Get Out of My House

[tannis]

THE WHOLE STORY: This house is full of m-m-madness...

"The quiet, aloof couple's son, called Jackie, won a scholarship to a grammar school, and then went on to medical school, from which he graduated in 1943. He married Hannah Daly, three years his senior, a County Waterford Irish farmer's daughter turned Epsom nurse, became a GP in Bexley, and bought East Wickham Farm."
~ Waiting for Kate Bush, Mendelssohn (2004, p.38)

"Kate's father was an exceptionally determined student who won a scholarship to Grays grammar school and went on to medical school. He graduated in 1943 and married Hannah Daly, a staff nurse at Long Grove Hospital in Epsom..."
~ Kate Bush, Vermorel (1983, p.52)

Long Grove Hospital was in the news recently, when historians working at the Surrey History Centre in Woking discovered two volumes of records in the ruins of Long Grove.

At least 43 female typhoid carriers were locked up for life in a mental hospital, the BBC has learned. The women were held at Long Grove asylum in Epsom, Surrey, in the period between 1907 and its closure in 1992. Nursing staff told a BBC investigation that some of the women may have been sane when they were admitted but went mad because of their incarceration. Most of the records from the hospital were destroyed after it shut down. But historians working at the Surrey History Centre in Woking discovered two volumes of records in the ruins of Long Grove. Former nurses have told the BBC how the asylum was run like a prison. Jeanie Kennett, a ward manager who worked at Long Grove for 40 years, said it was a "basic existence" for the patients. "They're somebody's loved ones, they're somebody's mother, or sister, everybody had forgotten about them - they were just locked away," she said. "Life was pretty tough; they were seen as objects, it was prison-like - everything was lock and key."
BBC News, Monday, 28 July 2008
news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/uk/7528045.stm

LONG GROVE HOSPITAL

Previous names:
Long Grove Asylum (1907 - 1918)
Long Grove Mental Hospital (1918 - 1937)

Her record company knew better than to push Kate Bush.
KB: "I'm left alone to work on albums. If there was any outside pressure I'd completely go under and probably have to be put away in an institution somewhere."
Tracks, "Love, Trust and Hitler", November 1989
gaffa.org/reaching/i89_tr.html

Long Grove Hospital used to be a mental hospital in Epsom, Surrey in the United Kingdom. c1890 London County Council bought all the land belonging to the Manor of Horton in Epsom, Surrey, to develop a complex of asylums which was to become the largest in Europe. Long Grove Hospital was built 1903 to 1907 and opened in June 1907. It was the tenth London County Asylum and fourth in the Epsom Cluster.

KB: "Well, one of the first records I ever bought was called They're Coming To Take Me Away, Hah Hah by Napoleon the 14th. I thought that was great!"
MTV, Unedited, November 1985
gaffa.org/reaching/iv85_m1.html

The Epsom hospitals were at the forefront of advances in psychiatric medicine. Between the wars they were associated with London research departments and introduced new treatments such as electro-convulsive therapy, insulin treatment, and induced malaria therapy. When the Epsom hospitals were founded, they were intended to be cut off from the surrounding community. The first changes in this policy came after the War, and the use of chlorpromazine and related drugs in the 1950s led to further changes.

Recruitment of staff was a constant problem at first. The untrained male attendants and female nurses received between £18 and £39 per annum and free board and lodging. Men had to ask permission to marry and only single women were employed. Often several members of a family worked at the hospitals and their social life was often based there.

The Long Grove asylum was the third to follow the Bexley Asylum Plan for accommodation for 2,000 patients. The improved financial situation of the council allowed the use of red brick and marginally more embellishment as opposed to yellow stock brick at Horton and Bexley sites. Later additions included a nurses home (c.1910) almost identical to those added at Bexley and Horton but situated north of the laundry.

Interviewer: "But, you know, in one or two of the American reviews of The Dreaming, your music has been described as "schizophrenic"... And it seems to me that, in a manner of speaking, your music represents a virtual compendium of psychopathology; I mean to say, it is alternatively hysterical, melancholic, psychotic, paranoid, obsessional, and so on..."
Musician (unedited), Peter Swales, Fall 1985
gaffa.org/reaching/i85_swa.html
Peter Swales, for those who are interested, is a friend of the Bush family, and he is the author of several papers on aspects of psycho-analysis (Gaffa).

