1986 paper on HoL :
...new implications arise from the re-spelling of the name Orgonon itself within the song. It has not been determined yet whether or not this re-spelling was originally a deliberate one. It is arguable, however, that, by the time the twelve-inch "Organon Mix" was released, the emphasis on this spelling reflected Kate's intentions. If this is so, then the word "organon" may be seen as a reference not only by pun to Reich's once-controversial sexual theories, but also directly to the term "organon", used by Aristotle in reference to several of his logical treatises, and again by Sir Francis Bacon in some of his philosophical writings. Suggestions have been made, as well, that the misspelling may be a reference to a character from the long-running British television series "Dr. Who", although this seems a remote possibility, since it is unlikely that Kate is certain of the correct spelling of that character's name.
The most likely reference is to the British pharmaceutical product Organon, a common sleeping aid: such a connotation is not wildly arcane; nor is it unrelated to the theme of the song. It is not inappropriate, however, that the term seems also to rationalize her single known vice by referring to Walter Rumsey's "Organon Salutis", an obscure document of 1659 subtitled, "Divers New Experiments of Tobacco and Coffee: how Much they conduce to preserve Humane Health."
The issue of whether or not it was intentional was finally put to rest by Peter Manchester:
... in correspondence between me and Kate. The relevant paragraph of my letter to her of May 18, 1986 ran like this:
"I am a 43 year old professor of philosophy and speculative theology, which I believe I can verify by my first remark, which is to complain pedantically that Peter Reich follows his father Dr. Reich's practice of spelling 'Orgonon' as I have just written it, with an 'o', from 'orgone' energy, whereas your song title and lyrics for "Cloudbusting" write 'Organon'. Organon was originally the title given to the five logical treatises of Aristotle by his editor of record, Andronicus of Rhodes. It has thereafter had some currency among philosophers as a title for a general methodological tractate, or an 'instrument of thought' in the sense of a fundamental logical mechanism. I would not put it past you to be aware of this fact, at least subliminally, and to have perpetrated a deliberate pun. But I rather suspect I have caught you in a spelling error.
"Of course maybe you have a whole thing with A and O, Alpha and Omega": my ears hear the lyric in "Not This Time" as
To the A, to the O
To the A, to the O
To the O that's bursting
To keep me going and to keep the shit away.
And certainly you're
right that we all sin!"
In her reply (undated, but immediate), Kate writes:
"I'm afraid the Orgonon mis-spelling IS a mistake and we were aware of this as soon as we saw the 'copy'. It is very difficult to correct everything and this one slipped through my hands but I find it a wonderful experience when errors of this kind give birth to such fascinating theories!"
[I am nervous about transcribing private correspondence, but this one issue seems to have come to her and the family from several angles, so I place this much of our exchange on the record.]
In Greek 'organon' simply means 'tool'. So an 'organ' is a tool (of life), an 'organism' is a system of tools. In designating the logical treatises of Aristotle as an Organon, Andronicus of Rhodes interpreted them as a fundamental set of 'tools' for philosophical thinking (which may not have been Aristotle's view at all). By the Middle Ages this view of logic as a 'primer' became official and finally officious, provoking the Englishman Francis Bacon to publish a "Novum Organum" (1620) rejecting medieval philosophy and instigating the tradition of critical empiricism that evolved into what today is called 'scientific method'. Bacon wrote in Latin, where the form is 'organum', but in English translation his work is entitled "New Organon."
Two years ago someone speculated that the revisionist and anti-traditional aspect of Bacon's work might underlie the spelling in Kate's lyrics and titles for CB. I doubt it. I do still suppose that some sort of subliminal awareness of the term 'organon' on Kate's part generated the initial misspelling, but given her Catholic schooling, it is far more likely to have been Aristotle than Bacon.
It is interesting that the word 'orgasm' does NOT derive from the same root, but instead from a different Indo-European root that means 'to swell'. Wilhelm Reich may well have wanted on good scholarly grounds to emphasize the difference by the innovative spelling 'orgone' for his postulated hyper-Freudian life-energy. The name he gave his ranch in Maine, Orgonon, is based on that eccentric spelling, and violates the regular linguistic laws of formation for the particular Greek root, though once again with the advantage that it makes clear that he is NOT talking about an 'organon'.
To throw in one last twist, it could be that the Reichian spelling of orgone/Orgonon is behind the video's placement of the ranch with the cloudbusters in Oregon (instead of Maine). In which case we have a NEW slip/pun to take up with Kate.
