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Post by rosabelbelieve on Dec 18, 2007 21:57:45 GMT
One of my very favorite songs. I agree with Al Truest that it really is a journey from the very quotidian, domestic world of washing clothes and mopping floors to a sublime reverie of being in the ocean, and with a now absent loved one. This sort of alchemy of very ordinary things into a mystical, trancelike vision is to me almost the essence of art. IMO, Art takes the small rythms of life and infuses them with something sacred, and transcendent. A very beautiful thing, I think. Mrs. Bartolozzi embodies this marvelously. Really, Aerial as a whole embodies this marvelously. It's a very natural and mystical album for me, full of circadian rythms and the magically intricate and harmonious cycles of the most quiet, ever-present things, like birdsong and washing clothes. In my opinion, her masterpiece.
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Post by Al Truest on Dec 18, 2007 23:18:04 GMT
One of my very favorite songs...it really is a journey from the very quotidian, domestic world of washing clothes and mopping floors to a sublime reverie of being in the ocean, and with a now absent loved one. This sort of alchemy of very ordinary things into a mystical, trancelike vision is to me almost the essence of art. IMO, Art takes the small rythms of life and infuses them with something sacred, and transcendent. A very beautiful thing, I think. Mrs. Bartolozzi embodies this marvelously. Really, Aerial as a whole embodies this marvelously. It's a very natural and mystical album for me, full of circadian rythms and the magically intricate and harmonious cycles of the most quiet, ever-present things, like birdsong and washing clothes. In my opinion, her masterpiece. I like the way you think. Well said.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Dec 18, 2007 23:55:41 GMT
Thank you! I'm hoping to post a lot more song interpretations here, in time.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Feb 7, 2008 2:55:18 GMT
After doing a lot of work with The Dreaming, and finding the whole Hermes/Hestia thing, I'm actually beginning to the Mrs. Bartolozzi has a lot in common with Houdini. Hestia fits perfectly with the character of Mrs. Bartolozzi, as the goddess of the hearth and home. And the element of grief and the departed loved one is also similar, with her slipping in and out of a reverie of the ocean and of the past. It's such a beautiful song, as well... So we have Hestia, grieving for a lost loved one. Maybe she is trying to find some solace in the comforting cycles of cleaning the house. I wonder if the washing machine might be a symbol for her desire simply to be released from her pain, cleansed of all the memories that bring her back to him, all the thoughts that stain her with sorrow. Like in GOoMH... I wash the panes... I clean the stains... Washing clothes is a sort of emotional catharsis for her, an attempt at scouring herself of ghosts. She wants to renew herself from the past- she wants everything to "sparkle." But this simple task sends her into a sort of reverie, a trance in which she is swept to the ocean, the waves going in and out, the surf unceasing. Water is such a recurrent symbol in Kate's work- and in this song a very complex one. It is both her hope to cleanse herself of sorrow, and the deep, intense, mystical, drowning ocean of memory and unconsciousness. Both the water of rebirth and death, of forgetfulness and memory, of her immense pain and the possibility of healing. Both her tears and he life giving aqua vitae. He is standing right behind her... In her emotional world, he is very much, painfully alive, present in all that she does- inextricable from the clothes on the washing line, in the deep, tidal patterns and waters of the sea. As I said earlier, I do think this song is about the inseparable weaving of the mundane and the sublime- the strange, mystical, shimmering alchemy and oneness of all things in their inextricable entwinement with something very deep, something miraculous and sacred, even magical, that is at the centre and marrow of all life. (The centre of the universe? A bit like all the things you guys were talking about in the Universal Code thread... That is a magnificent thread, BTW. I wish I had been here when I could've commented on it. In Mrs. Bartolozzi, it is not a light, joyful connection, but it is an insistent one, pulling her towards the sorrowful and dark waters of the mind. But I think in the end it is something that heals her. This is a very intensely emotional song. And yet there is none of the anger, the destructiveness, that Kate explored so often with her earlier work. Mrs. Bartolozzi seems to me to have accepted her lot. She does not pull herself away from the water. Hmmm.. The Dreaming, check... The Ninth Wave, check.. Looks like I'm on to Aerial.
