Alan D
Group: Members
Posts: 3670
Joined: Aug. 2004 |
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Posted: June 05 2008, 10:59 |
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Matt's been giving me a prod to add something to this discussion, on the grounds that I had a sort of mild Kate Bush epiphany listening to this album some years ago while decorating a room. It's true - I ended up with the whole album on repeat, playing through the day from start to finish.
I've watched these posts as they've been added here, and it seemed to me that almost everyone has thought far more about this than I have, so that any comments I might make would be relatively superficial. And for one reason or another, I've not been listening to KB lately - though I listened twice to the Ninth Wave today, to refresh my memory.
I find myself faced not so much with a story, but something more like a set of transient images and fleeting thoughts (represented by the individual lines), experienced against a more slowly shifting background (the separate songs). I should explain that some years ago, while listening to Bob Dylan's 'Mississippi', I realised that the key to many of Dylan's lyrics was that they often mirrored our states of consciousness - fragmentary bits of things drifting in and out of our perceptions, sometimes so near the edge of consciousness that we're hardly aware of them unless we make a real effort to stop them in their tracks. Whether that works for anyone else I don't know - but I felt that I understood Bob a lot better after that.
My inclination is to listen to The Ninth Wave in the same kind of way - to treat it as if it were inspired by our shifting consciousness - but in this case, a consciousness under the threat of something overwhelming. I read the Ninth Wave itself as an image of that - the cataclysm (whatever it might be) that threatens to overwhelm us. I'm struck by the fragmentary nature of the lyrics - little snapshots of consciousness: the sense of more than one voice being present; snatches of paradoxical thoughts and bits of Zen - the 'one hand clapping' maybe just for a moment making sense because all these different voices are 'me'. There's the puzzlement over time, and the impossibility of grasping the moment that 'doesn't belong to you, it belongs to me'. The terror of feeling that your whole mental structure is giving way (I think 'Under Ice' is just brilliant at conveying that - like a gigantic migraine, with the splinters of silvery light breaking up not just vision, but everything that holds you up.)
So there's all of this going on - and then there's the Tennyson poem, which is NOT 'The Holy Grail' as it says on the cover, but 'The Coming of Arthur' - see here. Now that HAS to be important. The ninth wave that threatens to overwhelm actually brings with it the archetypal hero that will save us all - Arthur. See how it continues from KB's quote:
Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame:
And down the wave and in the flame was borne
A naked babe, and rode to Merlin's feet,
Who stoopt and caught the babe, and cried, 'The King!
So the ninth wave which threatens destruction also brings with it new life, terribly vulnerable right now, but which, even so, is the child who'll become the hero who will save us. That must mean, surely, that the overall meaning of KB's song cycle is upbeat, positive - some sort of redemption is possible from the apparent destruction. Out of life's devastating visitations we can be reborn, stronger and better, and understanding more.
But this is just my take on it. I wouldn't want to have to defend it, and I'm not trying to convince anyone. It's just the way I try to make sense of it for myself. So there you go, Matt. 'A fine mess you got me into!', to coin a phrase.
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