FEATURE:
Into the Wild
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional shot for 50 Words for Snow (2011)/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Kate Bush’s Use of the Spiritual, Mystical, Mythical and the Beyond in Her Music
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I am going to do a couple of…
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in a promotional shot for 50 Words for Snow/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush (from the book, KATE: Inside the Rainbow)
other features regarding Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow as, on 21st November, the album turns nine. That is the last album we have from Bush, in the sense that there may be more to come but there has been nothing since then. There is a lot to love about the album but, over forty years since her debut album, she was still delightfully off the grid and beyond the norm when it came to subject matter. Ignore the fact that Misty is about a tryst between a woman and snowman, and 50 Words for Snow’s title track finds Stephen Fry reciting fifty imaginary words for snow, Wild Man provides us with something distinctly Kate Bush-esque. The song was released as the only single from 50 Words for Snow on 11th October, 2011 – as the songs on the album are quite long -, and it got some airplay on BBC Radio 2. Featuring a vocal from Andy Fairweather-Low, Wild Man is a standout from 50 Words for Snow. The Kate Bush Encyclopaedia is at hand to give us some insight into the inspiration behind the song:
“Well, the first verse of the song is just quickly going through some of the terms that the Yeti is known by and one of those names is the Kangchenjunga Demon. He’s also known as Wild Man and Abominable Snowman. (...) I don’t refer to the Yeti as a man in the song. But it is meant to be an empathetic view of a creature of great mystery really. And I suppose it’s the idea really that mankind wants to grab hold of something [like the Yeti] and stick it in a cage or a box and make money out of it. And to go back to your question, I think we’re very arrogant in our separation from the animal kingdom and generally as a species we are enormously arrogant and aggressive. Look at the way we treat the planet and animals and it’s pretty terrible isn’t it? (John Doran, 'A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed'. The Quietus, 2011)”.
I really love the intrigue and genuine curiosity Bush has in the song. There is something mystical and magical about all of her albums, and Wild Man appears right in the middle of 50 Words for Snow - and it is one of those terrific centrepieces. Also on the album is a song called Among Angels and, whilst not explicitly evangelical and spiritual, there are references (“I can see angels standing around you/They shimmer like mirrors in summer”). There is something otherworldly about 50 Words for Snow, and there is as much mystique and unusualness as on Bush’s debut, The Kick Inside. Thinking about Bush’s yeti-quest on Wild Man, and it compelled me to step into the wild with Kate Bush. Bush is so connected to not only the natural world and people, but she has that belief in what lies beyond. She attended St Joseph's Convent Grammar School, a Catholic girls' school, before she embarked on a professional path, and spirituality and God has fed into her work at various moments – most famously on Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Bush herself sees it her God-given mission to make music, and I look back to 1978 and some of the songs highlighted on The Kick Inside and feel sorry for Bush. She was parodied quite a lot because she discussed philosophy and the mystic/spiritualist teacher, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, on Them Heavy People.
Her album opens with whale song on Moving, and whilst some felt that this was Bush being very hippy-dippy and kooky, it shows that the first sound she wanted to be heard on the album was a whale - something very soothing and unusual. She embraced the natural world and spirituality, and I think her work has that great mix of the grounded and relatable and the more mystical, spiritual side. One could never accuse Bush of being detached from real life as, on her debut, she tackled incest, death and mortality; but her most-famous cut from The Kick Inside, Wuthering Heights, is her embodying the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw from the novel; trying to get through Heathcliff’s window. Also consider the fact that she has “come home” from the other side – “How could you leave me/When I needed to possess you?” she declares. Strange Phenomena talks of clusters of coincidence and synchronicity; Them Heavy People, in a wider sense, deals with religion and spiritual teachings. A teenage artist would normally not write about such high-minded and fascinating themes but, from the get-go, Bush was melting the ultra-real and heavy with the religious and spiritual. One could well imagine Bush finding worth in psychics, horoscopes, and different faiths and, whilst that might not resonate with everyone, it shows that she was hungry for knowledge and to learn more about herself, other people and the world around her.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in Amsterdam in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Barry Schultz
The childlike and fictional is referenced in Lionheart’s In Search of Peter Pan; Blow Away (For Bill) name-checks departed musicians and passing to the other side. This is how Bush explained Blow Away (For Bill):
“None of those people [who have had near-death experiences] are frightened by death anymore. It's almost something they're looking forward to. All of us have such a deep fear of death. It's the ultimate unknown, at the same time it's our ultimate purpose. That's what we're here for. So I thought this thing about the death-fear. I like to think I'm coming to terms with it, and other people are too. The song was really written after someone very special died.
