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Post by Lori on Jul 31, 2003 23:00:01 GMT
It's wonderful Everywhere, so white The river has frozen over Not a soul on the ice Only me skating fast I'm speeding past trees Leaving little lines in the ice Cutting out, little lines in the ice Splitting, splitting sound Silver heels spitting, spitting snow
There's something moving Under, under the ice Moving under ice Through water Trying to ("It's me!") get out of the cold water ("It's me!") Something, ("It's me!") someone - help them
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Post by brillo69 on Jun 12, 2004 21:36:06 GMT
It's wonderful Everywhere, so white The river has frozen over Not a soul on the ice Only me, skating fast I'm speeding past trees leaving Little lines in the ice Cutting out little lines In the ice, splitting, splitting sound Silver heels spitting, spitting snow There's something moving under Under the ice Moving under ice – through water Trying to get out of the cold water "It's me" Something, someone – help them "It's me"
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Post by tannis on Nov 26, 2007 15:37:52 GMT
KATE: The second song is called Under Ice, and is the dream that the person has. They're skating on ice; it's a frozen river and it's very white everywhere and they're all alone, there doesn't appear to be anyone else there. As they skate along they look down at the ice and they can see something moving underneath. As they skate along with the object that's moving under the ice they come to a crack in the ice; and as it moves under the crack, they see that it's themselves in the water drowning, and at that moment they wake up into the next song, which is about friends and memories who come to wake them up to stop them drowning. Mimicking the skater, the music works up terrific pace and speed… ‘The river has frozen over…’/‘I'm speeding past trees…’ - the skater cinematically glides across the dangerous landscape… Time/sensory distortion… ‘It’s wonderful…’ - Intense… Irresistible… Exhilarating… ‘Not a soul on the ice…’ - Soulless? Her soul destroyed? Frozen? ‘Only me…’ - She is the only one venturing out… Like she can’t judge the conditions? reckless? chaotic? out of control? … Vulnerable… Alone against the elements… Leaving cares behind… Leaving… THE DIRECTOR'S CUT… ‘…Little lines in the ice,/Cutting out little lines,/in the ice,/splitting, splitting sound,/Silver heels spitting, spitting snow…’ - slo-mo trouble… the internal, the external, and the natural narrative… ‘There's something… Under… Moving… Trying… "It's me"…’ - struggling emotional mess… Human passion, human recklessness, human difficulty, human need… Touching the Void… "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water..." Listening to The Ninth Wave Suite is like watching JAWS! … the ‘Under Ice’ music and the 'shark theme' to JAWS are equally ominous! … stranded at sea… Kate’s fearsome witchfinder under the surface… The warning “Get Out Of The Water!” By the end of the Suite, you’re clinging to your partner, much too scared to stand in the Atlantic! * ‘Under Ice’ reminds me of ‘Doppelgänger’ by DORY PREVIN, from the album “Reflections in a Mud Puddle” (1971). Indeed, like The Ninth Wave Suite, the ‘B’ side of “Reflections…”, called “Taps Tremors and Time Steps (One Last Dance for My Father)”, is also a conceptual piece drawing on real life disasters, the 1971 Los Angeles earthquake and the 1937 final flight of The Hindenburg.
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Post by tannis on Nov 29, 2007 13:53:03 GMT
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Dec 19, 2007 3:49:30 GMT
After the drowsiness of And Dream of Sheep, Under Ice seems to me to be the beginning of a cycle of dreams/hallucinations. This song has an extraordinary, fearful tension- of the frosty, delicate barrier of ice that separates our heroine from the phantasmagoric, monstrous, magical depths of her psyche. Ice is a very rigid barrier, but also a very brittle one; she is taking great risks to skate so dangerously over it, her silver heels sketching delicately and exhilaratingly over the sharp, repressing winter of her mind. She is at once deliriously afraid and overwhelmingly bewitched by the mysterious waters of her unconscious, so she is dancing at the edge of her fears. It is intensely spellbinding, that realm of fear and power and mythology, and she cannot help being magnetized, seduced into the depths of the ocean. but there is still that dense, silent, icy fear, gripping like frost at her heart... She begins to see that it is herself ensnared in the stormy turmoiling ocean. Her very own mind, struggling to breathe and live and be let out... She is terrified, and the ice of her calm control is shattered.... The storm of her unconscious emerges and floods, swirling with ravishing electricity, with strange dragonlike creatures, all teeming and rushing over her, enveloping her in the terror of their long held off judgement. All that witchery overtaking her... and so we come to Waking the Witch.
