Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (10/15/89)
Really-From: munnari!uowcsa.oz.au!u8530671%uowcsa.cs.uow.oz.OZ@uunet.UU.NET (Scunge) In article <2063@draken.nada.kth.se>, nv89-pyl@nada.kth.se (Patrik Yle'n) writes: > >From which Scandinavian country did you get the reference to the > ninth wave, I'm from Sweden, my father is Norwegian, my mother is > from Finland, and I've never heard about the ninth wave in mytho- > logy! Actually, I thought the Ninth Wave was a Celtic idea. I honestly don't _know_ what the Ninth Wave is, but from reading Morgan Llywellyn's (sp?) "Bard" (a seemingly well-researched fiction novel), I get the impression that they spoke of the ninth wave as being way out from shore, practically out at sea. Now, if you're going to believe me, you'd best hope that Morgan researched "Bard" properly :^) . Mark "Scunge" Wann u8530671@uowcsa "What is 'arrgh'?"
Julian.West@MAC.DARTMOUTH.EDU (03/01/90)
Dave Armstrong writes:
----------------------
Subject: And may they rest in peace with coffee - homeground
The following was included in the press kit for the album
_Hounds_Of_Love_.
Side 2 is equally dramatic. It is a conceptual piece entitled
THE NINTH WAVE. The seven songs combine to tell the story
of someone who has been alone in the water for some time and
who is in danger of drowning. His past, present and future
manifest themselves in the struggle to keep him awake.
-------------------------
_His?_
Are they kidding?
I know Kate frequently takes on a male persona in her
songs. (_TGAT_, presumably, _Cloudbusting_ and _TWW_ are
only the first ones to occur to me.) And one could even
argue that many, if not most, of her songs are meant to
be sung by a gender-neutral narrator. Really stretching
this, one could claim that the use of "his" above is
meant to be gender-universal. Really, really stretching
it would be to say that since Kate is female, using a
cross-gender reference underscores the universality of
the song.
But by any of these lenient standards, the copywriter is
plain wrong. The character in _The Ninth Wave_ is female.
She just is.
The two most irrefutable female references in the work are
_Waking the Witch_ and the first lines of _Jig of Life_:
"Hello, old lady..."
One could go on to argue that a female weltanschauung
permeates the entire work, but I needn't venture onto
such thin ice to make my point.
------------------------------------------ Julian -------Love-Hounds-request@GAFFA.MIT.EDU (05/07/90)
Really-From: Stephen Thomas <spt1@ukc.ac.uk>
Just a quickie, folks. Could someone *mail* me the story that
The Ninth Wave is telling, please? It crops up from time to time
on the group, but I must have missed it last time. I was listening to
it last night and I realised that I did not have a very clear understanding
of what it was saying, so I thought I would tap the wisdom of the group,
if you don't mind ...
Thanks in Advance,
Stephen
--
Never give | Stephen Thomas
fate an | JANET: spt1@ukc.ac.uk
even chance | Telephone: +44 (0)227 764000 ext 3824
| Snail: Computing Lab, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.ano@csres.cs.reading.ac.UK (Adrian N Ogden) (03/21/91)
Has anyone else out there got any idea what "The Ninth Wave" is about?
(I'm a somewhat-less-than-occasional reader of this group, so if there
has been an answer I've missed it.)
I've come to the conclusion that it's about a close brush with
death, and the soul/astral body being separated from the
material one. Preface everything which follows with IMHO.
"And Dream Of Sheep" - this introduces the character, a child
lost in her own dreamworld. She pays little attention to the
real world, her mind is always straying to an imaginary better
place, ("I can't be left to my imagination") and sleep is just
a doorway to that place.
"Under Ice" - It's winter and the land is covered in snow. (One
of the few settings in which the real world aquires a dreamlike
quality which would appeal to such a child.) Skating alone on
the frozen river, lost in her own world, the ice cracks and
gives way...
