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Post by rosabelbelieve on Dec 19, 2007 5:33:58 GMT
In Hello Earth, our heroine comes to know her place in the universe. A very transcendent song. She has floated far from the earth on an ocean that becomes the sky, wheeling with the cycles of constellations, the cosmical, beautiful 'music of the spheres.' She sees clearly the arising and calming of the storm within and without her, and becomes a sort of starry prophetesss, a seer transcending the smallnesses of herself. A universal songstress, singing out her tale of life and death full of storms and ocean. She can see the exquisite fragility of the earth from her ascendency, can see the intricate delicate interconnectedness of all life. She knows now the immense power of what the alchemists called imaginatio, the power of imagination to truly partake in the everchanging story of existence. (With just my heart and my mind, I can be driving, driving home... ) She can relive the storm that carried her here. She sees the birth of the tempest, murderer of calm, and "watching storms, start to form over America.." But here she reaches the limit of her mortal power. She can't do anything, just watch them swing with the wind out to sea. She has the power of sight, the power to glimpse the exquisitely fragile workings of life and fate, but not the power to change things. She tries to warn people, but she is so far away... This leaves her questioning desperately "Why did I go? Why did I go?" What is the purpose behind all that I've gone through? She reaches the zenith of her sight here, as the darkness of the chorus seeps around her. To transcend this limit is to transcend body and mind and even the human soul. Maybe this leads to the complete transcendesnce of everything that is death. Deeper, deeper, somewhere in the darkness, there is a light. Go to sleep little earth... She is not a constellation, a sort of goddess pinned allseeingly in the stars. Maybe death could in some way place there, as sometimes it was in mythology. But if she is to live, she must sink away from this mystical, dreamlike sight, from her immense, almost godlike detachment, and shrink back into her part in the dance of life. Maybe this also means drowning, and giving herself up to the deepness of the ocean. Maybe it means awakening from her magnificent trance and returning to the humble, beautiful, smallnesses and joys and sufferings that make up an everyday life. Either way, it seems she follows the light in the darkness, into the morning fog....
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Post by tannis on Jul 25, 2008 19:18:59 GMT
Date: Sun, 24 Nov 85 01:03 MST Subject: Miami Vice/Hello Earth Unfortunately, the chorus from "Hello Earth" was not original with Hounds of Love. It was used in the 1979 Werner Herzog film "Nosferatu, the Vampyre". I'm not sure who originally wrote it, the music in Nosferatu was credited to Wagner, Gounod, and Popul Vuh. Hounds of Love: The Ninth Wavegaffa.org/dreaming/tnw_song.htmlNosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (Hello Earth)www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjK22UFiToE&feature=relatedin this remarkable scene we can hear a choral passage re-recorded later by Kate Bush in her song "Hello Earth"
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Post by tannis on Aug 1, 2008 18:55:24 GMT
Go to sleep little Earth...
GRIFFITH: At last, with easy roads, he came to Leicester, Lodged in the abbey; where the reverend abbot, With all his covent, honourably received him; To whom he gave these words, 'O, father abbot, An old man, broken with the storms of state, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye; Give him a little earth for charity!' So went to bed; where eagerly his sickness Pursued him still: and, three nights after this, About the hour of eight, which he himself Foretold should be his last, full of repentance, Continual meditations, tears, and sorrows, He gave his honours to the world again, His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace. KATHARINE: So may he rest; his faults lie gently on him! ~ The Life of King Henry the Eighth, Act 4, Scene 2
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Aug 1, 2008 19:47:13 GMT
I was listening to this song last night, and thinking about how the 'little earth' might represent the soul. This song has a universal scope and magnitude, with the protagonist's panoramic and prophetic view of the stars and the ocean. The first verses really show the macrocosm, the cosmos - and the last verses seem to show the microcosm, the heroine's soul tired and adrift in the celestial ocean, and maybe ready to sink back into its source. Interesting connections with Shakespeare again, Tannis.
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Post by tannis on Aug 1, 2008 22:31:11 GMT
I was listening to this song last night, and thinking about how the 'little earth' might represent the soul. This song has a universal scope and magnitude, with the protagonist's panoramic and prophetic view of the stars and the ocean. The first verses really show the macrocosm, the cosmos - and the last verses seem to show the microcosm, the heroine's soul tired and adrift in the celestial ocean, and maybe ready to sink back into its source. Interesting connections with Shakespeare again, Tannis. Thank you, Rosa... Space signals; lost in space; lost in the water; an out of body/mind experience; terra firma; radio warnings; The Tempest; letting go; Just look at it go! ... Why did I go? ... Go to sleep little Earth... Hello Earth really does have a universal scope and magnitude, with the protagonist becoming panoramic, with prophetic views of stars and sea. And I agree, the 'little earth' does seem to represent the heroine's spirit sinking back into the infinite spiritual cycle of its source.
