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”I know I am imperfect, and it is this imperfection that makes me want to improve. If I became perfect, and were no longer vulnerable, maybe I wouldn't experience the same emotional shock that makes me feel the need to write music.”
This, ladies and gentlemen, is Kate Bush. A bold child prodigy, revealed in the candid and magical splendor of her 16 years, who bloomed and appeared extraordinarily to the very fortunate David Gilmour, who became her patron and will always have the honor of having gifted the world the talents of this extraordinary artist, a being so deeply human in her shocking sensitivity and so distant from any possible analysis and rational cataloging. A nymph, a goddess from another dimension (despite a given birth date, July 30, 1958, a little over a month younger than my mother, which would make sense if time existed: but in this review, time is unnecessary) lost in a land populated by shadows, fairies, graceful white horses, and mysterious faceless men.
Kate Bush had composed the songs of this vinyl miracle in perfect solitude, happily trapped in a sort of enchanted glass bell, within which a small part of her innate talents (composer, dancer, author, musician) served the whims of a mad child-woman full of mischievous innocence, sensuality, recklessness, enchantment, and lust. Energy. Something too great for poor mortals: it was brutally clear that she was an extraordinary creature that had somehow landed in earthly life, strong in her gypsy soul, lived through her thousand vocal registers, her thousand eternities. A phenomenon. “The Kick Inside” is the enchantment, the spell of a nomadic princess who has gone beyond languages, genders, and “earthly” musical conventions, yet deeply attached to her uprooted roots, in love with a humanity lost in literature, arts, and song. Poetry. How much femininity is there in her that is not found in most of the muses that have brightened and will brighten the irreversible course of our lives, how much astonishment in benefiting from this angelic demon now mother, now tender girl, now untamed shrew, now butterfly… an iron Venus, therefore divine and imperious in her poignant frailty. Impossible to find her a contemporary, criminal to attempt to align her with any other model: in the art of Kate Bush, the notes, the musical genres, the literary quotes, references to distant lands, and romantic and impetuous sunsets mean nothing, they are simply the frame of a sweet orgasmic lament in which one can truly touch with hand that inner limbo of a geisha suspended between total chastity and unbridled libertinism. The torment and the ecstasy.
But Kate cannot recount her ecstasy, she is not home. Lost in a blissful confusion, she lives it through the modulations of her voice first aborted, then hinted at, then mistreated and released, through a fantastic worldly ritual, of an initiation celebrated in garments of veil with giant fuchsia blooms and in the sound of the nightingales' singing. The Divine leads me to the sweet and disturbing incipit of Moving, between Macbethian echoes and enchanted nocturnal suggestions, invites me not to be afraid to feel her in the dark, to let my battered spirit dance; the location does not matter, and now I venture to find her in a Berlin bar (The Saxophone Song) unaware of the stars building towers on the vowels, to know that I had everything of her even though unaware and undeserving of the poetry I may have bestowed upon her. The lights in the room go out at the bloom of Strange Phenomena, and I struggle to understand by drawing hypothetical meanings: but these are not songs, they are dreams and nightmares chasing each other through the gestures of a priestess so sweet and terrible in her insecurity, crossing my hearing and instinct in a mystical and painful embrace. It can be punk, reggae, or progressive. It can be a symphonic blues in which I see from very far away the images of Carole King and Joni Mitchell, but it's like entering a road where one crosses instead of meeting.
There's a hole in the sky with a big pupil in Kite calling me, inviting me to come up and become a kite on a diamond night, a diamond kite: and she's there, and we don't know if we want to stay above the moon anymore, but now I, too, no longer know how to descend, now that I’ve finally known her. And I feel bad because I know I can't be The Man With The Child In His Eyes while Kate wonders why she's told her love won’t last forever, and why she feels she must remain in this desert without the Tartars, in this valley of tears dried by her arcane whisper. I hear her voice and seek her presence while I get lost in the misty northern moor, perceive the call of Kate/Cathy returned to her Wuthering Heights, disturbed by the resignation of having to live inside a cruel illusion, though fantastically comforted by the words of my beloved that seem to want to tear apart Emily Brontë's masterpiece. But what does it matter! Even if for a few minutes, I am your Heathcliff. Or your James and The Cold Gun while suddenly you spit your poison in my face, and slap me reminding me that I’m fleeing from reality, and that paradise is nowhere else but where we have been destined, while in the chaos of my emotions I seem to hear Pink Floyd's Animals accompanying your melody kissed by the stars, now that you, from tender lover, have become so mean, and I from passionate Heathcliff become an unworthy James of you.