Although the song had been formulating before and had to be written as a comfort to those people who are afraid of dying, there was also this idea of the music, energies in us that aren't physical: art, the love in people. It can't die, because where does it go? It seems really that music could carry on in radio form, radio waves... There are people who swear they can pick up symphonies from Chopin, Schubert. We're really transient, everything to do with us is transient, except for these non-physical things that we don't even control... (Kris Needs, 'Lassie'. Zigzag (UK), November 1985)”.
In all of these songs I have mentioned thus far, there is an undeniable sense of conviction and belief from Bush. Many songwriters might talk of God and spirits glibly, but she has this installed and unwavering belief.
Maybe a song like Blow Away (For Bill) is more about Bill Duffield’s – a lightning technician who tragically died in a freak accident on the warm-up night for Bush’s The Tour of Life in 1979 -, spirit ascending; there is a little tongue-in-cheek, but Bush is someone who asks questions about death and where we go. The final two songs from 1982’s The Dreaming have spirits and the other side very much at their heart. Houdini references the famous escapologist and seances. It is interesting that Houdini is about the escapologist trying to debunk mediums and people he felt were frauds. Though Bush was probably not quite of the same mind as Houdini, it was an area that she was compelled by. Bush discussed Houdini’s story:
“During his incredible lifetime Houdini took it upon himself to expose the whole spiritualist thing - you know, seances and mediums. And he found a lot them to be phoney, but before he died Houdini and his wife worked out a code, so that if he came back after his death his wife would know it was him by the code. So after his death his wife made several attempts to contact her dead husband, and on one occasion he did come through to her. I thought that was so beautiful - the idea that this man who had spent his life escaping from chains and ropes had actually managed to contact his wife. The image was so beautiful that I just had to write a song about it. ('The Dreaming'. Poppix (UK), Summer 1982)”.
The Dreaming’s closer Get Out of My House, is guided by Stephen King’s The Shining, and it is this chaotic and mesmeric song about a possessed house. It is another case of Kate Bush tackling something unconventional and highly engrossing as a song subject:
“'The Shining' is the only book I've read that has frightened me. While reading it I swamped around in its snowy imagery and avoided visiting certain floors of the big, cold hotel, empty for the winter. As in 'Alien', the central characters are isolated, miles (or light years) away from anyone or anything, but there is something in the place with them. They're not sure what, but it isn't very nice.
The setting for this song continues the theme - the house which is really a human being, has been shut up - locked and bolted, to stop any outside forces from entering. The person has been hurt and has decided to keep everybody out. They plant a 'concierge' at the front door to stop any determined callers from passing, but the thing has got into the house upstairs. It's descending in the lift, and now it approaches the door of the room that you're hiding in. You're cornered, there's no way out, so you turn into a bird and fly away, but the thing changes shape, too. You change, it changes; you can't escape, so you turn around and face it, scare it away. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, October 1982)”.
I am gripped by some of the lines - "Woman let me in!/Let me bring in the memories!/Woman let me in!/Let me bring in the Devil Dreams!";“I will not let you in!/Don't you bring back the reveries/I turn into a bird/Carry further than the word is heard” -, and one can almost sense Bush herself embodying the house and appearing in hallways as this ghost and disembodied voice is scaring away those who dare trespass.
Hounds of Love has a few curious cases where we enter Bush’s unique lyrical perspective concerning the heavenly and otherworldly. I mentioned Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) - and it is one of the most overt nods to religion in her songs. Though she is not praising God and talking about his power, she is asking him literally to make it so she can swap places with a man so they can understand one another; so that everyone can do this so the sexes can better relate and communicate. Whilst Cloudbusting is not about mystical creatures or spirits, it is Bush having her head turned by a device and story that sort of goes beyond reality and puts its faith in, to be fair, questionable science:
“'Cloudbusting' is a track that was very much inspired by a book called A Book Of Dreams. This book is written through a child's eyes, looking at his father and how much his father means to him in his world - he's everything. his father has a machine that can make it rain, amongst many other things, and there's a wonderful sense of magic as he and his father make it rain together on this machine. The book is full of imagery of an innocent child and yet it's being written by a sad adult, which gives it a strange kind of personal intimacy and magic that is quite extraordinary. The song is really about how much that father meant to the son and how much he misses him now he's gone. (Conversation Disc Series, ABCD 012, 1985)”.