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Post by Al Truest on Feb 7, 2008 4:29:02 GMT
You actually read the 'Universal Code" thread? Now I really am enamoured. Please feel free to dig the thread up. I am more than willing to add the evolution of my thoughts since then.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Feb 7, 2008 4:31:39 GMT
Yes, I did! I really want to dig it up- but last time I looked it was locked. Any possible remedy to that?
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Post by Al Truest on Feb 7, 2008 4:37:16 GMT
Yes, I did! I really want to dig it up- but last time I looked it was locked. Any possible remedy to that? ^ Done, I look forward to your thoughts. 'must sleep now...
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Feb 7, 2008 4:48:24 GMT
Thank you so much! I will definitely post on it... though tomorrow, as you're right, thought requires adequate sleep.
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Post by tannis on Feb 7, 2008 6:33:11 GMT
Maybe she is trying to find some solace in the comforting cycles of cleaning the house. I wonder if the washing machine might be a symbol for her desire simply to be released from her pain, cleansed of all the memories that bring her back to him, all the thoughts that stain her with sorrow. Like in GOoMH... Washing clothes is a sort of emotional catharsis for her, an attempt at scouring herself of ghosts. She wants to renew herself from the past- she wants everything to "sparkle"... "They traipsed mud all over the house..." Yes, as we watch them going ’round and ’round, there are frightening comparisons with GOoMH (house/hall/wash/clean/stains), etc. I took my mop and my bucket And I cleaned and I cleaned...LADY MACBETH: There's still a spot here... (rubbing her hands) Come out, damned spot! Out, I command you! One, two. OK, it's time to do it now.—Hell is murky!—Nonsense, my lord, nonsense! You are a soldier, and yet you are afraid? Why should we be scared, when no one can lay the guilt upon us?—But who would have thought the old man would have had so much blood in him? ... The thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?—What, will my hands never be clean?—No more of that, my lord, no more of that. You'll ruin everything by acting startled like this... I still have the smell of blood on my hand. All the perfumes of Arabia couldn't make my little hand smell better. Oh, oh, oh! ... Wash your hands. Put on your nightgown. Don't look so frightened. I tell you again, Banquo is buried. He cannot come out of his grave... To bed, to bed! There's a knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What's done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed! Exit Doctor: Will she go to bed now? Gentlewoman: Yes, right away. Doctor: Evil rumors are going around. Unnatural acts will cause supernatural things to happen. People with guilty and deranged minds will confess their secrets to their pillows as they sleep. This woman needs a priest more than a doctor. God forgive us all! (to the waiting- GENTLEWOMAN) Look after her. Remove anything she might hurt herself with. Watch her constantly. And now, good-night. She has bewildered my mind and amazed my eyes. I have an opinion, but I don't dare to say it out loud. Gentlewoman: Good night, good doctor. Exeunt ~ The Tragedy of Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1Q: 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.htmlMrs. Bartolozzi's house has been violated... "All over the hall carpet I took my mop and my bucket And I clean and I clean..." = an intimate and personal feminine metaphor; hall = an intimate Freudian sexual metaphor (and likewise the jug metaphor of 'A Coral Room': "My mother and her little brown jug/It held her milk..."); and the washing machine is also intimately feminine and womb-like."It took hours and hours to scrub it out..."Lady Macbeth will go mad trying to scrub away blood on her guilty hands that only she can see; and 'scrubber' is sexually violent and derogative, implying 'a woman of easy virtue or disrepute'.Maybe the 'washing song' is a descent into madness à la Ophelia? ...Washing Machine Stands For Comfort... Mrs B. could even be the mother of MSFC cleaning up after her son's arrest; and Ariel is the name of a UK range of laundry detergents!"Out of the corner of my eye I think I see you standing outside..." "But..."Thought is a constant energy wave; and Mrs B experiences a synchronicity between the washing cycle and the ocean tidal rhythm. Her daydream (or nightmare?) flirts with sexual metaphor, reaching an ambivalent climax.Ocean tides are controlled by the moon--a symbol of intuition and the unconscious--and dreams of oceans are often symbolic of the same. Turbulent seas may indicate emotional upset or deep, uncomfortable stirrings in the unconscious. Calm, rhythmic seas may be symbols of a relaxed state of being, of being in touch with your intuition, or of being in harmony with the Universe. Dreams of oceans can also indicate a deep emotional longing. Wild fish swimming in schools can symbolize cooperation or familial harmony. Seeing small fish can mean sadness and dissatisfaction. And Freud of course held that small fish represented the male sperm! ...... "Oh when it rained and it rained..."Housewife by Anne Sexton, 1962
