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Post by tannis on Sept 20, 2008 21:33:05 GMT
Put on The Red Shoes...The next Sunday there was the sacrament, and Karen looked at the black shoes, looked at the red ones--looked at them again, and put on the red shoes... ~ The Red Shoes, Hans Christian Andersen[/b] "When I write songs I really like to explore the mental area, the emotional values. Although in a way you can say that being a psychiatrist is more purposeful than writing music, in many ways it isn't because a lot of people take a great deal of comfort from music. I know I do. It makes you feel good. The really important thing about music is that all it is a vehicle for a message, what ever your message is. I'm probably a lot better at being a songwriter than I would be a psychiatrist, for instance. I might have people jumping out of windows now." Melody Maker, "Bush Baby", Harry Doherty, March 1978gaffa.org/reaching/i78_mm1.htmlThe release of The Red Shoes (1993) was accompanied by various promotional packages, which include red satin ballet shoes, T-shirt, CD and video... Put them on and your dream'll come true...
? UK? The Red Shoes (box) CD non-EMI ltd ed (inc. size 4 1/2 red shoes, certificate, heart-shaped box, 1.5k copies)
? UK? The Red Shoes (box) CD non-EMI ltd ed (inc. UK CD, badge, T-shirt, black shoebox)
? UK? The Red Shoes (box) CD non-EMI ltd ed (inc. UK CD, size 1/4 shoes, red shoebox)
? UK The Red Shoes "shoebox" CD/VHS EMI (inc. CD, video (RbG/MoP from "Aspel and Co."), biog, pen, 35mm slide, 1000 copies) eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=215540
French The Red Shoes "shoebox" (French promo-only 4" x 3" black miniature shoe box, contains a cute 3" long pair of red satin ballet shoes, rare!). eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=25950As noted, in both Anderson’s fairytale and the film, the ballerina dances to her death. In the fairytale, her legs are cut off and she does lonely penance for her sin of narcissism. In the film, she disappears from sight by jumping off a bridge onto railroad tracks. But the red shoes keep dancing, carrying her exhausted, spiritless body along with them. So when you put on KT's The Red Shoes, keep an eye on those jumping feet...
Anderson wrote, "the executioner chopped off her feet with the red shoes on" -- punishment for her narcissistic creativity. And the red shoes have been understood by the feminist psychoanalyst Susan Kavaler-Adler as a symbol of woman’s addictive narcissistic creativity: "The artist who experiences a powerful compulsion to turn away from external others and to seclude herself in her own private world. . . can become possessed by addictive and narcissistically tantalizing images of the self. . . Furthermore, she can become addicted to the image of intensity created by manically driven work. The intensity of such work resonates with a narcissistic longing for vivid recognition that can come to substitute for a healthy longing for a good object. We may view such an artist as trapped in a hall of mirrors. . ." (Kavaler-Adler, 1996).
And from the minute she put them on, KaTe couldn't stop dancing, and jumped straight into her next project. Her narcissistic urge to create - the addiction of an idealized self-image, that is to the image of being a star or being 'great' - led to The Line, The Cross and The Curve (1993).
Through the Looking-Glass: And What Alice Found There...
In this version of the tale, Bush plays a frustrated singer-dancer - an artist trapped in a hall of mirrors - who is enticed by a mysterious woman into putting on a pair of magical ballet slippers. Once on her feet, the shoes start dancing on their own and Bush's character (who is never referred to by name) finds herself in a magical and psychedelic wonderland through the looking glass. Her guide on this strange journey is played by Lindsay Kemp, who in real life was Bush's dancing mentor. The film was released direct-to-video in most areas and was only a modest success. Kate Bush later 'castrated' The Line, The Cross and The Curve (1993), calling it "a load of bollocks". Soon after its release, Bush effectively dropped out of the public eye."Don't strike my head off!" said Karen. "Then I can't repent of my sins! But strike off my feet in the red shoes!" And then she confessed her entire sin, and the executioner struck off her feet with the red shoes, but the shoes danced away with the little feet across the field into the deep wood. And he carved out little wooden feet for her, and crutches, taught her the psalm criminals always sing; and she kissed the hand which had wielded the axe, and went over the heath. "Now I have suffered enough for the red shoes!" said she. ~ The Red Shoes, Hans Christian Andersen[/b]
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bess
Under Ice
Posts: 45
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Post by bess on Sept 26, 2008 2:14:31 GMT
^ The urge to be creative is such an intense one. It can be disastrous as well as wonderful, and it is possible to get lost in the labrynth of mirrors that inspiration can be. Thank you for more interesting thoughts on Kate's songs, tannis.