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 94 17:20:16 PDT
From: steve.b@TQS.COM (Steve Berlin)
Subject: Cecil Adams on W. Reich
Recently, I picked up a copy of "Return of The Straight Dope", by Cecil Adams (my hero). If you want to make your life MUCH better, learn the secrets of the cosmos, and increase your IQ tenfold, I suggest you pick up seven or eight copies of this book. Anyway, here's something that stopped me in my tracks on page 73:
(A reader asks) "I've always cast a jaundiced eye on the shenanigans of scientific fringe groups. But my eye is a little less yellow when I look at Wilhelm Reich. Reich claimed to have discovered a life energy he called "orgone" back in the 1930s. He made a device that supposedly accumulated the energy, the "orgone accumulator" (ORAC), and another that allegedly could manipulate it in the atmosphere called a "cloudbuster."
"Some MD's who still subscribe to Reich's theories publish the 'Journal of Orgonomy'. I remember one article claiming tomato plants grown inside an ORAC produce more and larger tomatoes. There's a meteorologist named Jame DeMeo who does research on the cloudbuster. Plus (and this is the ultimate evidence) Kate Bush sang a song about the cloudbuster on her 'Hounds of Love' album. Seeing as you're the last word on subjects like this, what's the last word on orgone? Yes, no, or maybe?"
- Steven Stocker, Baltimore
To which Cecil answers:
"No. Reich was a nut-an unjustly perecuted nut, it should be said, but still a nut. He claimed that (1) he had done battle with alien spaceships, (2) he could produce clouds and create rain with his cloudbuster, and (3) his orgone boxes could cure (or at least ameliorate) everything from cancer to the common cold. He believed living cells arose spontaneously from inorganic matter, that cancer cells are actually protozalike critters that have tails and can swim like fish, and that orgone energy is what makes the sky blue and causes heat shimmer.
"Even his terminology was like something from a bad science-fiction movie. UFOs he called EAs, for Energy Alpha. The alien spaceships gave off DOR, for Deadly Orgone. The aliens themselves he called CORE men, for Cosmic Orgone Engineering.
"Still, you have to give Reich some credit. He was an intelligent, charismatic man who had his share of admirers. He was a cherished associate of Freud's in his early years and made some useful contributions to psychoanalytic theory.
"But he seems to have had only the most tenuous grasp of reality. His ideas became more and more eccentric over time and he was eventually expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association. He wound up in the United States and from then on devoted all his time to the mad pursuit of the orgone.
"Reich convinced a great many people, including a few scientists like the aforementioned DeMeo, who claims he ended a drought with a cloudbuster. To this day there are several orgonomic societies. But the mainstream view has always been that Reich was a quack and that his ideas have no scientific basis.
"Loony though Reich was, he did not deserve the shameful treatment he received at the hands of the government. From early 1950s onward he was hounded by federal agents. His laboratory in Maine was raided, his equipment destroyed, and his books confiscated and burned. Reich did make exaggerated claims for the medical powers of his orgone boxes, but he was hardly a major threat to the republic and there was no excuse for the ferocity of the campaign that was raised against him.
"In 1956 Reich was convicted on shipping orgone boxes across state lines in defiance of a court order obtained by the Food and Drug Administration. He was sent to prison, where he died of a heart attack in 1957. But his ideas, both good and bad, live on."
[Copyright (c) 1994 by Chicago Reader, Inc. Used with permission. Really!]
Share and Enjoy,
Stev0 the straight dope
"What a blessing that so much of humanity is able to be alive at the same time as myself." - Cecil Adams
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994 08:23:57 -0500 (EST)
From: "Stuart M.
Castergine" <scasterg@cd.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: A train
in Cloudbusting
> At the end of Cloudbusting, you hear a train coming to a stop. Why? What is the significance? I read A Book of Dreams and there isn't any reference to trains.
I believe in an interview once Kate said that they just couldn't figure out how to end the song. It went along great then just seemed to trail off and fall to pieces as the end. They tried all sorts of things, and just happened across the train sound on a whim. It just seemed to fit and give the song a sense of clousre, so they used it. I'm afraid there's no deeper significance that than. :-}
From: aj796@freenet.carleton.ca (Tippi Chai)
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994
15:56:42 GMT
Subject: Re: A train in Cloudbusting
> I believe in an interview once Kate said that they just couldn't figure out how to end the song. ... and just happened across the train sound on a whim. ... I'm afraid there's no deeper significance that than. :-}
I'm not so sure. I posted on gaffa some passages from the book when HoL came out, and there *is* a mention of trains - the part where Peter saw the men in the "big black car" coming up the hill and he runs like a train (or something to that effect) trying to reach his father.