"Waking The Witch" - very metaphorical, as opposed to the
previous parts, this tries to describe simultaneously the
fear of drowning and the phenomenon of having one's life
flash before one's eyes. It does so by making her the subject
of a witchhunter trial, and her life is paraded before her
eyes and meticulously dissected. On top of fearing for her
life, this also brings in the question: "If I'm dying, am I
going to go to Heaven or Hell?" ("What say you, good people?
Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!")
"Watching You Without Me" - separated from her physical body,
she finds herself in/goes to her house, watching her family.
They know only that she's not returned home and that something
must be wrong. Seeing their concern is a revelation for her,
but in her disembodied form she can't speak to them.
"Jig Of Life" - travelling farther afield, she meets another
disembodied spirit. This one is truly dead, and is jealous of
her, for she still has a link to life. It wants the life force
that she still has.
"Hello Earth" - now the whole world is before her. At a glance
she can see all the far-flung places and people she has until
now only dreamed of. And still not knowing whether she will live
or die, she tries to see everything, to savour everything. This
is the fulfilment of all her dreams, but it might be the only
time she sees it all before she has to say goodbye to it forever.
"The Morning Fog" - returning to her body, she wakes up in her own
bed. Suddenly being alive, with her family, means more to her than
it ever has before. Now all she wants is the real world, because
she knows every dream has it's nightmare.
Or maybe it _was_ just a nightmare.
Does anyone have any different ideas? And can anyone explain
what the title "The Ninth Wave" means?
_______________________________________________________________________
/|| ||\ || //\\ # "From his lips come truth, within insanity #
//|| ||\\|| || || # And people passing by #
//=|| || \|| \\// # Don't hear and cannot see" - Kings X #
//ano@csres.cs.rdg.ac.uk #============================================# jburka@SILVER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU (Jeff Burka) (03/21/91)
>I've come to the conclusion that it's about a close brush with >death, and the soul/astral body being separated from the >material one. Preface everything which follows with IMHO. Well, it's definitely about a close brush with death, and the idea of astral projection is there (though it only occurs in dreams). To be honest, with the amount of stuff you came up with, I'm kind of surprised that you never caught the water connection. Unfortunately, I've once again lost my text file in which KaTe describes each song (piffle!), so you'll have to do with my inferior remembrances and interpretations. The suite is about a woman who's been shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean. Whilst there, she goes through a series of experiences that change her life, makes her appreciate and love her family. KaTe never says whether the woman is rescued--she seems to be more interested in the character's epiphany. >"And Dream Of Sheep" Lost in the middle of the sea, praying she'll be found, this woman realizes that night is coming on--and with it sleep. She realizes, though, that if she falls asleep she'll surely drown, so she struggles to stay awake. Eventually it is too much and she gives in and dozes. >"Under Ice" The character's first dream: she is skating along a frozen riverbed, enjoying the solitude, the quiet, the white, when she notices something moving under the ice. Out of curiosity she starts to follow this shadowy object down the river until she comes to a crack in the ice and sees that the 'object' is in fact her own drowning body! "It's me!" >"Waking The Witch" - very metaphorical The woman wakes up ("You must wake up!") in time to be tried by a witch hunter. I don't remember KaTe having all that much to say about this song, and it is a very difficult song. In my opinion, it is the woman arguing with herself about whether she is worth saving, or if she should give up-- she's not good enough, not worth the effort. For this interpretation, it is important to know that the Witch Hunter's voice is actually done by KaTe, electronically changed. Eventually she comes up with the willpower to stay alive... >"Watching You Without Me" - separated from her physical body, >she finds herself in/goes to her house, watching her family. >They know only that she's not returned home and that something >must be wrong. Seeing their concern is a revelation for her, >but in her disembodied form she can't speak to them. Yes. KaTe says that this is perhaps the worst dream that the character has--she floating in the middle of the ocean, dreaming of what her husband is doing without her. >"Jig Of Life" Once again, the