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Post by tannis on Jan 2, 2009 16:44:34 GMT
KATE BUSH'S SUBVERSIVE SHOESBut there was a grand ball in the town, and Karen was invited. She looked at the red shoes, saying to herself that there was no sin in doing that; she put the red shoes on, thinking there was no harm in that either; and then she went to the ball; and commenced to dance. But when she wanted to go to the right, the shoes danced to the left, and when she wanted to dance up the room, the shoes danced down the room, down the stairs through the street, and out through the gates of the town. She danced, and was obliged to dance, far out into the dark wood. Suddenly something shone up among the trees, and she believed it was the moon, for it was a face. But it was the old soldier with the red beard; he sat there nodding his head and said: “Dear me, what pretty dancing shoes!” She was frightened, and wanted to throw the red shoes away; but they stuck fast. She tore off her stockings, but the shoes had grown fast to her feet. She danced and was obliged to go on dancing over field and meadow, in rain and sunshine, by night and by day—but by night it was most horrible. She danced out into the open churchyard; but the dead there did not dance. They had something better to do than that. She wanted to sit down on the pauper’s grave where the bitter fern grows; but for her there was neither peace nor rest. And as she danced past the open church door she saw an angel there in long white robes, with wings reaching from his shoulders down to the earth; his face was stern and grave, and in his hand he held a broad shining sword. “Dance you shall,” said he, “dance in your red shoes till you are pale and cold, till your skin shrivels up and you are a skeleton! Dance you shall, from door to door, and where proud and wicked children live you shall knock, so that they may hear you and fear you! Dance you shall, dance—!” The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen (1845)www.fairytalescollection.com/Hans_Christian_Anderson/The_Red_Shoes.htmFeel your hair come tumbling down Feel your feet start kissing the ground Feel your arms are opening out And see your eyes are lifted to God...Bush's The Red Shoes reconstitutes the dancing girl and her demonic shoes, celebrating La Dance to nervous excess, and bringing to mind Vaslav Nijinsky's diarised descent into schizophrenia. The Dancer is torn between life and art, between reality and fantasy, between sacrifice and fulfilment. Ultimately Bush controls her passion, producing a song and a whole album and a film to go with it.
In The Line, the Cross & the Curve (1994) (3 of 7, The Red Shoes), the Dancer dances "down the room" and through the mirror, willed by the red shoes. She is obliged to dance over the dead, visually evoking HCA's dance through the churchyard, while the Guide (Kemp) mirrors HCA's old soldier. In some ways, The Red Shoes (song and video) tells part of the HCA tale, evoking Karen's desire to dance at the grand ball, her forced demonic dance, her horrible night dancing, and ending with the chorus repeating the angel's painful words:She gotta dance, she gotta dance And she can't stop 'till them shoes come off These shoes do, a kind of voodoo They're gonna make her dance 'till her legs fall off Call a doctor, call a priest They're gonna whip her up like a helicopter...She danced, and was obliged to go on dancing through the dark night. The shoes bore her away over thorns and stumps till she was all torn and bleeding; she danced away over the heath to a lonely little house. Here, she knew, lived the executioner; and she tapped with her finger at the window and said: “Come out, come out! I cannot come in, for I must dance.” The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen (1845)THE DANCER: "What have you done to yourself?" The Line, the Cross & the Curve (Bush, 1994)In the fairy tale, Karen's desire (to dance) becomes her punishment (to dance) - a process taken to violent extremes when the girl calls for the executioner to cut off her feet. This is mirrored in Kate Bush’s song, where the girl's desire to dance is met with a sense of wrong-doing, entrapment and emergency (unlike Scarlet O'Hara at "The Monster Bazaar"!). Karen's predicament is also mirrored in TLTC&TC, where the Mysterious Woman can't use her hands. So when the Dancer puts on the red shoes and morphs herself through the mirror, the implication is that she, like Karen and the Mysterious Woman, will face a similar punishing injury.