If Hannah Daly was a staff nurse at Long Grove Hospital in Epsom, then it seems likely that Kate's mother was a psychiatric nurse.

At one time, just before leaving school, she had an ambition to become either a psychiatrist or a social worker. Both careers made sense to her as an alternative to her first love: "I guess it's the thinking bit," she told me, "trying to communicate with people and help them out, the emotional aspect. It's so sad to see good, nice people emotionally upset when they could be so happy. The reason I chose those sort of things is that they are, in a way, the things I do with music. 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's very much a therapeutic thing, not only for me. If [people] let it into their ears, that is all I can ask for. And if they think about it afterwards or during it, that is even more fantastic. There are so many writers and so many messages, to be chosen out of all of them is something very special. The messages are things that maybe could help people, like observing the situation where an emotional game is being played, and maybe making people think about it again."
It was March 1978 when Kate Bush said those things.
"Stand By Your Mantra", Classic Rock magazine, December 2005
gaffa.org/reaching/iv05_classicrock.html

After speaking to Kris Needs for over 90 minutes, KaTe said "It's like two psychiatrists talking" (ZigZag, 1980) - a somewhat strange comparison to make! Kate's father, Dr Bush, became a GP in Bexley. So maybe he was also a psychiatrist. And if both KaTe's parents were involved in psychiatric services, no wonder KaTe had an ambition to become a psychiatrist or to write songs like Babooshka, The Infant Kiss, Get Out Of My House, Mother Stands For Comfort, etc.

Q: Would you make a good therapist?
KB: "I really don't know. When I was little, I really wanted to be a psychiatrist. That's what I always said at school. I had this idea of helping people, I suppose, but I found the idea of people's inner psychology fascinating, particularly in my teens. Mind you, it's probably just as well I didn't become one. I would have driven all these people to madness. I'm better off just fiddling around in studios... Having said that, I think some of my lyrics were just, well, mad, really. And why not! ... "
Q: You wouldn't make a good Lady Macbeth?
KB: "Lady Macbeth? (Laughs) No. To tell you the truth, I'm not that intrigued by acting. If someone offered me something really interesting, especially someone I admired, I'd do it because I'd be crazy not to. But I'm no actress. I don't have the talent or the temperament."
Q, "Booze, Fags, Blokes And Me", December 1993
gaffa.org/reaching/i93_q.html

LONG GROVE MENTAL HOSPITAL: Famous Patients

Famous patients include Josef Hassid (a Polish violin prodigy), Ronnie Kray (one of the Kray twins) and George Pelham (a man who survived the sinking of two ships, including the RMS Titanic).

KB: "I'd rather hang on to madness than normality..."
Record Mirror, "The Shock of the New" (1981)
gaffa.org/reaching/i81_rm.html

Josef Hassid was a Polish violinist. He was noted for his intense vibrato and temperament, causing Fritz Kreisler to say "A Heifetz violinist comes around every 100 years, a Hassid every 200." Furthermore pianist Gerard Moore called him "possibly the most incandescent prodigy after perhaps Yehudi Menuhin." He received an honorary diploma in the 1935 Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Warsaw and traveled to London in 1938 with his father, since his mother had died when Hassid was young. However, the start of World War II prevented their return to Poland. He performed in London, where he suffered from a memory lapse while playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto in Queen's Hall. He was first placed in a psychiatric hospital in 1941 after suffering from a nervous breakdown at the age of 18. He was admitted again in 1943 and was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia. He was lobotomised in late 1950 and died at the age of 26. Josef Hassid was one of several prodigies whose brilliant careers were short lived. Bruno Monsaingeon's The Art of Violin commemorates Hassid.

Kate Bush has just done the Daily Express. Now it's me...But no way does she just press her nose and gush out the conveyor-belt niceties. We talk for over 90 minutes, touching all manner of subjects in an enthusiastic flow. Quite deep at times--"It's like two psychiatrists talking," she said after...
ZigZag, "Fire in the Bush" 1980(?)
gaffa.org/reaching/i80_zz.html

Ronnie Kray was diagnosed as insane in 1958. He was placed in a straitjacket and sent to Long Grove mental hospital. Ronnie didn't stay for long as he and his brother hatched an elaborate escape plan. Reggie visited his brother and wore identical clothes (they were identical twins too) and when a member of staff went to fetch some tea they simply swapped places and Ronnie walked out as 'Reggie' and remained on the run for 5 months.