character's strength and willpower are flagging, at which point she's visited by her future self ("I'll be sitting in your mirror") who begs her to live--if not for the present woman's sake, than for her future self and children's sake. Once again, she pulls through. >"Hello Earth" Finally, the woman re-experiences the storm that shipwrecked her in the first place, this time from the perspective of a satellite traveling across the sky. She tries to warn her ship ("Get out of the waves/Get out of the water"), and, of course, fails.... >"The Morning Fog" - returning to her body, she wakes up in her own >bed. Suddenly being alive, with her family, means more to her than >it ever has before. Now all she wants is the real world, because >she knows every dream has it's nightmare. Alack and alas, this song has been the center of some of the largest debates on gaffa: is the character actually rescued at the end of the suite, or is she left floating? KaTe's description would imply that a) she's left floating and b) it doesn't matter, because the suite is more about emotions, and the epiphany the woman undergoes. And one last note before I run of to registration: KaTe wrote the entire "Ninth Wave" suite without a title for the piece. Leafing through a book one day, she happened upon the Tennyson quote, which she decided was a perfect epigraph for the piece. She was not inspired by it. I've seen a few articles and stuff come through .gaffa that people have retyped from magazines in which people have made this mistake. Jeff -- |Jeffrey C. Burka |"I've lost my way through this world of | |jburka@silver.ucs.indiana.edu | profanities/I thrive on the wind and | |jburka@amber.ucs.indiana.edu | the rain and the cold." --Happy Rhodes|
mandorallen@st1.vuw.ac.nz (06/07/91)
In article <numbers deleted> Richard Caldwell quoth: > You should be aware that Juby's book has been widely panned for it's > slipshod journalism. I'd have to check Juby's remarks on _The Ninth > Wave_ to point out any specific problems. I seem to recall that Juby > did at least get the general idea correct but his details are > unreliable. The way I see the book is that the guy was too much of a KaTefan to write a proper biography. I don't hold that against him - hey, am I not the guy who would sell his liver to a catfood factory for a concert ticket? - but it does mean that it gives his fellow-worshippers (e.g me) plenty of warm fuzzies, while your average guy/gal in the street is turned off. For instance, take the prologue, where the guy falls over himself to say what a nice person She is. > > The character in _The Ninth Wave_ is definitely a woman. This is > most clearly evident in _Jig of Life_. Also saying that _The Ninth > Wave_ is about "a guy falling off a boat" is sort of a gross > oversimplification. It was supposed to be! (I knew I should have put ;-) after it) > More accurately, according to Kate... > > | It's about someone who is in the water for the night - alone in > | the water. And it's really about their past, present and future > | coming to keep them awake to stop them drowning, to stop them > | going to sleep until the morning comes. I just wish She'd made it a bit more explicit, that's all. > > There is a tendency look for "hidden meanings" in great works of art > and they are quite simply not always there. _The Ninth Wave_ is a > brilliant piece of story telling from the start. Beyond that you > have hundreds of little ideas and feelings and subtle nuances of > these that you can peel away layer after layer. None of these are > really hidden but they may not be immediately obvious. > > _The Ninth Wave_ doesn't need any hidden meanings to make it a work > of genius. Being disappointed to find that there [probably] isn't > one is missing the point. Still, missing the point is perfectly > acceptable if you like. When asked if it was important that people > recognize the concept nature of _The Ninth Wave_, Kate said... > > | No, I don't think so. I don't know if that's relevant or important > | though. I think the most important thing is that people that > | listen to it get something out of it, that they enjoy it. > > You seem to have got the important part! I'm not dissappointed to find out there isn't (probably) a hidden meaning. What got me down was that I'd entirely overestimated the "Depth" of the concept... that is, thinking it was the same kind of thing that I groove to on Floyd and Genesis (who'd do enormous great spiels on Life, Death and Birth Control). But that's just me being silly. -- This was the Bard, Anthony Hobbs, speaking from mandorallen@st1.vuw.ac.nz." "Oh! To be in love, and never get out again!" (KaTe Bush, 1978) "There's Winston Churchill dressed in drag, he used to be a British Flag!" (Genesis, 1972) DISCLAIMER: Victoria University aren't smart enough to hold these opinions.