Gordon (2005) argues that the Kate Bush song offers a fascinating twist on the 1848 didactic tale, but she does not discuss the supplementary film that Bush directed in conjunction with the album (TLTC&TC, 1994). And if we consider the supplementary film, the song seems to leave the tale basically intact while sending out the transformed message that if we have to dance we might as well enjoy the feel of the frenzy!
Bush ends the song with “you gotta dance” emblazoned on our minds; there is no “The End” (Gordon, 2005). The song’s lack of closure embodies life as a never-ending "sweet sucker dance" till finally you call a priest: "I am a Catholic. In case of accident please call a priest"!
In Kate Bush's Subversive Shoes (2005), Gordon argues that "the sounds of the song transform the [fairy] tale into something new, especially the technologically produced music and sounds that highlight rhythmic repetition and the peculiarities of her voice... Throughout the song she continuously thickens the soundscape, and each new sound pushes the song farther into the magical and demonic world of the shoes... [T]he effect of this demonic tendency toward excessive repetition forces the listener to sit with the dancing girl on the cusp of magic and reality. It brings us all into a hypnotic, trancelike state." Thus we collectively experience the compulsive magic of La Dance.
The Red Shoes song is like watching an ecstasy dancer and wanting to share the drugged experience, and then getting hooked by the joint. The Dionysiac desire, the loss of control and the deindividuated experience lead to a blurring between self and Other. In TLTC&TC, this morphing is presented by the Dancer taking on the wicked visual characteristics of the Mysterious Woman.
Karen comes by the shoes dishonestly, tricking her kind benefactor into buying them. In the song, and especially in TLTC&TC, the Dancer's desire to dance means that she herself is 'tricked' by temptation into putting on the red shoes. As Gordon notes, Bush’s protagonist "puts the shoes on purposefully because she wants to dance like their original owner... A site of massive energy, the shoes are magic objects that alter the body of the girl who inhabits them, but here the dancer chooses that alteration." However, their original owner promises elevation of the whole self, but in reality the shoes lead to a schizophrenic fragmentation and destabilization.
Gordon, 2005: "The voice of the dancing girl is joined in the song by voices of the shoes’ original owner, the shoes themselves, and a commenting narrator... Bush’s envoicing of multiple speaking subjects makes it difficult to imagine the identity of any one speaker, which in turn makes it hard to tell where the agency at any given moment lies. In the world of the song multiple voices represent simultaneous subjectivities that inhabit Bush’s body... [T]he song’s confusion of identity complicates the issue of control... The song begins with Bush playing the protagonist... At the third line of text the shoes’ original owner enters, but Bush keeps her voice in the high range to indicate the morphing of the two dancers into one another... [T]he two characters seem to become one voice, bonded by the possessing shoes and dragged together into an ecstatic space. This is different from the fairy tale, in which the girl is a victim of her fate, spoken about by an omniscient male narrator. Here we are all in it together... Finally, at the end of the song the dancing girl appropriates the words of the shoes’ original owner."see more: Bonnie Gordon, "Kate Bush's Subversive Shoes", Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture - Volume 9, 2005, pp. 37-50artsandsciences.virginia.edu/music/graduate/documents/BonnieGordon_KateBush.pdf
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Post by tannis on Jan 2, 2009 17:20:16 GMT
The Line, the Cross & the Curve (Bush, 1994) & The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger, 1948)Let's dance put on your red shoes and dance the blues Let's dance to the song they're playin' on the radio... ~ Let's Dance (Bowie, 1983)
Women still face a "tough struggle" to gain acceptance in the film industry. A recent survey revealed that only 6% of successful films in 2001 had female directors. Kate Bush has achieved significant advances in male dominated areas, including The Line, the Cross, and the Curve (1994), which she wrote, directed and starred in. The film is her reading, her vision, and her interpretation of The Red Shoes songscape. Consequently, when discussing The Red Shoes album songs, the film needs to be considered. So let's consider The Line, the Cross & the Curve (Bush, 1994) alongside The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger, 1948).The Red Shoes 1948 Trailers www.youtube.com/watch?v=45AvQ9MR0CU "Thrill to matchless music as she dances dangerously between two loves.."