So either 1) Kate didn't tell the truth (and this has happened before) or 2) she forgot but it stayed in her subconcious memory (it was a powerful passage) or 3) Stuart's RAM is faulty :-) :-) :-)
(When I first posted the passages I didn't even notice the train bit. It was |>oug who pointed it out when he saw it!)
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 1995 22:41:35 -0500 (EST)
From: "Brian J
Dillard" <dillardb@student.msu.edu>
Subject: Wilhelm Reich
Here is part of the text of the NYT Book Review I told y'all about a few weeks ago. What's best about it is something I discovered only just now, as i reread and retyped it. In the last to the next paragraph notice the dream sequence about the train! Here we have another interesting, IMHO, explanation for that whistling at the end of Cloudbusting. . . (I seem to remember a thread about this a few weeks ago )
Here goes:
'SEX WAS EVERYTHING'
'Journals and letters of Wilhelm Reich, who was in a sense more Freudian than Freud
BEYOND PSYCHOLOGY
Letters and Journals, 1934-1939
By Wilhelm Reich
Edited by Mary
Boyd Higgins
Translated by Derek Jordan, Inge Jordan and Philip Schmitz
Illustrated 256 pp. New York:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $25
... [most stuff deleted]
". . . Reich's entries about his personal relatiosn show great pathos and loneliness . . . . A dream he records, of an express train thundering through empty plains with no destination, expresses this loneliness, and perhaps also the runaway streak of madness in this otherwise sane man. So far, Reich's belief that he had discovered the secret of life has not been validated. But perhaps it will be, when we understand what the elusive concept of 'energy' really means."
This ran in the 29 January edition of the Review of Books. Enjoy!
From: llovich@aol.com (Llovich)
Date: 25 Jun 1995 16:56:07 -0400
Subject: Re: C.B.( meterology mix)
The "Cloudbusting" Meteorological Mix is the U.S. title for what was called in the rest of the world the "Cloudbusting" Organon Mix. As far as I know, the only place it's available on CD is on the TWW box set -- so if you already have that, well, you've got it.
For the record the "Cloudbusting" Meteorological Mix was released in the U.S. to accompany TWS, not HoL.
Until the next time, VanceMan
From: Ulrich Grepel <uli@zoodle.robin.de>
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 95
22:29:20 +0200
Subject: Re: C.B.( meterology mix)
Well, there are three official releases of The Organon Mix of Cloudbusting (regard the wording and spelling...). All three are expensive:
1. This Woman's Work boxed set:
2. moments of pleasure / The Best Works / 1978-1993:
This is a 2-CD promo set from Japan. It's one of the rarest official Kate items, and was recently advertised in a magazine for not less than $800. The 2 CDs contain quite a lot of b-sides as well, though nothing that's not available elsewhere on CD.
3. Cloudbusting:
This US promo CD from '86 contains the 'Meteorological Mix' of Cloudbusting, which is the wrong title for the right song. The CD was Kate's first ever non-album CD and is quite rare. If you *need* to have it *soon*, expect to pay quite a lot as well.
The mixing of song titles (Organon Mix vs. Meteorological Mix) is an interesting thing in itself: EMI America seems to have gotten this wrong at one point in time and halfway stuck to that. It's easy to get lost in the song titles, because there in fact *is* a remix of a Kate song called The Meteorological Mix, though it's not Cloudbusting but rather a different single from the Hounds of Love album, The Big Sky. Now The Big Sky was the last single in the UK for the HoL album, and the US Cloudbusting promos (there's a 12" with the same typo) came out for the The Whole Story album, so this was even after The Big Sky came out in the UK. Not as easy to understand is the typo of Cloudbursting which also is quite common and even extends to such items as an Australian video compilation tape from 1991 which is used in discos, bars, etc.
Bye, Uli
From: IEDSRI@aol.com
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 14:21:23 -0400
Subject: spelling of Orgonon
Since Uli is cataloguing the spelling errors regarding this release, he should add that Kate herself has admitted that the spelling of "Orgonon" as "Organon" was a mistake. Reich's home/center in Maine (like its smaller cousin in Arizona) was properly named "Orgonon". (See A. Marvick's paper "Venturing Into the Garden" for a fuller discussion of this important subject.)
-- Andrew Marvick (IED)
On
to The Ninth Wave General Thoughts
written by Love-Hounds
compiled and edited
by
Wieland
Willker
Sept 1995 June 1996