FEATURE:
The Ninth Wave
PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
Revisiting the Promise of a Visual Realisation of Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love Masterpiece
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THIS is something…
that I pitched earlier in the year. The idea of Kate Bush’s The Ninth Wave being brought to the screen. It has not happened yet. Bush was toying with the idea of realising it not long after Hounds of Love was released in 1985. When she was writing this seven-song suite, one imagines they were envisaged as screen songs. Part of a narrative that would make their way onto the small or big screen. I do not have much to add to the feature I wrote previously in terms of plot and narrative. I am going to add and update it. It is worth contextualising the song suite and what it is about. What Kate Bush said about it. I am going to end by asking how easy or hard it might be to bring it to the screen. It is interesting how The Ninth Wave, in its title and concept, links to art and classic poetry. It is a story and concept that is timeless in a way. A woman getting lost at sea and stranded. Waiting to be rescued. Having to battle the darkness, waves and what lies beneath. Whether a modern horror film or a poem like The Lady of Shalott, there have been countless depictions of heroines doomed or endangered on the water. I am going to start with this feature. An explanation of a concept and idea that is terrifying and is a common fear: being lost at sea and vulnerable to the elements:
“Intensely powerful music, strong imagery of a vast ocean, and the emotions that come with it, there’s a lot to love about Kate Bush’s The Ninth Wave Suite. Found on the second side of her 1985 album Hounds of Love, The Ninth Wave consists of seven tracks focussed on the story of a person lost at sea, in Kate’s own words:
“The Ninth Wave was a film, that’s how I thought of it. It’s the idea of this person being in the water, how they’ve got there, we don’t know. But the idea is that they’ve been on a ship and they’ve been washed over the side so they’re alone in this water. And I find that horrific imagery, the thought of being completely alone in all this water.”
In my opinion, Kate is overwhelmingly successful in portraying this narrative, and manages to produce a whole host of other ideas and experiences in a relatively short time. To understand why, and start dissecting the suite, I think it helps to look into how other artists have approached the subject.
In the world of art, seascapes have long been an intriguing subject, and one of the true masters of painting the sea is Ivan Aivazovsky, who also has a painting entitled The Ninth Wave. This work depicts a group of sailors stranded at sea, clutching a piece of their wrecked ship. Their despair is juxtaposed against a beautiful setting sun, bouncing off the waves that build up before them.
Poetry too has often drawn from the sea. An example included by Kate in the Hounds of Love liner notes is from Tennyson’s “The Holy Grail:”
“Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame”
The subject has always been a favourite amongst British artists, being an island nation with a strong history with the ocean. Kate certainly had much material to draw inspiration from.
So in which direction did Kate Bush take her ocean story? Well, many. The tracks do play out like the film which was in Kate’s imagination, beginning with the wonderfully lonely “And Dream of Sheep,” in which the narrator floats alone in their life jacket, drifting in and out of consciousness. As the character falls into the “warmth” of a hallucinatory state, the scene is set for Kate to experiment with their mental state and the dreams they experience.
Beginning with “Under Ice,” the music becomes much darker and more intense. The lyrics of the track give a warped impression of the cold and hypothermia that the narrator is likely experiencing. We transition to the sudden direction to “wake up,” the theme of the track “Waking the Witch” (my personal favourite,) where things start to get more chaotic, the calm voices of the introduction being replaced by broken, fragmented jitters of speech — “Help me, listen to me, listen to me, tell them baby!”
IN THIS IMAGE: Ivan Aivazovsky’s The Ninth Wave
With the most intense section of the suite over, Kate continues her experimentation into mental states, where in “Watching You Without Me” she describes an out of body experience — as a ghost in her own home, watching her loved ones worry. A third hallucination appears with “Jig of Life,” and we are suddenly enveloped in the sounds of Irish folk music — violin, fiddle, pipes, and drums. Confronted by her future self, the narrator is persuaded to fight for their life — the relentless, powerful instrumental driving the story forward.