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Post by tannis on Dec 19, 2007 22:36:29 GMT
Hello Rosabelbelieve! ... Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I like your UI song interpretation. It really unpacks under and ice, bringing out the suspense and grip of the ice-dance, and the bewitching beauty and terrifying potential of the landscape. Indeed, UI now reminds me of TRS (silver heels/red shoes)... And that 'force' under the ice is as frightening as the icy conditions... Maybe the 'It's me!' is really the Witch(finder)... the black magic of the Unconscious... like in a fairytale when the witch takes on a helpless disguise to trap the princess... like Miranda Richardson in TLTC&TC/Shoedance/The Red Shoes! ...or like Venice in DON'T LOOK NOW (1973)*, pulling the Sutherland character into its Venetian trap... (And DON'T LOOK NOW shares similar themes - drowning, entrapment, the supernatural presence, plight and premonition, survival and communication, etc...) ... EDIT: KB on film: "My favourite is Don't Look Now. I was incredibly impressed by the tension, the drive and the way that every loose end was tied up. I get so irritated by films which leave ideas hanging..." (1982, Company). "There are many films that you don't think much of at the time, but weeks afterwards you get flashbacks of images. Sometimes films like Don't Look Now and Kagemusha have really haunted me. You don't necessarily steal images from films, but they are very potent and take you somewhere else - somewhere impossible to get to without that spark..." (1985, Melody Maker). "Donald Sutherland I can always watch - he's got such a wry sense of humour. Ever since I saw him in M*A*S*H I've been a fan. And yet in this film there's no humour at all. It's a real creepy and has a terrifying climax. But there's such a lot to be observed in the relationship between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie that you don't get tired of it..." (1983, Popular Video). - gaffa.org/cloud/subjects/film.html
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Dec 19, 2007 23:45:57 GMT
Thank you, Tannis! I've really enjoyed your contributions as well. I think the idea of the "It's me!" being the witch and the witchfinder in a helpless disguise is really interesting. I guess the character of the witch/witchfinder, for me, isn't truly evil, though- I see the trial as a terrifying but neccesary experience for the heroine to have in order to gain her footing in "the black magic of the Unconscious.." There are so many interesting ways of looking at Kate's songs, aren't there? I don't think I could ever really get bored of them, every time I listen there's something new to think about.
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Post by tannis on Dec 20, 2007 1:49:30 GMT
Yeah, Kate is elemental! ... Listening to her songs is like water scrying, mirror gazing, ice gazing... staring into a crystal ball, seeing wisps, veils and inclusions, and watching different ideas and meanings take form... The Jig of Life... Organic Acid Crash... Kate Bush - Organic Acidwww.youtube.com/watch?v=wynz2g7F2CEAn extraordinary Kate / John Carder Bush project... "They zigzagged into a conservative end"Another take on UI could be the mind-expansion of a bad trip. Under Ice taps into vulnerability, rashness and terror. Spaced out speeding across still life... Maybe a mind-expanding trip taking the protagonist to the edge of self, to the messy beyond self... Speeding above/ over ice becomes trapped below/ under ice, and the self becomes dangerously split... Coke Crash... ('Ice' is street slang for cocaine; 'Splitting' is street slang for rolling marijuana and cocaine into a single joint; 'Kate Bush' is street slang for kind bud, an expensive and potent strain of marijuana!)... And taking drugs on a troubled Catholic education must lead to tremendous internal schisms, as the religiously-minded super-ego turns against the transgressive self like a ring of damning Mother Superiors! ... And you're right, life is full of trials and tribulations; and conflict/conflict-resolution is necessary in the struggle for wisdom, integration and "owning up to the whole self" ... Waking the Witch definitely taps into that journeying process of awakening...
