August 29, 2024
Essay BY Dawn Bratton
If I Only Could, I'd Make a Deal With God
Image: YouTube still
I’d ask him to
trade our
places...
Image: unknown photographer
THESE FAMOUS WORDS are derived from Kate Bush’s song, “Running Up That Hill,” which for many listeners first introduced them to Kate in 2022, when it received renewed attention after appearing in the popular Netflix series, Stranger Things. Thereby a new generation of listeners were initiated into the wonderful world of UK singer, songwriter, and dancer, Kate Bush.
"I found a book on how to be invisible
On the edge of the labyrinth
Under the veil you must never lift
Pages that you must never turn
In the labyrinth
You stand in front of a million doors
And each one holds a million more
Corridors that lead to the world of the invisible..."
Kate Bush, were you in my dreams?
You know the one, I was running and running. Through endless hallways and corridors, up and down endless stairs that led nowhere. Only arriving onto more hallways and corridors and stairs. Doors lined down these hallways: Doors, everywhere. But every time I opened one, it only entered onto more stairs, hallways, and corridors...
Trapped inside this labyrinth, I desperately sought for some hold on reality, some solid ground on which to plant my two feet. Later, when I read Kate Bush’s words, they said, Ah, yes, I know. That recognition in the other, of the self. That full circle, Ah, yes, I’ve been there.
Really, she is a poet. Her book, How to Be Invisible, a compilation of her selected lyrics, is really a book of poetry. Yet it’s not only her song lyrics that are so beautiful. Her work, in many ways, was an experiment in the art of possession. The artistic intention being to fully inhabit something—a character from a story, a memoir, a movie, or even just one tiny little snowflake:
"I was born in a cloud
Now I am falling, I want you to catch me
Look up, and you'll see me, you know you can hear me
The world is so loud, keep falling, I'll find you...""
Wuthering Heights
The first song of Kate’s I personally fell in love with was her debut song, “Wuthering Heights,“ one that lifted her to the top of the UK Singles Chart at the tender age of nineteen. Any reader who has coiled up with a blanket and this old, stormy Victorian-era gothic novel by Emily Brontë on a barren winter night can appreciate this song’s full fun, about the ghost of Cathy haunting Heathcliff.
">"Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy
I've come home, I'm so cold
Let me in your window..."
Because it is Kate playing, pretending with the heart of a child. Still playing, but only now taking her playing more seriously.
Serious play?
A contradiction.
But one that any creative artist or writer must live and ultimately reconcile with.
Babooshka
Another favorite of mine is Kate’s song, “Babooshka,” which is about a woman seeking to regain intimacy with her husband. Not knowing what else to do, this woman starts sending her husband “scented letters,” which he receives with a “strange delight.” Just like his wife, but before the years drew by, like she was when she was beautiful...
"She wanted to test her husband
"She knew exactly what to do
A pseudonym
To fool him
She couldn't have made a worse move..."
What unfolds with this song is a mysterious liaison between a man and his own wife, a woman whose identity is now veiled in mystery. He falls back in love with her, and they agree to meet in person. Uncanny, he goes to set eyes on her…
This Woman's Work
In the sordid and complex world of the 80s and 90s music industry, Kate took the fate of the freedom and integrity of her own work into hand, becoming (along with everything else) a business woman. She set up her own publishing company, Kate Bush Music, and created her own management company, Novercia, placing members of her family, along with herself, onto the board of directors.
In 1994 Kate went silent. She dropped out of the public eye. There were whispers of her becoming an eccentric, a recluse. Then, in 1998, Kate gave birth to a son with guitarist Dan McIntosh, whom she remains married to until this day. A creative career, business aptitude, and the personal fulfillment of creating a family.
On that tone, I will end with possibly her most beautiful and haunting song, to me, as a woman, "This Woman's Work." A ballad to those in our lives who often unintentionally get left behind when the passion and peril of creativity runs its course. Those people we could never do without. A song I believe would resonate with any woman—whether she is a creative artist, navigating a demanding career, or a homemaker and mother. Perhaps even all three.
"Pray God you can cope
I'll stand outside
This woman's work
This woman's world
It's hard on the man..."
This video concludes my artist’s ode to a woman whose songs have sung to my soul, whose work inspires me in the continuing search, the continuing conversation of the creative life, always going, always blooming ☾❀
Check out these other great song videos by Kate Bush:
- Breathing
- Cloudbusting (inspired by the moving memoir, A Book of Dreams, by Peter Reich, the son of the infamous and controversial figure, Austrian doctor and psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich)
- The Sensual World
- The Man With the Child In His Eyes
Read more about her on Wikipedia.
Image: Chris Moorhouse, Getty Images
About the autor
Dawn Bratton lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has found a quiet corner to write poetry and prose that orbits the image of eyes and theme of perception as the gateway to the universe of experience. Always motivating her work is the impulse to illuminate experience through the creative act. From 2021 - 2023 she served as secretary, and then vice president, for WordSwell literary journal based out of Oakland, CA; and in 2023, she helped co-found Moon Blossom Collective. Her poetry has recently appeared in Oracle, Matter, The Opiate, Modern Literature, The Metaworker, Global Poemic, and Disquiet Arts, among other literary journals. Visit her at dawnbratton.com.