"I think you're all completely mad, and thank you very much."
~ Kate Bush to her fans.

George Pelham survived the sinking of RMS Titanic, but suffered a breakdown. On 22nd January, 1935 he was admitted to Horton Psychiatric Hospital, Epsom, Surrey. On 28th August, 1939 he was transferred from Horton Hospital probably because of the outbreak of World War Two, when Horton Hospital became a general hospital serving the armed forces. He was admitted on that day to Long Grove Psychiatric Hospital, Epsom, Surrey and died there 42 days later at 1 am on the 9th October, 1939.

see more:
Long Grove Hospital Pictures
www.countyasylums.com/mentalasylums/longgrove01.htm
www.epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk/HospitalCluster.html
www.derelictplaces.co.uk/main/showthread.php?t=2950

Desert Island Discs: Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the stand-up comedian Jo Brand. Her first career was as a psychiatric nurse - and for several years she would spend the day working in a psychiatric unit before appearing at a comedy club in the evening. Both careers demand an ability to be calm in extreme situations and to display a confidence that is often not felt.

Jo Brand's Favorite Piece of Music: Oh England, My Lionheart by Kate Bush

Desert Island Discs: 18 March 2007
www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/desertislanddiscs_20070318.shtml

[tannis]

HEE-HAW: The Fall Of The House Of Bush....

KT seems to enjoy spinning puns around her name. So perhaps GOoMH takes inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe's "House of Usher" - an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion....

"I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth - in regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated - an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit - an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence....

"For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself: and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar... His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber....

"I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:

I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace -
Radiant palace - reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion -
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.

II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This - all this - was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.

III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute's well-tunéd law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate ;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh - but smile no more.

The narrator is impressed with Usher's paintings, and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Usher sings "The Haunted Palace", then tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be sentient: This house knows all I have done. The poem serves as an allegory about a king "in the olden time long ago" who is afraid of evil forces that threaten him and his palace, foreshadowing impending doom. As part of "The Fall of the House of Usher," Poe said, "I mean to imply a mind haunted by phantoms — a disordered brain".

The beginning of the poem compares the structure with a human head. For example, the windows are eyes, its door representing a mouth. The exterior represents physical features while the interior represents the mind engaged in imaginative thought. The poem takes a marked change in tone towards the second to last stanza. The house and family are destroyed and, apparently, become phantoms.

Isolation and paranoia cause the decay of the Usher roots. In the past, the Ushers were noted for a long lasting family existence, displayed through works of art and musical science. Not only does the physical state of the House of Usher fall, but the ancient family name or dynasty, as it might be called, dies also - the Fall (as in the name of the story) of a brother, sister, family name, and house.

The Fall of the House of Usher, 1894 illustration by Aubrey Beardsley
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Aubrey_Beardsley_-_Edgar_Poe_3.jpg

"From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened - there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind - the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight - my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder - there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters - and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the 'House of Usher'."

HOUBA HOUBA: "Suspendu au Gaffa"

Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne.

Poe uses this quote from DE BÉRANGER (a French songwriter) as a motto for his story "The Fall Of The House Of Usher":

"His heart is a suspended lute;
when touched it reverberates."

Poe's inspiration for the story may be based upon events of the Usher House, located on Boston's Lewis Wharf. As that story goes, a sailor and the young wife of the older owner were caught and entombed in their trysting spot by her husband. When the Usher House was torn down in 1800, two bodies were found embraced in a cavity in the cellar!

They said they were buried here....

[rosabelbelieve]

^ Good connections, Tannis... I have a friend who's very into Edgar Allen Poe's work. I should read more of it.

[tannis]

^ Thank you, Rosa...

THE HAUNTING OF KATE BUSH

On "Tales That Inspired Bush's Lyrics," GOoMH might also have taken inspiration from Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963)...

"Scandal, murder, insanity, suicide. The history of Hill House was ideal. It had everything I wanted... It was an evil house from the beginning, a house that was born bad..."

