There’s a strange, almost mystical siren crooning to me from the PA speakers. She’s repeating, among other things, the mantra of “We’re running up that road / We’re running up that hill”. In her voice is an incredible sense of purpose, as if her operation is the result of a distinct, definite existential vision, one which has perhaps even harrassed her and tormented her into this cathartic musical expression ironically tailored as a “pop” song.
It’s Kate Bush, a divisive songwriter from the idyllic Southeastern English county of Kent. The song is called “Running up That Hill (A Deal with God).” Outside, coal-grey skies blanket the mid-August sky. I’m in Plymouth, Indiana, and just the day before, I’d been in Logansport, seen half a dozen yards completely covered with water, and heard the receiver lady exclaiming to me that her sister had six inches of water standing in her basement, with much more rain in the forecast, of course granting more significance to Bush’s “running up that hill” image. To say the least, it’s a terrifying experience.
There are times, when I’m doing these blog posts, when I feel like research, and historical context, is in order. Other times, I feel like additional facts and circumstances are just arbitrary, and occlude the vitality of the matter at hand. Standing in that store hearing this strange woman croon to me with such purpose, in music that sort of like Radiohead is deliberately uncomfortable, deliberately tense, and in that redolent of an undeniable artistic singularity, things felt real to me. I would have dropped at Bush’s knees, given the opportunity, and, I’d imagine, harvested some unforeseen psychosomatic phenomena. It was like a glimpse into a horrifying realm of suffering, a magnanimous directive from a sort of epitome of “muse,” somewhat like Marathon warning the Athenians that the Trojans were attacking. And, just like, as Camille Paglia pointed out, nature makes us marvel but also “finger… our worry beads,” Bush does an authoritative job here of cleaving a surreal line between music that’s “good” and music that’s “enjoyable.” Sure, the enjoyment factor is ambiguous, but this is alarming, surreal stuff, and it’s very hard to imagine someone smiling during this song. It’s equally unlikely, in my mind, that they’d ever be inclined to turn it off, or to forget it, once they’d experienced it.
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