Some women marry houses. It's another kind of skin; it has a heart, a mouth, a liver and bowel movements. The walls are permanent and pink. See how she sits on her knees all day, faithfully washing herself down. Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonah into their fleshy mothers. A woman is her mother. That's the main thing. EDIT:"My blouse wrapping itself around your trousers..." "My skirt floating up around my waist..."Or perhaps the song deals with a woman living (or drowning) in the aftermath of having been raped ('rained', 'traipsed', 'scrub', 'hall', 'mop and bucket'). She is on her own, washing her and her supportive partner's clothes. But she is too far out, and not waving but drowning. Life has become deep and dark, with sex uncomfortably placed. The uncanny shirt, both familiar and strange, is momentarily terrifying, threatening a repeat of the past. But rational reassurance kicks in. The shirt is waving. It has been drowned, tumbled and hanged, but it is alive, clean and waving! This contrasting image starkly mirrors Mrs. Bartolozzi's profound and drowning sense of confusion.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Feb 8, 2008 2:25:19 GMT
Tannis, where do you find all these symbolism things? They're really fascinating. I like the poem, too- interesting connections with the song.
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Post by tannis on Feb 8, 2008 11:16:35 GMT
We know that KB likes the idea of making the musical and subject matter at odds. The play between music and subject, creating a light rabbit out of a dark hat, is part of the magic and the illusion. And I am sure KB is very particular in her song-writing creativity - her choice of symbols, allusions, attention to verbs, etc. The phrase 'was written quickly' is pretty formulaic. Her publicity on 'Lyra' says it "took about 10 days to do". But I suspect this is all defensive pessimism. On the fascinating symbolism of things, try internet art history sites, dream symbol interpretation sites, a book on symbols (The Myth of the Goddess, Cashford, is especially good), etc. And to unpack a word you need a good thesaurus. On Mrs B...'Mrs. Bartolozzi' is a disturbing song, telling several women's stories.Mark: "There's a journey that goes on in that song I don't know where it leads... very sensual sounding it almost gets sexual sounding... if the waves were different kind of waves. Or am I reading too much into it? There's one place where your skirt is up around the waist, and I was sort of reminded of the cover of 'Never Forever', the drawing of you lifting your skirt and all these fairies and goblins emerging from under it." Kate: (Laughs) "I still can't look at that without laughing!" - gaffa.org/reaching/iv06_bbc2_Mark_Radcliff_Talking_with_Kate.html(...on NFE cover, see below). KB: "Some of my friends loved it, others thought it was a funny interlude, and others didn’t feel comfortable either they thought it was about the disguise of a crime or it was too personal. But it’s not me in particular." KB: "...I think actually it's one of the heaviest songs I've ever written." THE WIFEBEATER by Anne Sexton, 1972There will be mud on the carpet tonight and blood in the gravy as well. The wifebeater is out, the childbeater is out eating soil and drinking bullets from a cup. He strides back and forth in front of my study window chewing little red pieces of my heart. His eyes flash like a birthday cake and he makes bread out of rock. Yesterday he was walking like a man in the world. He was upright and conservative but somehow evasive, somehow contagious. Yesterday he built me a country and laid out a shadow where I could sleep but today a coffin for the madonna and child, today two women in baby clothes will be hamburg. With a tongue like a razor he will kiss, the mother, the child, and we three will color the stars black in memory of his mother who kept him chained to the food tree or turned him on and off like a water faucet and made women through all these hazy years the enemy with a heart of lies. Tonight all the red dogs lie down in fear and the wife and daughter knit into each other until they are