The Haunting is often cited as filmdom's finest "ghost movie" due presumably to its understated eeriness and a certain low-key, cinematic elegance. Wise used infra-red film for exterior shots of the house to emphasise the "striations of the stone" and make it look "more of a monster house".

The Haunting (1963)-History of Hill House
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAo6WwpV3jk
The entire prologue of this excellent film, 'The Haunting'.

Memorable quotes for The Haunting (1963):
"Get away from here. Get away at once!"
"...one big distortion in the house as a whole."
"A deranged house isn't a bad way of putting it."
"You can't get in!"
"This House, you have to watch it every minute."
"Suppose the haunting is all in my mind."
"It can't get in. It can't get in. Don't let it get in!"
"The house is coming down around me. The house is destroying itself!"
"I'm disappearing inch by inch into this house."
"The house wants me."
"I'm the one it really wants. Can't you feel it? It's alive! Watching. Waiting. Waiting for me."
"The house tricks them so easily... Hill House belongs to me... Hill House doesn't want me to go..."
"Why don't they stop me, can't they see what is happening? But it's happening to you, Eleanor. Yes. Something at last is really, really, really happening to me."

The Complex Story of 'The Haunting'
www.ficsx22.com/haunting/haunting_themovie.html

The Haunting (1963 Classic) Original Trailer
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq74oz6mf3w

Certain to remain one of the greatest haunted-house movies ever made, Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963) is antithetical to all the gory horror films of subsequent decades, because its considerable frights remain implicitly rooted in the viewer's sensitivity to abject fear. A classic spook-fest based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House (which also inspired the 1999 remake directed by Jan de Bont), the film begins with a prologue that concisely establishes the dark history of Hill House, a massive New England mansion (actually filmed in England) that will play host to four daring guests determined to investigate--and hopefully debunk--the legacy of death and ghostly possession that has given the mansion its terrifying reputation.

Consumed by guilt and grief over her mother's recent death and driven to adventure by her belief in the supernatural, Eleanor Vance (Julie Harris) is the most unstable--and therefore the most vulnerable--visitor to Hill House. She's invited there by anthropologist Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson), along with the bohemian lesbian Theodora (Claire Bloom), who has acute extra-sensory abilities, and glib playboy Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn, from Wise's West Side Story), who will gladly inherit Hill House if it proves to be hospitable. Of course, the shadowy mansion is anything but welcoming to its unwanted intruders. Strange noises, from muffled wails to deafening pounding, set the stage for even scarier occurrences, including a door that appears to breathe (with a slowly turning doorknob that's almost unbearably suspenseful), unexplained writing on walls, and a delicate spiral staircase that seems to have a life of its own.

The genius of The Haunting lies in the restraint of Wise and screenwriter Nelson Gidding, who elicit almost all of the film's mounting terror from the psychology of its characters--particularly Eleanor, whose grip on sanity grows increasingly tenuous. The presence of lurking spirits relies heavily on the power of suggestion (likewise the cautious handling of Theodora's attraction to Eleanor) and the film's use of sound is more terrifying than anything Wise could have shown with his camera. Like Jack Clayton's 1961 chiller, The Innocents, The Haunting knows the value of planting the seeds of terror in the mind, as opposed to letting them blossom graphically on the screen. What you don't see is infinitely more frightening than what you do, and with nary a severed head or bloody corpse in sight, The Haunting is guaranteed to chill you to the bone.

[tannis]

I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.
Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or
other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.
~ The Colossus by Sylvia Plath, 1959

After thirty years of labor, the daughter/restoration-artist is "none the wiser" regarding what (if anything) he may have to say. This dead language is phallic in image ("the pillar of your tongue") and bestial in sound: "mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles."
The doxies of daughterhood: Plath, Cixous, and the father
findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3612/is_199604/ai_n8751551/pg_6

I will not let you in.
I face towards the wind.
I change into the Mule.
"I change into the Mule."
Hee-haw! Hee-haw! Hee-haw-hee-haw-hee-haw-hee-haw...
"Hee-haw! Hee-haw! Hee-haw!"

see more:
The Colossus
katebush.proboards6.com/index.cgi?board=leaveitopen&action=display&thread=1997&page=13

[tannis]

Get Out Of My House: Drum Talk - Esmail Sheikh

KT: "Grotesque beauty attracts me. Negative images are often so interesting."
Kate says she spent days writing and re-writing lyrics for the album, which took a year's work.
"Getting Down Under With Kate Bush", Robin Smith, 1982
www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/i82_smi.html