The final tracks of the suite lead to and take us through the serenity and relief of the narrator’s ambiguous rescue. “Hello Earth” is Kate floating away further and further from the life she knows. We hear samples of NASA communications, conveying the feeling of being so far from human contact.
The iconic “The Morning Fog” is the final track of the album, in which Kate is rescued. The joyful tone highlights the journey we have been through, loss, mental states, hope, and finally the serene, joyous feeling of being safe. Kate stated in interviews that the suite was always intended to end in rescue, but it could be argued that “The Morning Fog” is instead the narrator succumbing to the water, experiencing the final moments of life.
As a concept, being lost at sea is so terrifyingly simple and effective. Kate took the idea to so many different places, and it is a project I truly treasure. Kate has recently experimented more with Ninth Wave. It formed the focus of her Hammersmith shows in 2014, where costumes and sets were made to accompany the music. She also released a video for “And Dream of Sheep” in 2016, where she floats in her lifejacket, her little light blinking”.
There are a couple of other features I need to address before getting to the film idea. Here, we discover more about the links between Kate Bush’s The Ninth Wave and the poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I always listen to The Ninth Wave and think there is something quite gothic and ancient about it. A feel and sound that one could apply to a classic opera or a classic film. It is also a narrative that could be adapted for the modern age:
“‘Wave after wave, each mightier than the last,
Till last, a ninth one, gathering half the deep
And full of voices, slowly rose and plunged
Roaring, and all the wave was in a flame’ – ‘The Coming of Arthur’
The second part of Kate Bush’s ‘The Hounds of Love’ album takes its title from the first poem of Tennyson’s ‘The Idylls of the King’, ‘the ninth wave’.
Kate Bush uses ‘the ninth wave’, inspired by ‘The Coming of Arthur’, as well Aivazovsky's iconic 1850 painting ‘The ninth wave’ which shows a group of people shipwrecked at sea, as a metaphor for the final wave before drowning, a moment which becomes the anchor of the album and provides its framing narrative. Bush’s referencing to ‘the ninth wave’ doesn’t stop there, during her most recent tour ‘Before the Dawn’ she dropped confetti inscribed with this quotation from ‘The Coming of Arthur’ in Tennyson’s handwriting. Bush’s use of ‘The Coming of Arthur’ has gone on to influence pop generally, such as in ‘Waves’ by the Dutch singer Mr Probz, as ‘wave after wave’ became an iconic phrase.
‘Drifting away
Wave after wave, wave after wave
I'm slowly drifting (drifting away)
And it feels like I'm drowning
Pulling against the stream
Pulling against the wave’ – ‘Waves’
However, what if it’s possible to read ‘The Idylls of the King’ as having more than a passing influence on Bush’s album? The promotional photography for both the tour, ‘Before the Dawn’, and the original album ‘Hounds of Love’, both feature Bush floating amongst flowers wearing a life jacket, in what fans have noted, is a pose that self-consciously echoes that of Shakespeare’s ‘Ophelia’, but perhaps it also echoes that of Tennyson’s ‘Elaine’ in ‘Lancelot and Elaine’ from ‘The Idylls of the King’.
‘And Lancelot answered nothing, but he went,
And at the inrunning of a little brook
Sat by the river in a cove, and watched
The high reed wave, and lifted up his eyes
And saw the barge that brought her moving down,
Far-off, a blot upon the stream, and said
Low in himself, "Ah simple heart and sweet,
Ye loved me, damsel, surely with a love
Far tenderer than my Queen's. Pray for thy soul?
Ay, that will I. Farewell too--now at last--
Farewell, fair lily.’ – ‘Lancelot and Elaine’
PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush
If Bush’s songs do reference the fates of Elaine and Ophelia, both popular figures during the Tennysonian or Pre-Raphelite period, then it also sees the water that envelopes them as a feminine space, containing possibilities for power (a power on display in the song ‘Waking the Witch’, for example), and rebirth, as in ‘Morning Fog’. In ‘The Idylls of the King’ water is also a realm that is guarded by and controlled by the feminine.