killed. KB: "I like the idea of... clothes are...very interesting things, aren't they? Because they say such an enormous amount about the person that wears them. They have a little bit of that person all over them, little bits of skin cells and...what you wear says a lot about who you are, and who you think you are... So I think clothes, in themselves are very interesting. And then it was the idea of this woman, who's kind of sitting there looking at all the washing going around, and she's got this new washing machine, and the idea of these clothes, sort of tumbling around in the water, and then the water becomes the sea and the clothes...and the sea...and the washing machine and the kitchen... I just thought it was an interesting idea to play with..." - gaffa.org/reaching/iv05_bbc2_kate_on_Ken_Bruce_Show.htmlCLOTHES by Anne Sexton, 1974Put on a clean shirt before you die, some Russian said. Nothing with drool, please, no egg spots, no blood, no sweat, no sperm. You want me clean, God, so I'll try to comply. The hat I was married in, will it do? White, broad, fake flowers in a tiny array. It's old-fashioned, as stylish as a bedbug, but is suits to die in something nostalgic. And I'll take my painting shirt washed over and over of course spotted with every yellow kitchen I've painted. God, you don't mind if I bring all my kitchens? They hold the family laughter and the soup. For a bra (need we mention it?), the padded black one that my lover demeaned when I took it off. He said, "Where'd it all go?" And I'll take the maternity skirt of my ninth month, a window for the love-belly that let each baby pop out like an apple, the water breaking in the restaurant, making a noisy house I'd like to die in. For underpants I'll pick white cotton, the briefs of my childhood, for it was my mother's dictum that nice girls wore only white cotton. If my mother had lived to see it she would have put a WANTED sign up in the post office for the black, the red, the blue I've worn. Still, it would be perfectly fine with me to die like a nice girl smelling of Clorox and Duz. Being sixteen-in-the-pants I would die full of questions. "Women are discovering Clorox does what enzymes can't!"Clorox Bleach Commercial, 1970. - www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCQpAnQQOHk"It'll make Paul's dirty work shirts come out as looking as clean as this! Paul thinks I'm being pretty smart when I buy products like Duz. So do I!"DUZ Dishwashing Soap Commercial, 1972. - www.youtube.com/watch?v=csxGz7ziASk
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Feb 8, 2008 16:11:18 GMT
On the fascinating symbolism of things, try internet art history sites, dream symbol interpretation sites, a book on symbols (The Myth of the Goddess, Cashford, is especially good), etc. And to unpack a word you need a good thesaurus. LOL, I'm no stranger to a good thesaurus- I have about three, and I read them for fun! ;D I'll have to check out that book. It looks like a good one.
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Post by tannis on Feb 9, 2008 11:12:20 GMT
Hello Rosabelbelieve, I like your 'Delius (Song of Summer)' avatar. Delius’s Song of Summer was the swan-song of the aging syphilitic and blind composer. "Light and dark, good and bad. Both types of emotions flow out of Kate Bush and into her songs. Visually, it's all there on the sleeve of Never For Ever. Nick Price's Hieronymus Bosch-style cover shows a confused mass of bats and swans. The latter symbolise good, and on their backs ride the bad--all of them billowing out of Kate's dress, which is handsomely decorated with the clouds of her imagination." - gaffa.org/reaching/i80_rm.htmlNick Price, the artist on Never For Ever, is quoted as saying: "She gave me a specific brief. Light and dark creatures coming out from under her skirt. I think the meaning is unequivocal, but I did ask her at the time. She just gave a big grin!" "[Kate Bush] made her own experience of the creative process quite clear with the cover of Never For Ever. A cornucopia of fantastic and real, beautiful and vile creatures -- the products of her imagination -- is shown swirling out from beneath her skirt..." - gaffa.org/reaching/i89_q3.htmlThe NFE cover kinda reminds me of Pandora leaving open her box! (...and the photo-shoot basis of the album sleeve are of KB wearing a red maternity dress!) - www.atforumz.com/showthread.php?t=112669On the NFE vinyl centre label, KB appears as 'The White Swan'. Phoibos [Apollon], of you even the swan sings with clear voice to the beating of his wings, as he alights upon the bank by the eddying river Peneios; and of you the sweet-tongued minstrel, holding his high-pitched lyre, always sings both first and last. And so hail to you lord! I seek your favour with my song.