What about the lyrics, though? As I sat struggling with them, I felt that you had made them consciously oblique in places.
"I don't intend them to be that way. [Ha!] It's just the way they come out. The thing is, when I have subject-matter, the best way I could explain it would be across ten pages of foolscap, but as I've got to get in a song, I have to precis everything.
"Maybe the album is more difficult for people than I meant it to be. It isn't intended to be complicated, but it obviously is, for some. A lot of it is to do with the fact that the songs are very involved--there's lots of different layers.
"Hopefully the next one will be simpler, but each time it gets harder, because I'm getting more involved. I'm trying to do something better all the time."
Kerrang!, "Bushy Tales", Karen Swayne, 1982
www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/i82_ker.html

In the title track of The Dreaming, it is virtually impossible to be aware of all the sounds and voices at the same time. This seems to hold true for much of the album.
"I think, especially with that track and Get Out of My House, that was--well, hopefully--what we wanted to happen. It was very much working in layers.
"The idea was that the third or fourth time a person listened to the record, they would start hearing things they hadn't heard before. I think that's really my favourite kind of music. The best examples are some of the Beatles records. I still listen to them, and am still amazed at the quality of the songwriting. It still stands up today. I mean, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour -- there just isn't a bad track on them, every one is brilliant, and there are so many ideas in each song. Maybe each time you listen you pick up on a different area of what is going on. And I really wanted to create something a bit like that, so that, as people listened to it more, it would somehow grow.
"What I suppose worries me, are the people who aren't prepared for music you really have to listen to. Perhaps they find it a bit confusing because it's not all there on the surface. It's something that you do have to give time to, a bit like a book. But if it's actually getting through to some people, which it obviously has from the feedback, then that's fantastic."
Voc'l, John Reimers, Late 1983
www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/i83_vocl.html

By 1982 she was under the influence of Peter Gabriel and the revolutionary drum sound of Phil Collins's In The Air Tonight. Determined to do something like this herself, she became locked into a hellishly expensive round of aborted studio stints, finally emerging with The Dreaming, easily her weirdest effort and one that effectively stalled her career, peaking at Number 3 (Never For Ever entered at Number 1) and spawning a batch of flop singles. Wild rumours abounded, including the choice story advanced by the Daily Mail that she had ballooned up to 18 stone. This was patently untrue but she *had* ground herself down into a state of nervous fatigue, not helped by a reputed diet of junk food and chocolate. It was not the happiest of times.
"I look back at that record and it seems mad," she says now. "I heard it about three years ago and couldn't believe it. There's a lot of anger in it."
Q, "Booze, Fags, Blokes And Me", December 1993
www.gaffaweb.org/reaching/i93_q.html

When listening to the end of 'Get Out Of My House', it seems the entire song has been layered around the drum pattern associated with the closing drum talk: "Dha ghin / dha dha dha / Dha / Dha ghin dha dha / Dha ghin dha dha". The 'dha ghin...' talk seems to begin around 4:00, but becomes more pronounced around 4:29 and again at 4:39...

Dha ghin
dha dha dha
Dha
Dha ghin dha dha
Dha ghin dha dha

Jul 18, 2008 11:40:15 GMT tannis said:

Dha Dhin Dha Dha Dha/Dha Dha Dha Dhin Dha Dha/Dha Dkin Dha Dha...

This is credited as "drum talk" to Esmail Sheikh, from East Indian Classical music and is called bol. A bol, is a mnemonic syllable. It is used in Indian music to define the tala, or rhythmic pattern, and is one of the most important parts of Indian rhythm. Aerial Tal also suggests Indian influence.

Bol is derived from the Hindi word bolna, which means "to speak." So maybe GOoMH does indeed end happy ever after... with the two "mules" finally communicating on their essential or primordial level...

Two strings speak in sympathy...