What a fool. But in Feel It I feel captured and swept away again by you, wicked and delightful enchantress, when you give me back the keys to the game and to my apartment, I imagine possessing you while your stockings slide on the floor, feel my warm hand caressing you and you ask me to continue to move, synchronizing time in a glorious union. It could be love or just lust, we don't ask because it’s fun, and wonderful. Oh, To Be In Love! Peter Gabriel can wait. But how did I get here? You could have been anyone's dream, and now that everything seems to have become so unreal, the colors played by your piano seem more vivid now, and every word of yours is new to my ears, fearing slipping into tomorrow too quickly because yesterday is always too sweet to forget. Yet Schopenhauer said it, the lovers' sigh is the sigh of the species. L’Amour Looks Something Like You, Kate, while I enter with you into the boudoir before morning comes too soon, stupid, old moon. But it's you who resembles an angel dressed in lace with eyes rocking in wine, and you sail in my thoughts giving me chills when you sing about wanting to be touched by me, in search of that sensation of sticky love inside. You overwhelm me in the acme of eros, in the elusive orgasm, with my sperm and your honey settling on pink skin. Cigarette. You talk to me about Them Heavy People, those wonderful teachers who opened doors you thought closed forever, read you Gurdjieff and Jesus, almost killed you! But what a wonderful feeling. You who love the whirling dances of the Dervishes, love the beauty of rare innocence, just now that I cannot believe you different from a fairy, tell me I don’t need crystal balls because we are the humans who work miracles, and each of us has an inner Eden. Because it is in Room For The Life that Kate proudly professes her being a woman, claims it in a strong and human dimension, and overwhelms me with her contagious passion, strong and gentle at the same time, and one never feels so enchanted by the impetuosity of her touch of pure femininity when she sings “We were made strong because we are women”.
A strong woman. Yet I should have realized by this point that my dream is ending and I am headed for a cruel awakening when in The Kick Inside Kate appears in a sad and twilight music and speaks to me lowering the veil, and I already know she has now decided to leave me behind. No longer a lover, nor muse, but a sister, and I must lose her like an arrow shot into the murderous storm, because I know that when I read her letter, once I come to, she will already be well. And she will return home, but not before the sun and moon meet on that hill down there…
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
01 Moving (03:01)
Moving stranger,
Does it really matter,
As long as you're not afraid to feel?
Touch me, hold me.
How my open arms ache!
Try to fall for me.
How I'm moved.
How you move me
With your beauty's potency.
You give me life.
Please don't let me go.
You crush the lily in my soul.
Moving liquid
Yes, you are just as water.
You flow around all that comes in your way.
Don't think it over,
It always takes you over,
And sets your spirit dancing.
How I'm moved.
How you move me
With your beauty's potency.
You give me life.
(You give me life)
Please don't let me go.
(Please don't let me go)
You give me life.
(You give me life)
Please don't let me go.
(Please don't let me go)
Oh, You give me life.
(Oh, You give me life)
Please don't let me go.
(Please don't let me go)
You crush the lily in my soul,
(la-la-la-la la lily)
Soul
(la-la-la-la la lily)
Soul
(la-la-la-la la lily)
02 The Saxophone Song (03:52)
You'll find me in a Barlin bar
In a corner, brooding
You know that I go very quiet
When I am listening to you
There's something special indeed
In all the places where I've seen you shine, boy
There's something very real in how I feel, honey
It's in me, it's in me - and you know it's for real
Turning in your saxophone
Doo - ba - doo - ba - doo
The candle burning over your shoulder
Is throwing shadowson your saxophone
A surly lady in tremor
The stars that climb from her bowels'
Those stars make towers on vowels
You'll never know that you had all of me
You'll never see the poetry you stirred in me
Of all the stars I've seen that shine so brightly
I've never known or felt, in myself, so rightly
It's in me, it's in me - and you know it's real
Turning in your saxophone
Doo - ba - doo - ba - doo
03 Strange Phenomena (02:58)
Soon it will be the phase of the moon
When people tune in.
