13 Comments

She is unique for sure. I will never forget how thrilling it was the first time I heard Wuthering Heights. It thrills me still. There is a good BBC documentary on Kate Bush and her work on YouTube. It is worth a look.

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I just watched it!

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One of the few true originals of popular music. Musicians are always influenced by the past and the present, but they usually bring something new from themselves as well. Kate had much more to bring than most.

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Brendan Kennelly once told me that shyness was a kind of inverted arrogance, and I could see his point, but I never considered much the idea that it might be a way of turning the will towards creative endeavour rather than dissipating it in showy displays of virtu, of which the academic world is full.

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"shyness was a kind of inverted arrogance"

We shy people can't catch a break. The Internet has become our venue, for good or ill.

"People who hide are a plague"

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Oh yes, the Kate Bush phase! Hounds of Love is such a classic…

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Is it a "phase," though? I associate "Running Up That Hill" with driving a 200cc Chinese dirtbike at speed along the US-Mexico border wall. That interpretation is intrinsic to me. I'm glad the Zoomers are enjoying it; real art is timeless.

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"come on darling, come on, come on angel, lets exchange thee experience". Never forgot those lines.

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has their ever been a better way to sum up an essence between a man and women, or, between two people, anyway? I, for one, doubt it.

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I grew up in the Midwest suburbs and none of my good friends were into music, which meant I had to actively seek it out where I could find it. In the late 90's-early 2000's, this mostly meant reading magazine interviews with artists I liked and searching for references to any bands they mentioned as being influences, then heading to the local used CD store to see if they had any of those releases in stock. Occasionally, though, you could hear a song on TV or in a movie that would open up a new world for you (for example, I heard Nick Drake for the first time in a 2000 Volkswagen ad)...I think it's really cool that that seems to have happened here. Highly recommend this concert documentary from 1980: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfn66mUK0WI

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"I heard Nick Drake for the first time in a 2000 Volkswagen ad"

To your point -- it's weird how corporate capitalism sometimes functions, actually. If Nick Drake gets heard, it might not all be bad.

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an interesting commentary on a gentle artist. she quietly created something unique. There is, at times, something forced and brash about the way singers, musos present themselves on social media these days. though I have to admit growing up in another time all together, in the sixties, I did idolize Eric Burdon when he was with his later band Eric Burdon and the Animals and especially Eric Burdon and War sitll impresses me. not exactly gentle but better than the pushy and sharp elbowed these days in my biased view.

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“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood." O. Wilde

I quote him because, being a man, I can't quite imagine what it's like to be a young woman.

I know it isn't easy being young and that being a taller man helped. But what fool claimed life was going to be easy during any era on earth?

Each day brings its own trials, but as M. Aurelius said: "Each day provides its own gifts."

The larger point is this: “The question is not what you look at, but what one actually sees.” Henry David Thoreau

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