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From: nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: I am Doug! (Long, detailed discussion on "The Dreaming")
Message-ID: <4923@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 19:09:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.4923
Posted: Fri Aug  9 19:09:35 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 23:27:36 EDT
References: <1365@peora.UUCP> <4781@mit-eddie.UUCP> <1412@peora.UUCP> <4847@mit-eddie.UUCP> <1436@peora.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 133
Keywords: Probably of interest only to Kate Bush fans

["Do you want to feel how it feels?"]

> From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos)

> Incidentally, I guess you are aware that another song on that album (I
> think Suspended in Gaffa) also alludes to Biblical symbols.  I don't
> have the lyrics here, but there is a line there that says something
> like

>	There's a plank in me eye,
>	And a camel trying to get through it.

Yeah, I caught those, of course, because they're also common
expressions.

There's another Christian reference in the song too.  The line "I caught
a glimpse of a god all shining and bright" alludes  to Catholic mythology,
where people who are put in purgatory are shown a "glimpse of God", then
they never get to see him again as a form of torture -- they're shown
perfection and then are denied it.  Kate Bush has said that she thinks
that this is a really heavy image to lay on little kids.

> The second passage says "It is easier for a camel to go through an eye
> of a needle [some scholars read "the Eye of the Needle", the name of a
> narrow gateway in Jerusalem] than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom
> of Heaven."

The scholars who translate it the second way must be rich!

> These two passages are tied together, of course, by the word "eye" in
> her song.  Their presence also makes me doubt somewhat whether she is
> really as atheistic as you suggest; although she has a strange
> ecumenical view of (atonement, enlightenment, salvation), she does
> seem to express a concern for attaining it in this song.

I never said she was atheistic!  Who ever heard of an atheist who
believes in reincarnation, an afterlife, or astrology (real astrology,
not newspaper astrology).  I don't think she has any firm religious
beliefs, but I KNOW she isn't Christian.  Her religious beliefs are
probably a conglomeration of a lot of things she wants to believe in.

I have a radio interview somewhere on tape where an evangelistic
Christian calls up and asks Kate if she is Christian.  She says
something about believing in God, but that it isn't the Christian one
(Though she says that she thinks Christianity is good for many people --
just not for her.  She also says that she thinks it is bad for many
people too).  The caller keeps telling her that it IS the same god, and
eventually the announcer tells the guy that he has to go to the next
caller and hangs up on him.  I could listen to this tape again and tell
you more precisely what she says, if you are really interested.
Interpreting lyrics is more fun though...

Also, I don't think that the essence of "Suspended in Gaffa" is
religious.  Kate Bush says she used the image of god as a symbolic thing
-- a goal to obtain.  I think the song is about the pursuit of
perfection, one's goals, the meaning of life (not neccesarily seen in a
religious way), etc.

> I guess that makes sense; i.e., "it" might mean "show your love for me."
> However, I would interpret it as meaning that she doesn't pay as much
> attention now as she once did; perhaps that due to the flood of fans, she
> finds it impossible to listen to them all, all the time.

Maybe it means both!  (Though I think mine is closer to the truth....)

> I don't really see how any one can exist in any moral way if you
> believe that life is a futile endeavor.

I manage!  And I believe VERY STRONGLY in a somewhat Golden Rule based
set of ethics.

> However, I am not sure that The Dreaming suggests that life is a
> futile endeavor; several of the songs suggest impatience with the
> difficulty of life, but not really a resignation, a feeling that it is
> hopeless.

Just because it's all futile doesn't mean you should resign.  Kate Bush
said once in an interview that she would never be able to reach
perfection in her art and that this is a very difficult thing for her to
accept, but that she has to accept it, because even though it's a very
frustrating thing to realize, that's just the way it is.  (Actually *I*
think she reached perfection on "The Dreaming", and it's really
frustrating to realize that someone else has reached perfection but that
I never will!)  I think that both "Sat In Your Lap" and "Suspended In
Gaffa" are about this frustration of Kate thinking that she can never
reach the perfection she wants SO much to reach -- that it's really a
futile endeavor -- but she's going to continue to try anyway.

> While I understand how most of the song relates to facts about
> Houdini, what does his saying "Rosabel, believe" refer to?  I know
> that Houdini and his wife made a sort of agreement, that whichever
> died first would "come back" if possible to tell the other there was
> life after death (notice, in fact, that this is another hopeful sign
> from Kate Bush, an intimation of immortality), and that supposedly he
> did so.  Did he also supposedly give some message, phrased that way,
> in some form?

I think you are precisely correct.  Long before I ever heard of Kate
Bush I read some biographies on Houdini because I was into performance
magic.  My memory is kind of vague but if I remember correctly,
Houdini's mother died at some point, and he really wanted to get in
contact with her, so he went to all sorts of mediums, etc., but they all
turned out to be phonies.  So Houdini spent a lot of his time debunking
mediums.  He gave his wife a secret message and told her that if he were
to die, he would try to come back and give her the message, and that any
seance where she didn't get that message was a hoax.  So when Houdini
died, Rosabel (Houdini's wife) went around debunking mediums for a long
time.  The story goes, that after many many years, she finally met an
honest medium who actually contacted Houdini and received the message
"Rosabel, believe".

In any case, Kate Bush definitely believes in some sort of afterlife or
supernatural spirit.  She said in some interview something like "I can't
believe that when you die you just disappear.  All that energy has to go
somewhere..."  She must have never seen a file system experience a
head-crash, if you ask me...

>	    "Frr ubj Tbq jvgu uvf yvtugavat nyjnlf fzvgrf gur ovttre navznyf,
>	     naq jvyy abg fhssre gurz gb jnk vafbyrag; juvyr gurfr bs n
>	     yrffre ohyx punsr uvz abg."  -- Negnonavf

Well I sure hope I'm not a big animal!

			"And if I only could
			 I'd make a deal with God
			 And I'd get him to swap our places
			 Be running up that road
			 Be running up that hill
			 Be running up that building
			 If I only could"

			 Doug Alan
			  nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (or ARPA)