Two men are in love with the same woman. One is powerful and the other creative. One offers her the opportunity to fulfill herself as a great artist. The other as a woman.The Red Shoes (1) www.youtube.com/watch?v=joehYPXkIIw&feature=related 0:14 - The Shoemaker (Léonide Massine) brings to mind the genius Guide (Lindsay Kemp)... 1:15 - Moira Shearer as The Dancer... 1:27 - The Mysterious Woman moves like the Diva do... 2:31 - Oh the minute I put them on I knew I had done something wrong... 6:07 - The Dancer's distress is mirrored in TLTC&TC (3 of 7, The Red Shoes, 3:48; 5 of 7, Moments of Pleasure, 0:20)... 6:22-7:07, etc - The Dancer's falling, spinning and tumbling is quoted by Kate in TLTC&TC (5 of 7, MoP).The Red Shoes (2) www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjgAV4io110&feature=related 3:53 - The scene change brings to mind The Dancer's night-dance through hell in TLTC&TC (3 of 7, The Red Shoes). 4:08 - Moira Shearer momentarily collapses into Robert Helpmann's arms, the red shoes still dancing. Kate quotes the choreography in TLTC&TC (3 of 7, The Red Shoes, 5:53). In The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen (1845), when the coachman lifts Karen into the carriage her feet continue to dance.Kate Bush - 1 of 7 - The Line, the Cross and the Curve (Rubberband Girl) www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GWXkXUbbuI&feature=related The Rubberband Girl video sees Kate dancing to excess and ending up in a straitjacket... "Call a doctor, call a priest..." 5:51 - Karen herself was dressed very neatly and cleanly; she was taught to read and to sew, and people said that she was pretty. But the mirror told her, “You are more than pretty—you are beautiful.” ("The Red Shoes", HCA, 1845).Kate Bush - 3 of 7 - The Line, the Cross and the Curve (The Red Shoes) www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9_UsAlu9K0 When the Mysterious Woman enters, Kate, with that teased up kind of hair, looks bourgeois and sophisticated. The Mysterious Woman has burned her hands. So maybe she's been playing with fire and has got her fingers burned. Or maybe she's guilty of some sin. (In the Middle Ages, to confirm his innocence, the accused had to put his hand into fire. Fast-healing wounds were signs of innocence.) 2:05: The Mysterious Woman offers Kate her red ballet shoes. In HCA's fairy tale, the red shoes are red morocco (leather) shoes (though the soldier addresses them as "pretty dancing-shoes"). So, in TLTC&TC, Kate takes her cue for the red ballet shoes from the 1948 film. And, like in the film, the red ballet shoes are magically transferred onto Kate's feet, lacing themselves up automatically (3:28). 4:15: Kate jumps into the mirror and is transformed into a gypsy-type dancer, hair tumbling down, wild, erotic, sensual, etc. She has become anOther Mysterious Woman (like in Babushka). At 5:00 her feet are playing with fire, with devils, and her head seems to have sprouted horns. So maybe her hands face a similar burning fate. The wild is running free... 5:53: The Dancer collapses into the Guide's arms, the red shoes still dancing...“Now, I have suffered enough for the red shoes,” she said The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen (1845)Kate Bush - 5 of 7 - The Line, the Cross and the Curve (Moments of Pleasure) www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0541YUXuyI&feature=related DANCER: "I can't go on. I am torn between what I was and what is to become of me. In these shoes, every step I take is laced with madness. They fill me with pain and confusion, and with thoughts that are not my own. I have danced their dances. I see streets and buildings I know so well, although I have never been to these place. Together, we raced with wild horses till they dropped. We have leapt from cliffs into the raging waters below; and together we tripped from a stage into the pit. I see me falling. I feel my fear. And yet I was never here. These shoes are all anger and passion. I am possessed and I no longer have the strength to fight them..." In TLTC&TC, the dancer describes the effect of the shoes as madness, pain, confusion, anger and passion - rather like life itself: “you gotta dance, you gotta dance, you gotta dance”. The visual effect of falling, spinning, tumbling quotes Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes (1948).Bush's song flirts with the Bacchic excesses and dangers of carnival. Indeed, 'The Red Shoes' (film and song) shares similarities with the carnivalistic 'Sat In Your Lap' (video and song). I see the people working, And see it working for them. And so I want to join in, But then I find it hurts meOh she move like the Diva do I said "I'd love to dance like you." She said "just take off my red shoes Put them on and your dream'll come trueI want to be a lawyer. I want to be a scholar. But I really can't be bothered. Ooh, just gimme it quick, gimme it, gimme gimme gimme gimme!With no words, with no song You can dance the dream with your body on"Give me the karma, mama!" TRS and SIYL share a desire for immediate gratification without work or effort. TRS also taps into the "I want it all" of Suspended In Gaffa. But in TRS this desire is met with punishment. Indeed, the red shoes are gonna whip her up like a helicopter, till she's suspended in gaffa.Compare and contrast the SIYL jesters, minotaurs, ballet dress, labyrinthine tunnel, wild dancing, etc. And the SIYL video also shares balletic sense and sensibilities with The Red Shoes (1948; see The Red Shoes (1), 3:32).