Whether she truly embraces the idea of witchcraft and witches, one of Hounds of Love’s songs, Waking the Witch, very much bringing something completely unusual and unorthodox into a song:
“These sort of visitors come to wake them up, to bring them out of this dream so that they don't drown. My mother's in there, my father, my brothers Paddy and John, Brian Tench - the guy that mixed the album with us - is in there, Del is in there, Robbie Coltrane does one of the voices. It was just trying to get lots of different characters and all the ways that people wake you up, like you know, you sorta fall asleep at your desk at school and the teacher says "Wake up child, pay attention!". (...) I couldn't get a helicopter anywhere and in the end I asked permission to use the helicopter from The Wall from The Floyd, it was the best helicopter I'd heard for years for years [laughs].
I think it's very interesting the whole concept of witch-hunting and the fear of women's power. In a way it's very sexist behavior, and I feel that female intuition and instincts are very strong, and are still put down, really. And in this song, this women is being persecuted by the witch-hunter and the whole jury, although she's committed no crime, and they're trying to push her under the water to see if she'll sink or float. (Richard Skinner, 'Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love. Radio 1 (UK), aired 26 January 1992)”.
I love how Bush approaches songs and the way she can mix science, faith, the unknown and the unproven to cosmic effect!
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush (from the book, KATE: Inside the Rainbow)
Just moving onto a song from The Sensual World, Reaching Out, and Bush once more lets her imagination fly beyond the clouds (The Big Sky/Cloudbusting) and to the stars. As she explained in 1989, a quick walk around the park is all it took for a very evocative song to come to mind:
“That was really quick, really straightforward. A walk in the park did that one for me. I really needed one more song to kind of lift the album. I was a bit worried that it was all sort of dark and down. I'd been getting into walks at that time, and just came back and sat at the piano and wrote it, words and all. I had this lovely conversation with someone around the time I was about to start writing it. They were talking about this star that exploded. I thought it was such fantastic imagery. The song was taking the whole idea of how we cling onto things that change - we're always trying to not let things change. I thought it was such a lovely image of people reaching up for a star, and this star explodes. Where's it gone? It seemed to sum it all up really. That's kind of about how you can't hold on to anything because everything is always changing and we all have such a terrible need to hold onto stuff and to keep it exactly how it is, because this is nice and we don't want it to change.
But sometimes even if things aren't nice, people don't want them to change. And things do. Just look at the natural balance of things: how if you reach out for something, chances are it will pull away. And when things reach out for you, the chances are you will pull away. You know everything ebbs and flows, and you know the moon is full and then it's gone: it's just the balance of things. (...) We did a really straightforward treatment on the track; did the piano to a clicktrack, got Charlie Morgan [Elton john's drummer] to come in and do the drums, Del did the bass, and Michael Nyman came in to do the strings. I told him it had to have a sense of uplifting, and I really like his stuff - the rawness of his strings. It's a bit like a fuzzbox touch - quite 'punk'. I find that very attractive - he wrote it very quickly. I was very pleased. (Tony Horkins, 'What Katie Did Next'. International Musician, December 1989)”.
The Sensual World’s Rocket’s Tail is, literally, about her cat’s tail - which is less spiritual and more charming/unusual. One song from The Sensual World sort of partly takes us back in history, but it is also about dancing with the embodiment of The Devil: Adolf Hitler. Heads We’re Dancing is hugely arresting and original:
“That's a very dark song, not funny at all! (...) I wrote the song two years ago, and in lots of ways I wouldn't write a song like it now. I'd really hate it if people were offended by this...But it was all started by a family friend, years ago, who'd been to dinner and sat next to this guy who was really fascinating, so charming. They sat all night chatting and joking.
And next day he found out it was Oppenheimer. And this friend was horrified because he really despised what the guy stood for. I understood the reaction, but I felt a bit sorry for Oppenheimer. He tried to live with what he'd done, and actually, I think, committed suicide. But I was so intrigued by this idea of my friend being so taken by this person until they knew who they were, and then it completely changing their attitude. So I was thinking, what if you met the Devil? The Ultimate One: charming, elegant, well spoken. Then it turned into this whole idea of a girl being at a dance and this guy coming up, cocky and charming, and she dances with him. Then a couple of days later she sees in the paper that it was Hitler. Complete horror: she was that close, perhaps could've changed history. Hitler was very attractive to women because he was such a powerful figure, yet such an evil guy. I'd hate to feel I was glorifying the situation, but I do know that whereas in a piece of film it would be quite acceptable, in a song it's a little bit sensitive. (Len Brown, 'In the Realm of the Senses'. NME (UK), 7 October 1989)”.
