Friday, June 08, 2007

YOU CAN'T ESCAPE, SO YOU SCARE IT AWAY

An addition to the previous post on Kate Bush's "Get out of my House" :

The song is called "Get Out of My House," and it's all about the human as a house. The idea is that as more experiences actually get to you, you start learning how to defend yourself from them. The human can be seen as a house where you start putting up shutters at the windows and locking the doors not letting in certain things. I think a lot of people are like this they don't hear what they don't want to hear, don't see what they don't want to see. It is like a house, where the windows are the eyes and the ears, and you don't let people in. That's sad because as they grow older people should open up more. But they do the opposite because, I suppose, they do get bruised and cluttered. Which brings me back to myself; yes, I have had to decide what I will let in and what I'll have to exclude.

(Kate Bush in Company, 1982)

The idea with that song is that the house is actually a human being who's been hurt and he's just locking all the doors and not letting anyone in. The person is so determined not to let anyone in that one of his personalities is a concierge who sits in the door, and says "you're not coming in here" like real mamma.

(Kate Bush in Melody Maker, 1982 - note the "his personalities")

"No stranger's feet" on the level of the metaphor for the house, presumably means the person other walking into the house. On a more literal level, a" foot" is a measurement in poetry, and this could be saying that "your words will not enter me".

(from Gabbaweb, the website for all things Kate Bush)

I think the mule is that kind of... the stupid confrontation... I mean, there's not really that much to read into it. It was the idea of playing around with changing shape, and the mule imagery was something I liked inordinately. The whole thing of this wild, stupid, mad creature just turning around and going, you know, "Eeyore! Eeyore!" [Kate makes convincing Eeyore sounds]. I don't know if you saw Pinocchio, but there's an incredibly heavy scene in there, where one of the little boys turns into a donkey a mule. And it's very heavy stuff.

(Kate Bush in Love-Hounds, 1985)

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home