Kate Bush - Sat in Your Lapwww.youtube.com/watch?v=xEVMfG8z490
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Post by tannis on Jan 10, 2009 22:50:03 GMT
The Red Shoes: KATE and BALLETKB: Yes, it's called The Red Shoes, yeah. MA: Is it based on the film, the ballet film? KB: Well it is very much connected with the film erm, I was lucky enough to meet Michael Powel, the director of The Red Shoes before he died and erm, he was such a sweet man, he was really sweet, I thought one of Britain's best directors and erm, he had a very strong effect on me, he was a very sweet man and er, he seems to have popped up in two or three of the songs that are on the album. The "Aspel" Performance gaffa.org/moments/1_3.html
I: And have you ever thought of doing ballet? Have you ever done ballet, I mean have you ever sort of get into a musical, something like that? KT: I did ballet for a year, on and off, when I was at my dancing school. And I found it very hard to actually get on with the people in the room, that was really my big problem. It's such an important thing for a dancer because it is the classical basics and there's no way [of] getting around it. You know, if you want to have good technique, then you really do have to do ballet. And so for many technical points I'm not really correct when I dance. But I do feel that dance is something that is very free and you can't tie it down. It's techniques, but it's also emotion and for me the emotion is the thing that really matters. You can have technique, you know, that's superb and yet be as flat as a board. And yet, there are children that have never trained at dancing, and yet they make you want to cry, because they move like angels. They're beautiful, they're so free and they're just purely stating what they're feeling and it's so delightful because they're enjoying everything they do. And I think that's what dance is about, the enjoyment of that feeling of movement and freedom, it's like suddenly breaking through a barrier. Never For Ever Debut, Peter Powell, Radio 1, Oct 11, 1980 gaffa.org/reaching/ir80_r1.html
In the early days, did you write the lyrics first? KT: "I usually started off with the tunes, and used library books for a source of lyrics, but I couldn't get on too well with the restriction of always fitting the music to the words. So I started making my own lyrics up alongside the music." And then you became involved with dance? KT: "Yes, but that didn't happen until I was seventeen, because I didn't really get on with the dance teacher at school. Once I'd left school I tried to get into a dance school full-time, but no one would accept me as I had no qualifications in ballet. I had almost given up the idea of using dance as an extension of my music, until I met Lindsay Kemp, and that really did change so many of my ideas. [This is, as far as I am aware, the only occasion in which Kate explains that her ambition to merge her music with movement pre-dated her exposure to Kemp's work. Usually she simply credits Kemp exclusively for her inspiration.] He was the first person to actually give me some lessons in movement. I realized there was so much potential with using movement in songs, and I wanted to get a basic technique in order to be able to express myself fully. "Lindsay has his own style--it's more like mime--and although he studied in many ballet schools and is technically qualified as a dancer, his classes and style are much more to do with letting go what's inside and expressing that. It doesn't matter if you haven't perfect technique." Electronics & Music Maker, Mike Beecher, 1982gaffa.org/reaching/i82_emm.html
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Post by tannis on Feb 19, 2009 6:27:58 GMT
The Red Shoes The album's title track seems to have an Irish folk music influence, with a big bass drum sound and an unusual legato bass part, but again this stems from the music of Madagascar. "It's fascinating how music from different parts of the world can have these similarities. All the mandarins and mandolas are played by Paddy, who has really gone into this sort of music, and he also plays all the various whistles and flutes on the track". Future Music interview with Del Palmer, "Well red", Nov. 1993www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/i93_fm.html
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Post by tannis on Mar 29, 2009 14:33:35 GMT
"Really happening to ya..."
