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Post by Lori on Jul 31, 2003 23:04:21 GMT
It wouldn't take me long To tell you how to find it To tell you where we'll meet This little girl inside me Is retreating to her favourite place
Go into the garden Go under the ivy Under the leaves Away from the party Go right to the rose Go right to the white rose (For me)
I sit here in the thunder The green on the grey I feel it all around me And it's not easy for me To give away a secret It's not safe
But go into the garden Go under the ivy Under the leaves Away from the party Go right to the rose Go right to the white rose (For me)
It wouldn't take me long To tell you how to find it
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Post by lucagrella on Sept 16, 2003 15:38:09 GMT
Interesting...I was not aware there was a remastered version of Hounds of Love with songs added. When I (way back when) taped the album off of vinyl so I could listen to it in my car, I inserted Under Ivy (which was on the flip side of a 45 -- can't even remember which anymore) just before Cloudbusting on side 1, and it seemed to make what had felt like an imperfect album suddenly complete. I am glad to see that it has been included on the new version. I should note that a friend of mine at the time (who I've since lost contact with) who was a huge Kate Bush fan, hated Under Ivy and felt it was sacrilege for me to include it in my cassette version of Hounds of Love. But we pretty much disagreed on just about everything regarding Kate Bush... Hey, Steve L. of the lower east side in the 80s, if you're out there somewhere, drop me a line... Luca (known back then as Neil... )
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mizzshy
Reaching Out
"Oh darling, Make it go, Make it go away..."
Posts: 214
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Post by mizzshy on Apr 23, 2006 8:21:26 GMT
I love this... I wonder what it's about, because it doesn't seem to have an immediate meaning to me like other songs... Maybe it's about betrayal... That's the best I can come up with...
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Post by paul1574 on Apr 27, 2006 15:27:01 GMT
im glad this got onto hounds as its one of my fave songs by kate
i think its about secret love or even forbidden love carried on in secret as the song opens with directions on where to meet....
away from the party to a secret place she knew as a child
and she mentions how hard it is to keep the secret but theres an element of a test of his love as she goes first and is waiting there for him to arrive despite the thunder
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mizzshy
Reaching Out
"Oh darling, Make it go, Make it go away..."
Posts: 214
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Post by mizzshy on Apr 28, 2006 19:05:23 GMT
I like your explanation, paul. It sounds very poetic...
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Post by suntorytime on Jul 22, 2007 19:05:25 GMT
I love this... I wonder what it's about, because it doesn't seem to have an immediate meaning to me like other songs... Maybe it's about betrayal... That's the best I can come up with... I think you can interpret this song in many ways. But the other day I was reading The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a favourite of mine, and everything seemed to make perfect sense all of a sudden. In case you're not familiar with the story, The Secret Garden is about a little girl, Mary, who discovers a garden and keeps it a secret. The door to the garden is "under the ivy" and it is always referred to as "the door under the ivy". Inside the garden there are many wonderful things (including lots of roses, although their colour is never specified - I suppose they could be white if we wanted them to be). It quickly becomes Mary's favourite place. She only reveals the secret to a few close friends, and it is their secret alone and they try really hard to keep it that way. It's a bit of a magical world to them. The transition for the garden from grey to green is also a big point in the book. So maybe Kate was familiar with the story and it helped her inspiration? Also the "secret garden", or simply the garden, can stand for many things, namely the deepest of your heart and soul. It's hard to let people in it. Your thoughts, your true nature, is yours only until you let someone in your "secret". You need to really trust someone before you let them in your "garden". It's a pretty scary thing to do. What do you think? (By the way, there's a wonderful film of this story too. It's also called The Secret Garden, and Agnieszka Holland directed it.)
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Post by jean on Jul 27, 2007 17:48:12 GMT
Ah yes it's one of my favourites too Very nearly makes me cry! The lyrics just remind me of the way you can feel incredibly sad even in the middle of a brilliant night out and you, at some point in the night, need to slip away to your spot of refuge. I always have a period in the night where I feel desperately sad and have to go off for a bit away from the noise and fraudulent jollity! I just think of this when I hear lines such as "Under the leaves/Away from the party".
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Post by tannis on Jan 11, 2008 10:00:20 GMT
KATE on Under the Ivy: "It's very much a song about someone who is sneaking away from a party to meet someone elusively, secretly, and to possibly make love with them, or just to communicate, but it's secret, and it's something they used to do and that they won't be able to do again. It's about a nostalgic, revisited moment." DOUG: Is there any reason why it's so sad? KATE: "I think it's sad because it's about someone who is recalling a moment when perhaps they used to do it when they were innocent and when they were children, and it's something that they're having to sneak away to do privately now as adults." gaffa.org/dreaming/doug_int.htmlUnder the ivy bush One sits sighing...
Christina Rossetti
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Post by tannis on May 13, 2008 23:48:07 GMT
UNDER THE IVYKB: "One of my favourites is by Millais, The Huguenot. It's of a man going off to the wars being hugged to the breast of his lover. She's holding him to her by a scarf around his arm. It's very beautiful..." "What Kate Did Next" (1985)gaffa.org/reaching/i85_what.htmlA Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew's Day, Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge (1852) is a painting by John Everett Millais. The long title is usually abbreviated to A Huguenot[/color]. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d0/Huguenot.jpgThe painting depicts a pair of young lovers in an embrace. The familiar subject is given a dramatic twist because the "embrace" is in fact an attempt by the girl to get her beloved to wear a white armband, declaring his allegiance to Roman Catholicism. The young man gently pulls the armband off with the same hand with which he embraces the girl. The incident refers to the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572 when French Protestants (Huguenots) were massacred in Paris, leading to other massacres elsewhere in France. A small number of Protestants escaped from the city by wearing white armbands (wiki).