Thinking about The Red Shoes, and two of the most interesting songs on the album are also the most unconventional. Lily is, as the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia explains, is about a spiritual healer:
“Song written by Kate Bush. Originally released on her seventh album The Red Shoes. The song is devoted to Lily Cornford, a noted spiritual healer in London with whom Bush became close friends in the 1990s. “She was one of those very rare people who are intelligent, intuitive and kind,” Kate has said of Cornford, who believed in mental colour healing—a process whereby patients would be restored to health by seeing various hues. “I was really moved by Lily and impressed with her strength and knowledge, so it led to a song - which she thought was hilarious”.
Song of Solomon, one assumes, is about the King of Israel - Solomon (also called Jedidiah) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, Quran, and Hadiths, a fabulously wealthy and wise king of Israel who succeeded his father, King David. Bush has not really explained the song, but there is definite biblical and religious imagery through the song: “Mmm, just take any line/”Comfort me with apples/For I am sick of love/His left hand is under my head/And his right hand/Doth embrace me"/This is the Song of Solomon/Here's a woman singing”. King of the Mountain is the sole single from 2005’s Aerial, and it features a man who one would have assumed would have rubbed shoulders with Buddy Holly and Minnie Riperton on Blow Away (For Bill): Elvis Presley. The lyrics enquire whether Elvis Presley might still be alive someplace, "...looking like a happy man..." and playing with "Rosebud", Kane's childhood's sled (from the fil, Citizen Kane). There are a lot of people who think Presley is still alive, and whilst you get the sense Bush only half-believes that, the fact that this formed the core of her first single in eleven years – And So Is Love was her previous single in 1994 -, is meaningful. If her belief system does not include the fact that Elvis Presley still breathes, it is clear that she was still fascinated by the otherworld and perhaps reincarnation or some sort of nirvana. There are a couple of songs from Aerial I want to briefly mention before circling back to 50 Words for Snow.
Kate Bush’s mother died in 1992, but she was still very much with Bush – through her soul and writing – when writing beyond 1992. A Coral Room is one of the most emotional songs from Aerial and it uses a modest symbol, a brown jug, as a connection between Bush and her mother – as the Kate Bush Encyclopaedia reveals:
“There was a little brown jug actually, yeah. The song is really about the passing of time. I like the idea of coming from this big expansive, outside world of sea and cities into, again, this very small space where, er, it's talking about a memory of my mother and this little brown jug. I always remember hearing years ago this thing about a sort of Zen approach to life, where, you would hold something in your hand, knowing that, at some point, it would break, it would no longer be there. (Front Row, BBC4, 4 November 2005)”.
Joanni, a reference to Joan of Arc, mentions faith and God – “Joanni, Joanni wears a golden cross/And she looks so beautiful in her armour/Joanni, Joanni blows a kiss to God”, but one of the most interesting aspects of Aerial is the second album (it is a double album), A Sky of Honey. It is this concept of the passing of a day as Bush loses herself in nature and the world; birdsong is particularly important, and it sort of expands on the sounds of Hounds of Love - and its very expansive and ‘open’ sound.
Bush has always been influenced by the world and her environment, but there is something almost spiritual and philosophical about this suite of songs on Aerial. By the final track, Aerial, Bush is at the point of communicating with the birds: “All of the birds are laughing/All of the birds are laughing/Come on let's all join in/Come on let's all join in”. I mentioned Wild Man as a case of Bush being on the trail of the yeti but, actually, there are a couple of other songs from 50 Words for Snow that either go beyond this mortal coil or inhabit a sense of the spiritual. I am no idea where Bush was drawing her sparks of inspiration from for 50 Words for Snow but, among the wintery themes and snow was this fascinating story in Lake Tahoe. Here is Bush talking about the inspiration for that song:
“It was because a friend told me about the story that goes with Lake Tahoe so it had to be set there. Apparently people occasionally see a woman who fell into the lake in the Victorian era who rises up and then disappears again. It is an incredibly cold lake so the idea, as I understand it, is that she fell in and is still kind of preserved. Do you know what I mean? (John Doran, 'A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed'. The Quietus, 2011)”.
Maybe the snowman who climbs into bed with the protagonist in Misty is more symbolic than literal, so I think it is a metaphor for a cold and temporary love – something that goes beyond the strangeness of a snowman and woman entwined in a transitory bliss! Snowed in at Wheeler Street is a duet between Kate Bush and Elton John, and it is a song that is about departed and distanced souls reconnecting through history. Here are more details:
“The idea is that there are two lovers, two souls who keep on meeting up in different periods of time. So they meet in Ancient Rome and then they meet again walking through time. But each time something happens to tear them apart. (...) It’s like two old souls that keep on meeting up. (John Doran, 'A Demon In The Drift: Kate Bush Interviewed'. The Quietus, 2011)”.
