jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) (07/30/85)
[I put that "Subject" up there so you would know this was SOMEONE ELSE's
opinion on... Kate Bush! But I hope you will give me a fair listen anyway.]
Several months ago, I decided to take Doug Alan's advice and buy a Kate
Bush album. However, my initial impression was not that good; it seemed to
be a strange album with a woman who usually sang in a falsetto (is that what
you call it when women sing above their natural vocal range? I'm not sure),
used somewhat childlike vocal inflections, and wrote about uneasily occult-
sounding subjects.
However, when Mr. Alan posted a plausible interpretation of one of her songs
that suggested she might be more than that, I decided to listen some more.
As a result, I have come to the conclusion that Kate Bush's lyrics are act-
ually good literature! Well, at least comparable to Paul Simon, who I always
have thought of as a singing poet.
Two of her songs in particular have impressed me this way, from "The
Dreaming". These are "Get Out of My House" and "All the Love," both of which
seem to be highly metaphorical and very tragic.
"Get Out of my House" appears to be a story of a woman who, having been
abandoned (though not maliciously) by the perfect "SO", has decided not to
let anyone else into her life thereafter. Although people occasionally
come to her, saying "Woman, let me in, let me bring in the memories", even
the offer itself is interpreted as a threat. (In fact, her portrayal of
this "paranoia" is so extreme as to be very reminiscent of Peter Gabriel,
whose lyrics and album covers are filled with terrifying images almost
impossible to conceive of in a sane state of mind.)
What interests me in this song, however, is her occasional use of biblical
metaphors. Since Doug Alan has mentioned that she occasionally performed
with Peter Gabriel, I wonder if he is responsible for the imagery in this
song, since the person who concieved of these images is apparently suffic-
iently well familiar with the biblical euphemisms to have come up with the
line "No stranger's feet/Will enter me," and have successfully merged this
with the image of a house as representative of the human body.
But what is even more intriguing is the song "All the Love," which is very
obviously a story of the problems of being a celebrity; it's theme is
quite similar to one of the subthemes in Pink Floyd's _The_Wall_.
I'm not entirely sure what death symbolizes in this song; it could be death
in the sense of metaphysical poets, with the plurality of "good friends of
mine" being just an attempt to cover over the true meaning. This seems
plausible since the whole "The first time I died" appears mostly just an
attempt to throw the listener off the track of discovering the actual
meaning of the song. I guess, though, it could also be a vague reference
to reincarnation, a prediction that "this time" she will be in the arms of
"the friends [she] made", her fans.
Recurring through this song is the very eerie, haunting "We needed you/To
love us too": a suggestion of feelings of guilt, perhaps, that she is
"loved" by thousands of fans, who wait for her every move. (The word "move"
here is interesting, incidentally, in that it is the same word Jon Anderson
uses for exactly the same thing in "The Friends of Mr. Cairo," when he
describes the obsessive haunting of a movie star by one of her fans:
You've mirrored his appeal.
He wants you so! He wants
To be beside you.
Then you pass by...
Giving him the other side of you,
Like the mystics do,
So that every time he moves,
He moves for you.
It's interesting that in this song Kate Bush goes on to suggest that her
fans expect her to be perfect, stoical, and unemotional: "I didn't want
to let them see me weep/I didn't want to let them see me weak."
The chorus of this song repeats the accusing, demanding voice of her
fans: "All the love...we could have given/All the love you should
have given". Yet, these fans don't understand her creative needs,
and she states angrily: "The next time I dedicate my life's work/
To the friends I make, I give them what they want to hear. /They
think I'm up to something wierd/And up rears the head of fear in me."
I'm not sure what the first line above means... does it mean that she has
done all this for people, and then they didn't appreciate it? Or that in
the future, she will explicitly indicate who the work is for, thus
excluding anyone else from misinterpreting? I.e., is it "The next time, I
[will] dedicate my life's work to the friends I make," or "The next time
[that] I dedicate my life's work to the friends I make"? The printed
lyrics suggest the former, but the way it's said in the song suggests the
latter, which would also give a double meaning to the verb "make": both "to
make friends," and implying some sort of influence over them: that they are
only friends if she writes "what they want to hear".
So, now she screens them all out with an answering machine. I can
certainly identify with this! The main use of an answering machine to
someone who is getting calls at all hours of the day and night from people
who just want to talk is not to take messages, but to listen to who is
calling before you pick up the phone. (Perhaps this seems unkind; yet,
fans are the worst kind of "fair weather friends".)
The "goodbyes" are also very ironic. Besides the obvious fact that they
are saying goodbye for the last time, possibly, there is this interesting
hint that maybe their voices on a famous record album are "what they want
to hear": like the "you've mirrored his appeal" notion, the fans call not
out of any admiration for her work, but rather to be close to someone
famous, and thereby be famous themselves. You can imagine the 20 or so
people on there, each taking the album to play to their friends and saying,
"Look! That was me, right there! I'm on Kate Bush's album!"
Thus, while I don't find the lyrics to be particularly warm and appealing
(I could almost believe the Jansic story after looking at these lyrics
awhile), they are certainly intriguingly good poetry.
--
Shyy-Anzr: J. Eric Roskos
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