So does the drum talk say anything specific or is it just created rhythm? Let's look at the Hindi meaning.
www.wordanywhere.com/

Dha ghin
dha dha (or ga?) dha
Dha (or Dug or Dhan or Daan)
Dha ghin dha dha
Dha ghin dha dha

(Dha): 1. a big drum 2. a dog 3. sound
(ghin): 1. hate 2. disgust 3. aversion 4. abhorrence 5. odiousness 6. abominableness 7. nausea

(Dha): 1. a big drum 2. a dog 3. sound
(Dha): 1. a big drum 2. a dog 3. sound
[(ga): 1. a song 2. a demigod 3. a singer 4. a knower 5. the god Ganesha]
(Dha): 1. a big drum 2. a dog 3. sound

(Dha): 1. a big drum 2. a dog 3. sound
[(dug): 1. afflicted 2. sad
[(dhan): 1. a young woman 2. a lately married female; or: 1. wealth 2. treasure 3. riches 4. property 5. money 6. afflence 7. tin 8. pelf 9. means 10. fortune 11. coinage 12. chattels 13. roof 14. gold 15. substance 16. object of love 17. essence of life 18. sign of addition in arithmetic (plus) 19. positive 20. capital
[(daan): 1. The act of giving alms 2. charity 3. donation 4. bestowal 5. grant 6. presentation 7. liberality 8. tax, toll, anything which is demanded by law 9. the fluid that flows from the temples of an elephant while in rut 10. purification]

(Dha): 1. a big drum 2. a dog 3. sound
(ghin): 1. hate 2. disgust 3. aversion 4. abhorrence 5. odiousness 6. abominableness 7. nausea
(Dha): 1. a big drum 2. a dog 3. sound
(Dha): 1. a big drum 2. a dog 3. sound

(Dha): 1. a big drum 2. a dog 3. sound
(ghin): 1. hate 2. disgust 3. aversion 4. abhorrence 5. odiousness 6. abominableness 7. nausea
(Dha): 1. a big drum 2. a dog 3. sound
(Dha): 1. a big drum 2. a dog 3. sound

So it seems that the final act of the song is a big drum echoing the singer's hate, disgust, and aversion. I wonder what became of "Om mani padme hum"? Or was that just Strange Phenomena? ...

[tannis]

BASIC STROKES AND BOLS

Dha ghin
dha dha dha
Dha
Dha ghin dha dha
Dha ghin dha dha

Dha - This is a bol that uses both hands. It is a combination of Ta and Ga. There are at least four ways to play this bol; however the two most common versions are the Delhi (Dilli) style and the Purbi style.
Dhin - Dhin is a simultaneous playing of Ga and Tin. There are at least four different ways to play Dhin.
Ga - This is a stroke of the left hand. The most common technique is to hold the wrist down and arch the fingers over the syahi. The middle and ring-fingers then strike the maidan (the exposed skin between the syahi and the chat.) One must always remember that this stroke is "khula" or an open stroke, therefore it must be very resonant. Ga may be difficult for the beginner. There is a tendency to strike the drum and withdraw the hand under conscious control. Such action cannot be performed consciously. It is essential that the fingers and hand be relaxed the instant the drum is struck so that the hand can rebound of its own accord; like a ricochet. Only then can you hear the full open sound that characterizes this stroke.
There are numerous variations on the technique. For speed the index finger is often used to supplement the main Ga. Some players use only the middle finger, although this is generally considered to be a very poor technique. In some rare cases all four finger tips are used. There is another type of Ga which is played with the full open hand; nowadays this is generally used for special effects such as one might find in a Kathak recital.
Ga also has many variations in pronunciation. Common ones are Ge, Ghe, or Ghin.

dhin a dha ge na dha a te..
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G2wsZ4pAp8

Amazing Indian Percussion - 3 (Vocal Percusion Lesson)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXS6UByE_y8

Sheila Chandra-Taal
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtVgV-pi0mA

Nritya Gamini - Kathak Solo Won Joung Jin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0cuNZmvuLU
Kathak recital by South Korean dancer and tabla player Ms. Won Joung Jin (student of Shreemati Shubha Desai and Pandit Divyang Vakil).

see more:
Chandra & David's Tablasite
www.chandrakantha.com/tablasite/bsicbols.htm

[Barry SR Gowing]

Apr 12, 2009 15:00:27 GMT tannis said:

The idea was that the third or fourth time a person listened to the record, they would start hearing things they hadn't heard before. I think that's really my favourite kind of music. The best examples are some of the Beatles records. I still listen to them, and am still amazed at the quality of the songwriting. It still stands up today. I mean, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour -- there just isn't a bad track on them, every one is brilliant, and there are so many ideas in each song.