The unconscious, dreaming waterworld flows through KaTe's work... Yes, you are just as water... Telling me about the sea... Before you know I'll be over the water... You hit the water... We pull you from the water! ... The Ninth Wave... The Fog... It starts to rain...
Hello Earth also brings to mind Running Up That Hill...With just my heart and my mind I can be driving, Driving home, And you asleep On the seat...
And if I only could, I'd make a deal with God, And I'd get him to swap our places, Be running up that road, Be running up that hill, Be running up that building...And The Ninth Wave brings to mind Joni Mitchell's Blue (1971)...Up there's a heaven Down there's a town Blackness everywhere and little lights shine...Blue here is a shell for you Inside you'll hear a sigh A foggy lullaby There is your song from me...KB: "In some ways I thought of it as a lullaby for the Earth. And it was the idea of turning the whole thing upside down and looking at it from completely above. You know, that image of if you were lying in water at night and you were looking up at the sky all the time, I wonder if you wouldn't get the sense of as the stars were reflected in the water, you know, a sense of like, you could be looking up at water that's reflecting the stars from the sky that you're in. And the idea of them looking down at the earth and seeing these storms forming over America and moving around the globe, and they have this like huge fantasticly overseeing view of everything, everything is in total perspective. And way, way down there somewhere there's this little dot in the ocean that is them." Radio 1, Classic Albums interview: Hounds Of Love, 1991/2gaffa.org/reaching/ir85_r1.htmlIn a highway service station Over the month of June Was a photograph of the earth Taken coming back from the moon And you couldn't see a city On that marbled bowling ball Or a forest or a highway Or me here least of all You couldn't see these cold water restrooms Or this baggage overload Westbound and rolling taking refuge in the roads
~ Refuge Of The Roads, by Joni Mitchell (Hejira, 1976)The United States achieved the first manned landing on Earth's Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission commanded by Neil Armstrong. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong, accompanied by Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin, landed the lunar module Eagle on the surface of the Moon. Armstrong and Aldrin spent a day on the surface of the Moon before returning to Earth. A total of six such manned moon landings were carried out between 1969 and 1972.He stood looking thru the lace At the face on the conquered moon ~ Willy by Joni Mitchell (Ladies of the Canyon, 1970)
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Post by Barry SR Gowing on Aug 1, 2008 23:00:35 GMT
It's odd ... at first glance I might have thought this song was told from the perspective of an astronaut: Hello, Earth Hello, Earth With just one hand held up high I can blot you out Out of sight
Hello, Earth Hello, Earth Watching storms Start to form Over America Can't do anything Just watch them swing With the wind Out to seaAn astronaut looking down at the Earth from space would be able to blot it out with one hand and also watch storms forming over America. Of course, she or he wouldn't be able to drive home in their car However, some of the lyric seems to be from the perspective of the weather: All you sailors ("Get out of the waves! Get out of the water!") All life-saversand Go to sleep, little Earth I was there at the birth Out of the cloudburst The head of the tempestAnd other parts seem to be from the point of a view from a person on the ground looking up into space: I can be driving Driving home And you asleep On the seat
I get out of my car Step into the night And look up at the sky And there's something bright Travelling fast Just look at it go! Just look at it go! Very curious. Some of the lyric seems to be from the perspective of a person on the ground, and other parts seem to be seen from a person (or something) looking down from on high. --Paul--
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Aug 1, 2008 23:08:08 GMT
Yes, I've noticed that, too. I think part of what the many viewpoints do is give a sense of omniscience to the heroine's sight. After enduring so much terror in the water, and coming up against her own limits so many times, she can see forever and everywhere. And Tannis, yes, water is so important in Kate's work. It sort of seems to symbolize the source and end of all life, to me - the mystical realm of birth and death, where all signals originate and where they all ultimately dissolve into eternal silence.
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Post by tannis on Aug 2, 2008 1:50:28 GMT
Yes, I've noticed that, too. I think part of what the many viewpoints do is give a sense of omniscience to the heroine's sight. After enduring so much terror in the water, and coming up against her own limits so many times, she can see forever and everywhere. Yes, Paul, Hello Earth is a bit of a "Space Oddity"... Hello, Earth ("Hello Earth") Hello, Earth ("Hello Earth")The song's introduction ("Columbia now at nine times the speed of sound...") is communication between Nasa and the Columbia space shuttle. Previously, on The Ninth Wave, we have heard deep sea submarine sonar; and now we are hearing human communication from deep space. The stage of The Ninth Wave is becoming wider and wider; an ever-increasing circle, taking on cosmic dimensions and the vast perimeters of human endeavour.