ATAI.vuw.ac.nz (mandorallen@st1.vuw.ac.nz) (06/08/91)
Relay-Version: VMS News - V6.0-3 14/03/91 VAX/VMS; site matai.vuw.ac.nz Path: st1.vuw.ac.nz!mandorallen Newsgroups: rec.music.gaffa Subject: The Ninth Wave (was Re: Greetings from NZ) Message-ID: <1991Jun7.140822.1@st1.vuw.ac.nz> From: mandorallen@st1.vuw.ac.nz Date: 7 Jun 91 14:08:21 +1200 References: <9106060218.AA14016@rata.vuw.ac.nz> <1991Jun6.152155.28418@cbnews.cb.att.com> Distribution: world,vuw Organization: Victoria University of Wellington, NZ Nntp-Posting-Host: st3.vuw.ac.nz Lines: 63 In article <numbers deleted> Richard Caldwell quoth: > You should be aware that Juby's book has been widely panned for it's > slipshod journalism. I'd have to check Juby's remarks on _The Ninth > Wave_ to point out any specific problems. I seem to recall that Juby > did at least get the general idea correct but his details are > unreliable. The way I see the book is that the guy was too much of a KaTefan to write a proper biography. I don't hold that against him - hey, am I not the guy who would sell his liver to a catfood factory for a concert ticket? - but it does mean that it gives his fellow-worshippers (e.g me) plenty of warm fuzzies, while your average guy/gal in the street is turned off. For instance, take the prologue, where the guy falls over himself to say what a nice person She is. > > The character in _The Ninth Wave_ is definitely a woman. This is > most clearly evident in _Jig of Life_. Also saying that _The Ninth > Wave_ is about "a guy falling off a boat" is sort of a gross > oversimplification. It was supposed to be! (I knew I should have put ;-) after it) > More accurately, according to Kate... > > | It's about someone who is in the water for the night - alone in > | the water. And it's really about their past, present and future > | coming to keep them awake to stop them drowning, to stop them > | going to sleep until the morning comes. I just wish She'd made it a bit more explicit, that's all. > > There is a tendency look for "hidden meanings" in great works of art > and they are quite simply not always there. _The Ninth Wave_ is a > brilliant piece of story telling from the start. Beyond that you > have hundreds of little ideas and feelings and subtle nuances of > these that you can peel away layer after layer. None of these are > really hidden but they may not be immediately obvious. > > _The Ninth Wave_ doesn't need any hidden meanings to make it a work > of genius. Being disappointed to find that there [probably] isn't > one is missing the point. Still, missing the point is perfectly > acceptable if you like. When asked if it was important that people > recognize the concept nature of _The Ninth Wave_, Kate said... > > | No, I don't think so. I don't know if that's relevant or important > | though. I think the most important thing is that people that > | listen to it get something out of it, that they enjoy it. > > You seem to have got the important part! I'm not dissappointed to find out there isn't (probably) a hidden meaning. What got me down was that I'd entirely overestimated the "Depth" of the concept... that is, thinking it was the same kind of thing that I groove to on Floyd and Genesis (who'd do enormous great spiels on Life, Death and Birth Control). But that's just me being silly. -- This was the Bard, Anthony Hobbs, speaking from mandorallen@st1.vuw.ac.nz." "Oh! To be in love, and never get out again!" (KaTe Bush, 1978) "There's Winston Churchill dressed in drag, he used to be a British Flag!" (Genesis, 1972) DISCLAIMER: Victoria University aren't smart enough to hold these opinions.