I like the fact that Bush has retained this open mind and she can pepper in songs of faith, ghosts and yetis and it is not there for artistic effect or symbolic: there is this area of her imagination and mind that feels we are too closed off and she has this curiosity. Although the spiritual and religious are not as influential and instrumental to her as songs about love and understanding the human heart, it is still a big part and one that I was keen to cover.
I am going to wrap up soon, but there are a couple of articles online that mention Bush and the spiritual/philosophical; this article is particular interesting in its observation:
“This is key to understanding Kate. She has her own cult, her own mystery school tradition. Her unique strand of Shivaism, Dionysian and Druid philosophy, loosely wrapped up in a song and dance tradition. It’s part magical realism, overt nature spirituality and art house ….( Hard to pull off in cynical, post modern narcissistic Britain)
Shape shifting her artistry, she played with archetypes. She can access our primordial memory, when we were fish and birds. Her voice, a vehicle for multiple characters. She invokes the triple goddess. Athena, virginal, sensual innocence. Aphrodite, loaded with sexual power or Nimue, motherly, nurturing and “oh so tender ” and finally the Hag, Raven seer.Hecate, Queen of the witches, the dark half of the moon. Terrifying Kali the Crone or Macha in a frenzy, unleashing the furies upon us. All this choreographed into one ritualised, magical, shock and awe vision of an imagined future, all in one performance…..Very elemental, light and shade, earth and fire”.
An interesting exchange on this forum concerns how Bush can impart and speak about truth, but she can do so in a very moving, profound and unexpected way:
“Much of what connects me to the music and movement of Kate Bush is her ability to impart truth in a profound way. Most of you here have made a connection I would hazard to say as well. I find affinity with much of what she says lyrically and musically; but there is also the visual component - her videos, her movements, and especially in what is conveyed through her eyes. It is not feasible to me that this could be accomplished on a purely intellectual or simple emotional level. Emotion needs inspirational fuel.
Here is a portion from her 02nd September 1999 interview with Q magazine:
Kate Bush - "...people who create feel a great empty sense of hunger, a feeling of emptiness in life. And by being able to create, you can somehow express yourself in a way that maybe you can't in the ordinary realms of life...so many people are looking for God...In your creativity there can be quite deep attitudes, and I think it's got to be linked somehow with the subconscious that you're tapping into"
Q: Which of your songs particularly connect with this form of spirituality?
Kate - " 'Breathing' I think was one of my first, what I would call spiritual songs. The subject matter isn't necessarily, but the spark is. When I was writing it, it felt like: Hang on. I don't think I'm writing this --- this is a bit to good for me! Rather than the song being my creation. I was a vehicle for something that was coming through me...
..........
I have used the analogy; Genius is knowing without study and perfection without practice. Kate, it seems to me, is professing to be a conduit of spiritual energy. The themes of this kind of connection and communication run like a thread through the fabric of her body of work. Aerial, I think, is the culmination of her spirtual force to date. It is about epiphany, connection and passing on of spiritual love and harmony.
Does anyone else here see other examples in her words and inspiring movement or expression that speak to you on a deeper level?
PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport/Getty Images
Very interesting thread, thanks.
I think some sort of spirituality and/or religious imagery can be traced in many of Kate's compositions.
I remember she was asked about the role of religion in her life during an interview in 1985, and she replied that even though she could not consider herself a religious person, she is fascinated by the effect religion has on people.
I have always considered her songs like emotional arrows, shot to the listeners' hearts to make them think about things from different perspectives.
Even though Kate's work is not consistently patterned with clear religious references (maybe her most evident approach to the subject being the Catholic imagery behind "Why should I love you", where she makes references to the Host and the Sacred Heart...) I think there are very deep and interesting spiritual evidences scattered here and there for us to pick up.
What I like of Kate's approach to spirituality in her songwriting, is mostly the fact that she seems to be attracted by the positive energies coming from that source, without being transfixed by all the negative ones as the guilty feeling, the dominant idea of being rewarded in the afterlife through suffering and pain, the burden of the cross on the shoulders of humanity, just to mention a few from Catholicism.
Kate's spirituality is much more dealing with human passions and the continous struggle to reach the Truth, to touch Nature's beauties, to get a glimpse of that God...
"...can I have it all, now?...""Ok...ok...what's the beef this time?"
I will end it there but, as having listened back to many of her songs and read the lyrics, it is amazing how she can include songs about spiritual teachers and the mystical alongside hard-hitting tracks about loss. She is an artist whose lyrical palette and diverse mindset has impacted on many other artists - including Björk and Bat for Lashes. It seems there are no limits when it comes to Kate Bush’s…
POWER, charm and originality.