Each of the opening "Hello Earth" calls are echoed by a voice seemingly from space. A strange synchronicity? The shuttle talking to Nasa oblivious of our protagonist? Or perhaps they are used to indicate that our protagonist is still of the human race.
I imagine that our protagonist, whether floating in the sea or hallucinating from a view looking down on the earth, makes the two opening "Hello Earth" calls. It is just her and Nature in personal communication... With just one hand held up high I can blot you out Out of sight..."Out of sight" is also out of mind. Our protagonist is wanting to 'make it go, make it go away'. The stress of the situation gets too much and she regresses. Regression is a defense mechanism leading to the temporary reversion of the ego to an earlier stage of development rather than handling unacceptable impulses in a more adult way. The defense mechanism of regression, in psychoanalytic theory, occurs when thoughts are temporarily pushed back out of our consciousness and into our unconscious. Regressive behavior can be simple and harmless. A person may revert to an old, usually immature behavior to ventilate feelings of frustration. For example, an adult saying "I want to throw water balloons" is temporarily regressing to childlike behavior.
So, in Hello Earth, playing peek-a-boo with little earth suggests a stress-induced regression. [The Big Sky (video and song) also suggests elements of regression; and so does Hounds of Love.]Peek-a-boo Peek-a-boo, little Earth...Peek-a-boo is a game played with babies. In the game, one (child, teenager, or adult) hides their face, pops back into the baby's view, and says — to the baby's amusement — Peekaboo! I see you! Peekaboo is thought by developmental psychologists to demonstrate an infant's inability to understand object permanence. Object permanence is the term used to describe the awareness that objects continue to exist even when they are no longer visible. Without object permanence, it is "Out of sight, out of mind!"
The protagonist next uses her imagination to free herself from her situation. With just her heart and her mind she can transport herself to a visualized better place. A meditation... A flash-back... With just my heart and my mind I can be driving Driving home And you asleep On the seat
I get out of my car Step into the night And look up at the sky And there's something bright Travelling fast Just look at it go! Just look at it go!Maybe, in her dream visualization she sees a satellite tracking the night sky. Tracking storms and bringing her back into the immediate situation. 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…”Hello, Earth. Hello, Earth.
Watching storms Start to form Over America. Can't do anything. Just watch them swing With the wind Out to sea.[/i] Maybe at this point she is reliving the panic of radio emergency and the storm that eventually took her and that has put her in this situation. Or maybe she has left the human race to become something higher, greater, cosmic. After all, the second set of "Hello Earth" calls are not echoed back. Hence, as Paul noted, it could be that some of the lyric is from the perspective of the weather or even a Ghostly Other...Go to sleep, little Earth. I was there at the birth, Out of the cloudburst, The head of the tempest. Murderer! Murderer of calm. Why did I go? Why did I go?And is this her tale before she drowns/disappears without a trace?Go to sleep little Earth...
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Post by Al Truest on Aug 2, 2008 2:11:42 GMT
I will re read a thread @ Gaffaweb about the Fastnet - Force 10 book and the references to the fleet of yachts caught in violent storms over America. "Hello Earth" and Dream of Sheep" seem to allude to this tragic sea accident. Weather reports from satellite sources had made news in the U.K. before the Ninth Wave was written.
There are several water related fears and phobias in the imagery of the Ninth Wave - and without research tonight, I need to remember what the 9th wave represents in mythology and pagan lore. 'too tired right now - sorry...
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Post by tannis on Aug 2, 2008 14:29:18 GMT
On August 11, 1979, 303 yachts began the 600-mile Fastnet Race from the Isle of Wight, round the Fastnet Rock off the Irish Coast and back to Plymouth. A small depression, that had started in the American Mid-West, deepened at a catastrophic rate and hit the fleet in the early hours of the morning. By the time the winds subsided, 15 people were dead, 24 crews had abandoned their yachts and five craft had sunk. 136 sailors were rescued and just 85 boats finished the race.