Every girl knows about the punctual blues,
But who's to know the power behind our moves?
A day of coincidence with the radio,
And a word that won't go away.
We know what they're all going to say.
"G" arrives--"Funny, had a feeling he was on his way!"
We raise our hats to the strange phenomena.
Soul-birds of a feather flock together.
We raise our hats to the hand a-moulding us.
Sure 'nuff, he has the answer,
He has the answer
He has the answer, be-duh-be-duh-be-duh-be-duh...
"Om mani padme,
Om mani padme,
Om mani padme hum."*
You pick up a paper. You read a name.
You go out. It turns up again and again.
You bump into a friend you haven't seen for a long time,
Then into another you only thought about last night.
You hear your sister calling for you,
But you don't know where from.
You know there's something wrong,
But you don't want to believe in a premonition.
We raise our hats to the strange phenomena.
Soul-birds of a feather flock together.
We raise our hats to the hand a-moulding us.
Sure 'nuff, he has the answer,
He has the answer
He has the answer, be-duh-be-duh-be-duh-be-duh...
"Om mani padme,
Om mani padme,
Om mani padme hum."*
"Om mani padme hum.
Om mani padme hum.
Om mani padme hum.
Om mani padme hum..."
04 Kite (02:57)
(Come up and be kite)
Beelzebub is aching in my belly-o.
My feet are heavy and I'm rooted in my wellios.
(oh oh oh)
And I want to get away and go
(I wanna be)
From all these
(I wanna be home)
Mirror windows.
I look at eye level, it isn't good enough.
And then I find it out when I take a good look up.
There's a hole in the sky
(there's a hole in the)
With a big eyeball
(there's a hole in the sky)
Calling me:
"Come up and be a kite,
And fly a diamond night!
A diamond kite, a diamond kite.
Ooh, what a diamond!
"A diamond kite
On a diamond flight.
Over the lights, under the moon.
Over the lights, under the moon.
Over the moon, over the moon!"
(Come up and be kite)
I feel a rush along my body, like a bullet.
I'm 2-D after a push-and-pull feeling.
And I want to get back to
(I wanna be)
Safe home.
(I wanna be home)
I love the homeland dome.
I got no limbs, I'm like a feather on the wind.
Well, I'm not sure if I want to be up here, at all.
And I'd like to be
(I'd like to be)
Back on the ground,
(I'd like to be down)
But I don't know how to get down, down, down, down!
"Come up and be a kite,
And fly a diamond night!
A diamond kite, a diamond kite.
Ooh, what a diamond!
"A diamond kite
On a diamond flight.
Over the lights, oooh, under the moon.
Over the lights, oooh, under the moon.
Over the moon, over the moon!"
(Come up and be kite)
(Come up and be kite)
05 The Man With the Child in His Eyes (02:41)
I hear him
before I go to sleep
and focus on the day
that's been.
I realize he's there
when I turn the light off
and turn over.
Nobody knows about my man.
They think he's lost on some horizon.
And suddenly I find myself listening
to a man I've never known before,
telling me about the sea,
oh his love is to eternity.
Ooh he's here again,
the man with the child in his eyes.
Ooh he's here again,
the man with the child in his eyes.
He's very understanding and he's so
aware of all my situations.
When I stay up late
he's always with me
what I feel when I hesitate.
Oh I'm so worried about my love.
They say "no, no it won't last forever".
And here I am again my girl,
wondering what on earth I am doing here.
Maybe he doesn't love me,
I just took a trip on my love for him.
Ooh he's here again,
the man with the child in his eyes.
Ooh he's here again,
the man with the child in his eyes.