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Post by tannis on Dec 21, 2007 16:51:07 GMT
The river has frozen over...The RiverThe river in Siddhartha* (Hermann Hesse) represents life itself, time, and the path to enlightenment. As a representation of life, it provides knowledge without words, and Siddhartha’s reward for studying it is an intuitive understanding of its divine essence. The river’s many sounds suggest the sounds of all living things, and the flow of the river, as well as the fact that its water perpetually returns, suggests the nature of time. The ferryman points Siddhartha in the right direction, but the river itself is Siddhartha’s final instructor (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/siddhartha/themes.html). * The key to the pronunciation: Break it down into syllables, 'Sid-dhar-tha'. The "dh" sound is our soft "th" (as in the word "the") which is pronounced with the tongue behind the front upper teeth. It is different from the hard "th" (as in "thick") which is pronounced by sticking the tongue between the upper and lower teeth...
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Dec 21, 2007 16:58:06 GMT
Oh, cool! I never thought much about the river, but I like this interpretation a lot. The element of water is very recurrent in Kate's work, as a whole... I'll have to think more about that. Siddartha is a wonderful book; I should reread it.
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Post by stufarq on Jul 21, 2009 21:21:58 GMT
I've always suspected that this song was inspired by the scene in the film Damien: The Omen II where almost exactly this scenario happens.
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Post by tannis on Jul 22, 2009 0:27:16 GMT
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Post by stufarq on Jul 28, 2009 20:26:09 GMT
Yes, I can see what you mean about the music. There are rhythmis similarities in the strings, very much driving both pieces.
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Post by tannis on Jul 29, 2009 18:27:59 GMT
^ Yes, Broken Ice and Under Ice share a similar 'skating pace'. Maybe KaTe took an occult interest in The Omen trilogy... Put me up on the angel's shoulders I don't know if I'm closer to Heaven but It looks like Hell down there... It's her most religious album: "Your name is being called by sacred things/That are not addressed nor listened to/Sometimes they blow trumpets," she claims on Big Stripey Lie, a rhythmic sound-collage on which the fiddling poltroon Nigel Kennedy contributes deft strokes. He's also on Top of the City, where Bush's Achilles heel, her sheltered sensitivity, is paradoxically her greatest strength: "I don't know if I'm closer to heaven, but it looks like hell down there". From anyone else this would seem a blandly cynical acknowledgement of supposed urban spiritual barrenness but her very unworldliness gives it an odd authenticity. Q Magazine review of The Red Shoes Nov. 1993gaffa.org/reaching/rev_trs1.htmlGuildford Cathedral Weather Vane This 15 feet tall angel weather vane atop Guildford Cathedral weighs nearly ton and swivels very easily on mercury bearings. It was designed by Alan Collins and made in Islington (Hurst Franklyn & Co). Donated by Mr & Mrs SAdgey-Edgar in memory of their son who died during WW2.
Guildford Cathedral cannot be missed. This was where one of “The Omen” films was shot. It is a poor advertisement for the church. A young boy, travelling with his parents, seems happy enough. Suddenly he spots the passing spire of a cathedral. As the building looms into view, he is thrown into a rage. He foams at the mouth and tries to bite his mother. The negative connotations of this scene from the 1976 horror film have overshadowed Guildford cathedral for 30 years.
The Omen trailerwww.youtube.com/watch?v=3PuIBNLOeEU
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Post by tannis on Oct 3, 2009 13:27:19 GMT
UNDER THE ICE by Elizabeth Coatsworth
Who knows what's moving under the ice? Who knows what's moving along with the tide? Dark flows the river hidden from sight, Its currents are cold and swift and wide. Under the ice it darkly flows, But what is moving there with the tides, What life lies hidden — who knows? who knows?
~ from Story Parade, 1936, p.27.
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