KATE: “The song after that is Hello Earth, and this is the point where she's so weak that she relives the experience of the storm that took her in the water, almost from a view looking down on the earth up in the heavens, watching the storm start to form - the storm that eventually took her and that has put her in this situation…”
IMHO...
A moving song, full of sad and beautiful imagery… the moon, the heavens, Oneness, ecological interdependence, the cruel sea, the human mind, a baby, safety, compassion, etc…
The protagonist is alone on the vast ocean surface, gazing at the night sky, and ‘so aware of her situation.’ It’s just her and Nature… “Hello, Earth!… Hello, Earth!”
(Each of the opening calls is echoed by a voice seemingly lost in space.)
The song is about how small we are as individuals, how vast and unpredictable nature is, about trust and how everything is connected and interdependent…
A baby can (playfully) block care-giving Earth out of sight with just one hand (Earth being its mother)… and then make care-taking Earth reappear… Learning to trust and control his/her environment…
To the mother, her baby is her little Earth…
The moon is like a little Earth reflecting our insignificance…
We are all at the mercy of nature and must care more…
We all stare at the night, tracking vastness and insignificance… and maybe a satellite watching storms start to form.
Our heroine is now emotionally, physically and mentally exhausted…
Tired and as helpless as a baby, she cries “Why did I go?” before telling herself to “Go to sleep, little earth.”
Wikipedia: A different recording of "Zinzkaro", the Georgian folk song performed on the soundtrack to Herzog’s “Nosferatu the Vampyre” (1979), by the Vocal Ensemble Gordela, was used by Kate Bush in the song "Hello Earth" on her 1985 album Hounds of Love.
The song's introduction: "Where were you (?) now at nine times the speed of sound..."
Apparently, this is taken from communication between Nasa and the Columbia space shuttle during the flight on August 30, 1983. Dan Brandenstein was the pilot.
So another angle on the song includes: Vulnerable pilot looking at earth. Pilot reflects on the security of driving with loved one, on terra firma looking up and seeing a satellite spacecraft lit up and moving across the night-sky. Pilot traumatically watching storms form but unable from space to do anything.
Just read
gaffa.org/garden/kate20.htmlKate on the Chorus: “They really are meant to symbolize the great sense of loss, of weakness, at reaching a point where you can accept, at last, that everything can change.”
SO DOES SHE DROWN?
- “Look at it go!” (satellite? Earth? Life?) …
- The fragile echoes of the opening calls are not repeated.
- The sonar signals? … Lost in ‘space’? Lost in the ocean depths? Suffocating/drowning?
- Hello… and good-bye?
- Is this song her tale before she drowns/disappears without a trace?
-- ‘Driving home’/‘I get out of my car’/‘Step into the night…’ - driving/fear/theatre/horror are constant themes in Kate’s work.
-- ‘Why did I go…’ (go sailing?) (go down/drown?) - a rhetorical/existential question?
-- ‘Tiefer, tiefer. Irgendwo in der Tiefe Gibt es ein licht’ is sung by another.
‘Deep. Deep. Somewhere in the darkness, there is a light.’
-- Her tiny, futile torchlight still glows as her body sinks ‘deeper and deeper’ into The Deep.
-- ‘Think inside out’, and this image (and the German voice-over) forms the spiritual teaching that becomes “The Morning Fog”: regenerate and enjoy the big Light that really matters!
Maybe the protagonist of The Ninth Wave drowns with ‘Hello, Earth’…
Maybe Kate has themed the songs around Kübler-Ross' Five Stages of Grief...
Denial - "And Dream of Sheep"
Anger - "Waking the Witch"
Bargaining - "Jig of Life"
Depression - "Watching You Without Me"
Acceptance - "Hello Earth"
"The Morning Fog" - Our life-affirming lesson from that tragedy!