06 Wuthering Heights (04:29)
Out on the wiley, windy moors
We'd roll and fall in green
You had a temper, like my jealousy
Too hot, too greedy
How could you leave me
When I needed to possess you
I hated you, I loved you too
Bad dreams in the night
You told me I was going to lose the fight
Leave behind my wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights
Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy, I've come home
I'm so cold, let me in your window
Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home
I'm so cold let me in your window
Ooh it gets dark, it gets lonely
On the other side from you
I pine a lot, I find the lot
Falls through without you
I'm coming back love, cruel Heathcliff
My one dream, my only master
Too long I roam in the night
I'm coming back to his side to put it right
I'm coming home to wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights
Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy, I've come home
I'm so cold, let me in your window
Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy, I've come home
I'm so cold, let me in your window
Ooh let me have it, let me grab your soul away
Ooh let me have it, let me grab your soul away
You know it's me, Cathy.
Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy, I've come home
I'm so cold, let me in your window
Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy, I've come home
I'm so cold, let me in your window
Heathcliff, it's me, your Cathy, I've come home
I'm so cold
08 Feel It (03:02)
After the party
You took me back to your parlour.
A little nervous laughter
Locking the door.
My stockings fall
Onto the floor.
Desperate for more.
Nobody else can share this.
Here comes one and one makes one,
The glorious union.
Well it could be love,
Or it could be just lust,
But it will be fun.
It will be wonderful.
Oh, feel it. Oh, oh feel it,
Feel it, my love.
Oh, feel it. Oh, oh feel it,
Feel it, my love.
Oh, I need it. Oh, oh, feel it,
Feel it, my love.
Feel it!
See what you're doing to me?
God, but you're beautiful, aren't you?
Feel your warm hand walking around.
I won't pull away.
My passion always wins.
So keep on a-moving in.
So keep on a-tuning in.
Synchronise rhythm now.
Oh, feel it. Oh, oh feel it,
Feel it, my love.
Oh, feel it. Oh, oh feel it,
Feel it, my love.
Oh, I need it. Oh, oh, feel it,
Feel it, my love.
Feel it!
See what you're doing to me?
See what you're doing to me?
Just see what you're doing to me.
10 L'Amour Looks Something Like You (02:28)
You came out of the night,
Wearing a mask in white colour.
My eyes were shining
On the wine, and your aura.
All in order, we move into the boudoir,
But too soon the morning has resumed.
I'm hanging on the Old Goose Moon.
You look like an angel,
Sleeping it off at a station.
Were you only passing through?
I'm dying for you just to touch me,
And feel all the energy rushing right up-a-me.
L'amour looks something like you.
The thought of you sends me shivery.
I'm dressed in lace, sailing down a black reverie.
My heart is thrown
To the pebbles and the boatmen.
All the time I find I'm living in that evening,
With that feeling of sticky love inside.
I'm hanging on the Old Goose Moon.
You look like an angel,
Sleeping it off at a station.
Were you only passing through?
I'm dying for you just to touch me,
And feel all the energy rushing right up-a-me.
L'amour looks something like you.
13 The Kick Inside (03:34)
I've pulled down my lace and the chintz.
Oh, do you know you have the face of a genius?
I'll send your love to Zeus.
Oh, by the time you read this,
I'll be well in touch.
I'm giving it all in a moment or two.
I'm giving it all in a moment, for you.
I'm giving it all, giving it, giving it, giving it.
This kicking here inside
Makes me leave you behind.
No more under the quilt
To keep you warm.
Your sister I was born.
You must lose me like an arrow,
Shot into the killer storm.
You and me on the bobbing knee.
Didn't we cry at that old mythology he'd read!
I will come home again, but not until
The sun and the moon meet on yon hill.
I'm giving it all in a moment or two.
I'm giving it all in a moment, for you.
I'm giving it all, giving it, giving it, giving it.
This kicking here inside
Makes me leave you behind.
No more under the quilt
To keep you warm.
Your sister I was born.
You must lose me like an arrow,
Shot into the killer storm.
I've pulled down my lace and the chintz.
Oh, do you know you have the face of a genius?
I'll send your love to Zeus.
Oh, by the time you read this.
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