- from Homeric Hymn 21 to ApolloIn the Delius (Song of Summer) video, KB plays the Swan (obviously!) and PB plays the part of Delius, upon the bank, wearing an Apollonian sun mask! - gaffa.org/garden/paddy2.htmlIn Swan Lake, an evil sorcerer, von Rothbart, has captured Odette and used his magic to turn Odette into a swan by day and a woman by night. Once Prince Siegfried knows her story, he takes great pity and falls in love with her. When they realise the spell can never be broken, both Odette and Siegfried drown themselves by leaping into the lake... The Ninth Wave? Ophelia? etc.IMITATIONS OF DROWNING by Anne Sexton, 1962Fear of drowning, fear of being that alone, kept me busy making a deal as if I could buy my way out of it and it worked for two years and all of July. This August I began to dream of drowning. The dying went on and on in water as white and clear as the gin I drink each day at half-past five. Going down for the last time, the last breath lying, I grapple with eels like ropes - it's ether, it's queer and then, at last, it's done. Now the scavengers arrive, the hard crawlers who come to clean up the ocean floor. And death, that old butcher, will bother me no more. I had never had this dream before except twice when my parents clung to rafts and sat together for death, frozen like lewd photographs. Who listens to dreams? Only symbols for something - like money for the analyst or your mother's wig, the arm I almost lost in the washroom wringer, following fear to its core, tugging the old string. But real drowning is for someone else. It's too big to put in your mouth on purpose, it puts hot stingers in your tongue and vomit in your nose as your lungs break. Tossed like a wet dog by that juggler, you die awake. Fear, a motor, pumps me around and around until I fade slowly and the crowd laughs. I fade out, an old bicycle rider whose odds are measured in actuary graphs. This weekend the papers were black with the new highway fatalities and in Boston the strangler found another victim and we were all in Truro drinking beer and writing checks. The others rode the surf, commanding rafts like sleighs. I swam - but the tide came in like ten thousand orgasms. I swam - but the waves were higher than horses' necks. I was shut up in that closet, until, biting the door, they dragged me out, dribbling urine on the gritty shore. Breathe! And you'll know . . . an ant in a pot of chocolate, it boils and surrounds you. There is no news in fear but in the end it's fear that drowns you.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Feb 9, 2008 17:04:44 GMT
Thank you! I love the Never For Ever album cover- I think it's my favorite of all of Kate's.
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Post by tannis on May 24, 2008 20:58:49 GMT
Ophelia, John Everett Millais, 1851–1852www.artchive.com/artchive/m/millais/millais_ophelia.jpgOphelia: But, good my brother, Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own rede. Some people believe there is a skull hidden within the painting. Before the location is revealed, have a look and see if you can see it (once it is pointed out, it is hard not to see it). Look to the left of the forget-me-nots on the right of the painting, a nose and two hollow eyes can just be made out. This may well be just the light and shade in the foliage or the skull may be a reminder of death and hint at what is about to happen.www.tate.org.uk/ophelia/subject_symbolism.htmMRS BARTOLOZZI 'Washing' Photography by John Carder-Bush"Woman let me in! Let me bring in the memories! Woman let me in! Let me bring in the Devil Dreams!"Some people believe there is a red devil hidden within the 'Washing' photograph accompanying the lyrics to Mrs Bartolozzi in the CD/Vinyl booklet... Have a look and see if you can see it... Look at the center out-of-focus red image of trees... A nose, lips and two hollow eyes can just be made out. This may well be just the light and shade in the foliage or the red devil may be an Occult sign, a hint at what is about to happen, The Omen... "It's in the trees! It's coming!" Then there's that sexy red dress... The Devil Wears Prada!KATE BUSH on THE DEVILKB: "The devil's task is to tempt and temptation has to be attractive."gaffa.org/reaching/i89_tr.htmlKB: "So I was thinking, what if you met the Devil? The Ultimate One: charming, elegant, well spoken."gaffa.org/reaching/i89_nme2.htmlsee more: The Kick Inside: EVE, SATAN & THE PLANK IN THE EYEkatebush.proboards6.com/?board=kickinside&action=display&thread=1679&page=1MUSINGS ON AERIAL ALCHEMYkatebush.proboards6.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=leaveitopen&thread=1998&page=4
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