The gale swept over Ireland; the wind kept increasing; and the coastguards knew they had a Force 10 gale on their hands. Flares, maydays over marine radio frequencies, and distressed yachts; three thousands sailors were caught in the storm, and huge waves threw sailors overboard and rolled ships completely over. The lifeboat men stationed in the Irish Republic and Western Britain, and airforce and naval officers faced a major search and rescue operation. First light came slowly. By 5:30, Cornwall was vibrating with the whirl of blades and the whine of turbine engines. Helicopters set off, searching the broiling water for yachts in trouble. A Nimrod airplane (its military function to trace submarines) held radios and tracking devices, picking up panic stricken voices from all over the Western Approaches. The distress calls overlapped with each other and gave confusingly similar messages. For a while, only good luck brought the rescuers to the yachts in trouble. Many crews wanted to abandon ship. But the menacing ship masts meant helicopters could only pick people out of the water. One sailor jumped and swam, but then took twenty minutes struggling with thirty-foot waves to secure the rescue harness, before being lifted up secured only by his hands.
"Fastnet Force 10" by J Rousmaniere (1980)
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Post by tannis on Aug 2, 2008 14:33:52 GMT
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 94 13:06:51 PDT Subject: The Ninth Wave
A New Analysis of "The Ninth Wave"
Out of the cloud burst the head of the tempest Murderer, Murderer of calm Why did I go? Why did I go? "Hello Earth"
It's always been clear to us that "The Ninth Wave" is about someone who's been in a terrible accident at sea and is trying to survive in the water. But these words had always troubled me -- these are the words of someone who had a choice when making the journey. Usually this isn't the case. We travel because we must, for the most part... It then occurred to me that the words of the protagonist in "The Ninth Wave" are those of a racing sailor. This is the introduction to 'Fastnet: Force 10' :
What began as a six hundred-mile sail in fine weather around a lighthouse off the Irish coast became, for twenty-seven hundred men and women in 303 yachts, a terrifying ordeal as one of the most vicious summer gales in the twentieth century swept east from the American Great Plains to trap the Fastnet race fleet in the shallow water of the Western Approaches to Britain. The worst disaster in the one-hundred year history of ocean yacht racing, the 1979 Fastnet race is a startling reminder of man's vulnerability before the elements. As the official inquiry into the calamity concluded, "the sea showed that it can be a deadly enemy and those who go to sea for pleasure must do so in the full knowledge that they may encounter dangers of the highest order" ... Worse yet, six men were lost overboard and swept away when their safety harnesses broke. Nine others drowned or died of hypothermia in the cold water and air, either on board yachts or near life rafts that had capsized. In all, twenty-four crews abandonded their yachts, five of which sank. One hundred and thirty-six men and women were saved from sinking yachts, life rafts and the water itself by heroic helicopter crews, commercial and naval seamen, and fellow yachtsmen, and seventy yachtsmen were towed or escorted to safety by lifeboats... The Fastnet gale, however, showed how isolated and helpless we all can be. Human contact was difficult and and communication was impossible in the shrieking wind and and pounding seas. Even the security of the cabins was false, as galley stoves, tins of food, sails, and bodies flew from side to side below with every lurch and roll. While offshore racing had always been respected as a challenge, and, at worst, a risk, few people caught in the gale would have previously thought the sport to be actually dangerous. The realization that they, their shipmates, and their competitors were in danger dawned on the most unlucky sailors during the gale, and on many of the survivors after the storm passed and the fight for survival ended... The storm was born [on August 9] in the northern Great Plains of the United States, where hot air over baking wheat fields frequently tangles with cold Canadian air to produce tornadoes and violent thunderstorms. On Friday [August 10]... seventy-eight boats boats competeting in the J/24 sailboat class were swept by unpredictable, violent gusts from the south-west and north-west. The boats finished the race under a black sky and made it safely into the protected harbor of Newport just before the Coast Guard issued an alert warning for all sailors to seek shelter. Moving east at speeds as high as fifty knots, the swirling air was over Nova Scotia at about the time the Fastnet race started on Saturday [August 11], and was in the open Atlantic a day later. In the predawn hours of Monday, August 13, the dangerous little depression changed course and headed northeast... British forecasters realized at about noon on Monday that Low Y [the Fastnet gale], swinging around Low X, would sweep across southern Ireland and the Western Approaches that night (Rousmaniere, 1980; Cited in Gaffa).