Today, Kate is aware she may be the one who breaks open the charmed circle of her family. And she is afraid to destroy the magic opacity of the fabulous childhood which gave her her talent and still sustains it. That is one reason she hides behind 'coincidence' and fairytales, refusing to examine what is really happening to her and trying to control or put off any independent or objective scrutiny. This fear is increasingly apparent in her public statements and her paranoia about 'journalists'. At one time she persuaded EMI to put an embargo on all information and photographs to any journalist because of the allegedly 'incredible things' being said about her. (Kate Bush: Princess of Suburbia, Vermorel & Vermorel, London: Target Books, 1980, p.30)
Oh it's gonna be the way you always thought it would be But it's gonna be no illusion Oh it's gonna be the way you always dreamt about it But it's gonna be really happening to ya Really happening to ya Really happening to ya ~ ©1993 Kate Bush Music Ltd.
MARK: That, uh, dream. You know, you've had it before. Is it about something that really happened to you? .... MARNIE: You Freud, me Jane? MARK: If you won't see an analyst, why don't you try to help yourself? MARNIE: But that's why I'm in this trap, from trying to help myself. Just leave me alone, Mark, please. MARK: If I give you some books, will you read them? MARNIE: Your new homework? Frigidity In Women? The Psychopathic Delinquent and Criminal? MARK: Have you read them? MARNIE: I don't need to read that muck to know that women are stupid and feeble and that men are filthy pigs! In case you didn't recognise it, that was a rejection. MARK: I want you to read them. Start with The Undiscovered Self. MARNIE: Oh, for God's sake, Mark, leave me alone! I'm tired! Why can't you just leave me alone? MARK: Because I think you're sick, ol' dear. MARNIE: I'm sick? Well, take a look at yourself, ol' dear. You're so hot to play Mental Health Week, what about you? Talk about dream worlds. You've got a pathological fix on a woman, who's not only an admitted criminal but who screams if you come near her! So what about your dreams, Daddy dear? MARK: I never said I was perfect. That was quite a speech. It encourages me to believe that you have leafed through one or two books. Which one did you find the most interesting? MARNIE: You're really dying to play doctor, aren't you? OK, I'm a big movie fan. I know the games. Come on. Let's play. Shall I start with dreams or should we free-associate? Oh, Doctor, I'll bet you're just dying to free-associate. Alright now, you give me a word and I'll give you an association. You know, like: needles, pins; when a man marries, trouble begins. You ready? Well, come on! I thought you wanted to play doctor, so let's play! MARK: Water. MARNIE: Bath. Soap. Cleanse. Pure. Made pure for me. "And his tears shall wash away thy sins and make thee over again." Baptists. Mother used to take me to church, twice on Sundays. There. I'm not holding back at all, am I? You're bringing me out marvellously, Doctor. You'll have me up on my poor paralysed little legs by the very next scene. ~ Marnie (Hitchcock, 1964)
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