That's an interesting comparison. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in particular was an album that stretched the boundaries of what was possible in a recording studio, and The Dreaming did something very similar. A listener who heard Sgt Pepper for the first time now, from the vantage point of 2009, might not realise how revolutionary that record (made in 1967) was in terms of sound. Similarly, The Dreaming was very much at the cutting edge of what was possible in terms of sound in 1982. In some ways many of the sounds on these records might be very easy to emulate now, but on the other hand you can't quite recapture exactly how things were done back then. There's more depth and texture in those older recordings because they couldn't just "push a button" to get a sound (as you might now); you had to really work at it, and each sound might well be a "one-off" - a sort of magical occurence, if you will.

There wouldn't be much point trying to "go back" now and recreate those sort of recordings, using vintage equipment, because it would just be a pastiche. Back then those techniques were groundbreaking, but to do it now would just be an homage. Besides, unless you have the talent of the Beatles, or Kate Bush, how could it ever be as good?

P.S. Thanks for the "drum talk" explanation, Tannis!

--Paul--

[tannis]

ALIEN PRESENCES: RIPLEY AND JONES



The Ship's Cat: Ripley and Jones, the movie's only survivors

There's a door in the house
(slamming!)
I hear the lift descending
(slamming!)
I hear it hit the landing
(slamming!)
See the hackles on the cat standing!

Aug 10, 2009 0:27:08 GMT tannis said:

For Freud, "the ego is not even master in its own house": Copernicus and Darwin destroyed the belief that humans are at the center of the universe, and psychoanalysis destroyed the belief that one is the master of one's own soul. As Richard Rorty has said, this decentering indicates what is most unsettling about psychoanalysis: Freud suggested not only that one is not master of one's own house but that one's house is occupied by alien presences.
The Private Self, Arnold H. Modell, 1993, P.171

Referring to the Cloudbusting machine, KaTe said that her team worked with some designers who'd worked on the Alien. This has led to suggestions that H.R. Giger was somehow involved in the inspiration or design process for the 'Cloudbuster' built by Ken Hill. It is further suggested that Kate's Giger-esque costume for The Dreaming video was designed by Giger or inspired by his designs.
And, copyright considered, could the monster from the Experiment IV video have been inspired by Giger or The Giger Alien? Indeed, perhaps even the song's title took inspiration from Giger's Necronom IV... After all, as with the Cloudbusting machine, Kate has also mentioned the Alien alongside Get Out Of My House, suggesting the movie had something to do with the genesis of that song. And the teeth do look pretty similiar... ;D BTW, Percy Edwards was the voice of the alien in Alien (1979; alien vocalizator uncredited) and he provided sheep noises on Kate Bush's The Dreaming (1982), adding to the album's alien presences.

Get Out of My House
KB: 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's KBC article, Issue 12 (Oct 1982), About The Dreaming
www.gaffaweb.org/garden/kate14.html

Sexual imagery: Critics have also analyzed Alien's sexual overtones. Adrian Mackinder compares the facehugger's attack on Kane to a male rape and the chestburster scene to a form of violent birth, noting that the Alien's phallic head and method of killing the crew members add to the sexual imagery. McIntee claims that "Alien is a rape movie as much as Straw Dogs (1974) or I Spit on Your Grave (1978), or The Accused (1988). On one level it's about an intriguing alien threat. On one level it's about parasitism and disease. And on the level that was most important to the writers and director, it's about sex, and reproduction by non-consensual means. And it's about this happening to a man." He notes how the film plays on men's fear and misunderstanding of pregnancy and childbirth, while also giving women a glimpse into these fears. Film analyst Lina Badley has written that the Alien's design, with strong Freudian sexual undertones, multiple phallic symbols, and overall feminine figure, provides an androgynous image conforming to archetypal mappings and imageries in horror films that often redraw gender lines.

see more:
THE ALIEN JIGSAW: Experiment IV and Necronom IV
katebush.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=tww2&thread=1819&page=3
Alien (film)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)
Alien: sex, violence, and death
www.bluetanso.com/dgs-b7/Higher/Media/AlienStudy/Alien-Woman-Notes.txt
An excellent essay on the Alien (1979)