The Ninth Wave: "Fastnet:Force 10"gaffa.org/dreaming/tnw_ff10.html
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Post by tannis on Aug 2, 2008 14:46:19 GMT
Gaffa speculates that the 1979 Fastnet Race might have been the inspiration for The Ninth Wave, and that "Fastnet Force 10" by J Rousmaniere (1980) seems like the sort of thing that Kate would read. Now, maybe all of this is coincidence, but one thing is for sure, KaTe went over to Ireland to work on The Ninth Wave...KT: The next stage was recording all the pianos. The home piano on the demos was an "upright", and not good enough quality for professional recording, and so had to be replaced by a grand piano. Some of these tracks would be taken to Ireland to do some work on... The next stage was some Fairlight, and concentration on the tracks that would possibly go to Ireland within a few weeks' time... During the trip to Ireland, I hoped to write the lyrics for as many of the songs as possible, a lot of it being little odds and ends, which are the hardest to get, I suppose because you're so limited fitting in a couple of lines within a context, rather than creating it from scratch. However, the main reason for going was to work in Windmill Lane with Bill Whelan... One of the tracks we worked on was inspired by a discovery that Paddy had made of a fascinating Greek ceremony that he managed to get on tape... We consumed the information from Pad's tape as much as we could. I'd only finished writing the song the day before on Bill's piano while his wife brought me cups of tea and biscuits (thank you, Mrs. Whelan)... It really is fun working over there... Kate's KBC article, Issue 17, About Hounds Of Lovegaffa.org/garden/kate19.html
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Post by tannis on Aug 2, 2008 17:49:40 GMT
When I am a man I will be an astronaut And find Peter Pan...The message which can be heard immediately before the start of the song is as follows:
1. voice: "Columbia now at nine times the speed of sound." 2. voice: "Roger that, Dan, I've got a solid TACAN locked on, uh, TACAN two and three.[?]" 3. voice: "The, uh, tracking data, map data and pre-planned trajectory are all one line on the block." 4. voice: "Show your block decode..."
Parts of this message were deciphered by IED, Kevin Carosso and Weiland Willker. Note: "TACAN" is a military navigational system, also used by the space shuttle. Assuming that the recordings are legitimate clips of communications with the NASA Space Shuttle, they must derive from mission STS-8, launched August 30, 1983, which was the only flight sufficiently prior to the 1985 release of the album including anyone onboard named "Dan" -- namely Daniel Brandenstein, who as pilot of the mission would be the person most likely to report flight data to the ground. That mission was flown on the orbiter Challenger, not Columbia.
THE GAFFAWEB DICTIONARY: Hello Earthgaffa.org/diction/list.html"That mission was flown on the orbiter Challenger, not Columbia" ... And IMHO, the Hello Earth message definitely says "Columbia".
Hounds Of Love was released on 20 September 1985. At that time, Space Shuttle Columbia had flown 6 flights. Dan Brandenstein flew four space shuttle missions, but only flew with Columbia once, and that was STS-32 (January 9-20, 1990).
[On January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members. On February 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry over Texas, on its 28th mission, killing all seven crew members.]
So is the Hello Earth message a legitimate communication with the NASA Space Shuttle?
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Post by tannis on Aug 2, 2008 18:06:15 GMT
Not Waving but Drowning
"Not Waving but Drowning" is a poem by Stevie Smith published in 1957. Its short, dark story concerns a man whose thrashing – whilst drowning in the sea – is mistaken for waving by people on the shore. It is also clear that this is a metaphor for any situation in which a cry for help is misinterpreted or ignored by friends and family. Within a few months after writing this poem, Stevie Smith attempted suicide.
Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.
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Post by Barry SR Gowing on Aug 2, 2008 19:19:36 GMT
1. voice: "Columbia now at nine times the speed of sound." 2. voice: "Roger that, Dan, I've got a solid TACAN locked on, uh, TACAN two and three.[?]"...Assuming that the recordings are legitimate clips of communications with the NASA Space Shuttle, they must derive from mission STS-8, launched August 30, 1983, which was the only flight sufficiently prior to the 1985 release of the album including anyone onboard named "Dan" -- namely Daniel Brandenstein, who as pilot of the mission would be the person most likely to report flight data to the ground. That mission was flown on the orbiter Challenger, not Columbia... I can answer this riddle. As well as the seven astronauts on the shuttle, there is also a "support crew" of astronauts who stay on the ground. One of these astronauts will be designated "CAPCOM" (or Capsule Communicator) for the mission. The CAPCOM is generally the only person on the ground who talks to the shuttle crew. Consequently the comments by CAPCOM will appear in any communications with the shuttle. Was Daniel Brandenstein ever CAPCOM for a Columbia mission? Yes, he was. Here is his CV: www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/brandenstein-dc.htmlHe was CAPCOM for the second shuttle mission, STS-2, which was a Columbia mission in 1981. --Paul--
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