John Everett Millais's A Huguenot on St. Bartholomew's Day refusing to shield himself from danger by wearing a Roman Catholic badge is clearly a Pre-Raphaelite painting in its thorough and naturalistic attention to detail, but because of its subject matter, Millais makes certain compositional choices which, for a Pre-Raphaelite, are relatively unusual. First of all, Millais centers the painting very starkly on two human figures. As the title suggests, the man is a Huguenot, and by refusing to accept the Roman Catholic badge, he is potentially accepting physical harm, very possibly even death. His lover, the woman in the painting, tries to convince him to wear the badge, but he resists, even while they embrace and gaze into each other's eyes. Millais executes this subject, despite its vague religious and political overtones, with particular emphasis on the individual people in the painting. He emphasizes above all these two lovers lovingly in conflict with each other by compositionally framing the picture around the lovers and the one broken flower that has fallen near them — and by sternly separating these elements from the rest of the picture.
Millais separates the flower, which lays broken apart on the ground and on the man's shoe, from the other flowers in the painting, by placement and by color. www.victorianweb.org/painting/millais/paintings/bocher3.html
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Post by rosabelbelieve on May 14, 2008 0:13:48 GMT
^ A lovely painting, which I hadn't seen before. I can see why it's one of Kate's favorites.
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Post by tannis on May 14, 2008 1:28:44 GMT
I hadn't seen A Huguenot before, either. The foliage is beautifully realised... KATE BUSH and THE HUGUENOT
Do you think The Huguenot could have been the inspiration for the cover to THE DREAMING? ... On The Dreaming cover KaTe is attempting to pass the life-saving key to 'Mr Houdini'; and in A Huguenot, the girl is attempting to tie the life-saving Roman Catholic badge around her lover's arm. Both couples "embrace" their possible doom under a wall of ivy. The ivy, a symbol of immortality, provides hope of salvation and deliverance.JCB: "I thought that photographing Mr. and Mrs. Houdini on the banks of the Hudson River in a freezing wind had been a difficult assignment: the shot had required a long, long exposure and the wind was from the wrong direction, and when it was right, it kept shaking the tripod. However, the sedate, elegant brief for the cover of KBV had an element to it that all photographers are told to avoid working with at all cost: animals. Luckily, the dogs we wanted to use are friends of ours, so there was a good chance that they might put up with posing, keeping quiet and leaving each other alone. But only a chance..." gaffa.org/garden/jcb3.htmlCompare and Contrast:
A Huguenot, Millais, 1852upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d0/Huguenot.jpgThe Dreaming, Kate Bush, 1982 (Photography, JCB)gaffa.org/wow/k254.jpgOn November 22nd 1851, Millais wrote of his general design for the Huguenot painting:"It is a scene supposed to take place (as doubtless it did) on the eve of the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day. I shall have two lovers in the act of parting, the woman a Papist and the man a Protestant. The badge worn to distinguish the former from the latter was a white-scarf on the left arm. Many were base enough to escape murder by wearing it. The girl will be endeavouring to tie the handkerchief round the man's arm, so to save him; but holding his faith above his greatest worldly love, will be softly preventing her. I am in high spirits about the subject, as if is entirely my own, and I think contains the highest moral. It will be very quiet, and but slightly suggest the horror of a massacre. The figures will be talking against a secret-looking garden wall, which I have painted here." A lovely woman (Miss Ryan) sat for the lady in "The Huguenot," Mrs. George Hodgkinson, the artist's cousin, taking her place upon occasion as a model for the left arm of the figure. Alas for Miss Ryan! her beauty proved a fatal gift: she married an ostler, and her later history is a sad one. www.royalengineers.ca/LempriereHuguenot.html#top
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Post by rosabelbelieve on May 14, 2008 21:07:40 GMT
What a good connection. There is a striking similarity. The ivy, the embrace... and the idea of the woman trying to keep her lover safe reminds me of Night Of The Swallow as well as Houdini, where there is the tension between safety and danger, and ordinary life and adventure. And it's interesting that the ivy is a symbol of immortality. That does offer a hope for salvation and deliverance.
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Post by tannis on May 14, 2008 22:57:50 GMT
KB: "One of my favourites is by Millais, The Huguenot..."Maybe KaTe gives certain snippets of information away so that certain connections can be made. Like dropping breadcrumbs or leaving clues to buried treasure...
And, yes, The Huguenot does bring to mind Night Of The Swallow as well as Houdini...
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Adena
Moving
This time around we dance - we're chosen ones
Posts: 611
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Post by Adena on May 16, 2008 12:38:13 GMT
I used to sit under a big old tree in our garden with ivy on the wall behind on bad days, before we left that house. The moments I spent under that tree were some of my best, and having listened to Under The Ivy, I'm now crying remembering my quiet moments in our old garden. This song... oh, do I relate.
It's strange how, sitting here five years after I sat under the ivy myself, I still feel that same rush of emotion and sadness as in my early days. This is a truly beautiful song, and it highlights how wonderful sitting in a garden can be.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on May 18, 2008 2:32:18 GMT
It is such a beautiful song. And it always gives me a great feeling of sanctuary, and the retreat from the 'party' of life to something quieter and more essential. Thank you for sharing your personal connections with it, as well.
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