And there was no gate like it under heaven.
For barefoot on the keystone, which was lined
And rippled like an ever-fleeting wave,
The Lady of the Lake stood: all her dress
Wept from her sides as water flowing away’ – ‘Gareth and Lynette’
Bush’s command in the title track ‘Hounds of Love’ to ‘Take your shoes off and throw them in a lake!’ therefore becomes a command that links the first part of the album to the second part, a command that demands the acceptance of the power of the feminine, which both the listener and the subject must give themselves up to in the album’s second part. Throwing the accoutrements of life into a ‘lake’ is, of course, an act taken directly from the death of King Arthur, where he asks Sir Bevidere to throw his sword ‘Excalibur’ into the lake, an indication that he is letting go of his own grip on life.
‘Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran,
And, leaping down the ridges lightly, plunged
Among the bulrush beds, and clutched the sword,
And strongly wheeled and threw it. The great brand
Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon,
And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch,
Shot like a streamer of the northern morn,
Seen where the moving isles of winter shock
By night, with noises of the Northern Sea.
So flashed and fell the brand Excalibur:
But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
And caught him by the hilt, and brandished him
Three times, and drew him under in the mere.
And lightly went the other to the King.’ – ‘The Passing of Arthur’
That the final and twelfth track of the album, ‘Morning Fog’ references the last and twelfth poem of the ‘The Idylls of the King’, ‘The Passing of Arthur’, will therefore come as no surprise. The song’s lyrics read:
‘The light
Begin to bleed
Begin to breathe
Begin to speak
D'you know what?
I love you better now
I am falling
Like a stone
Like a storm
Being born again
Into the sweet morning fog’ – ‘Morning Fog’
The Death of Arthur is described by Tennyson:
‘Last, as by some one deathbed after wail
Of suffering, silence follows, or through death
Or deathlike swoon, thus over all that shore,
Save for some whisper of the seething seas,
A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous day
Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came
A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew
The mist aside, and with that wind the tide
Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field
Of battle: but no man was moving there;
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave
Brake in among dead faces, to and fro
Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down
Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen,
And shivered brands that once had fought with Rome,
And rolling far along the gloomy shores
The voice of days of old and days to be.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere,
And whiter than the mist that all day long
Had held the field of battle was the King’ – ‘The Passing of Arthur’
The morning fog and the last ‘wan wave’ are described as arriving whilst Arthur dies, and at the end of the poem, he, like Elaine, is pushed out on a boat into the middle of the lake, and the ‘new year’ is born.
‘he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year.’ – ‘The Passing of Arthur’”.
In 1992, BBC Radio 1 broadcast an interview with Kate Bush. She talked about Hounds of Love and its tracks. The Ninth Wave is the second side of this renowned and commercially successful album. The first side has more conventional songs, including singles Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Cloudbusting and Hounds of Love. The Ninth Wave is the second side. An ambitious and engrossing suite that draws the listener in:
“A: The continuous flow of music on a compact disk masks the fact that Hounds of Love and The Ninth Wave were conceived as two quite separate sides to the album.
K: Yes they were. I started off writing, I think, "Running Up That Hill", "Hounds of Love", and then I think probably "Dream of Sheep." And once I wrote that, that was it, that was the beginning of what then became the concept. And really, for me, from the beginning, The Ninth Wave was a film, that's how I thought of it. It's the idea of this person being in the water, how they've got there, we don't know. But the idea is that they've been on a ship and they've been washed over the side so they're alone in this water. And I find that horrific imagery, the thought of being completely alone in all this water. And they've got a life jacket with a little light so that if anyone should be traveling at night they'll see the light and know they're there. And they're absolutely terrified, and they're completely alone at the mercy of their imagination, which again I personally find such a terrifying thing, the power of ones own imagination being let loose on something like that. And the idea that they've got it in their head that they mustn't fall asleep, because if you fall asleep when you're in the water, I've heard that you roll over and so you drown, so they're trying to keep themselves awake.
K: Well at this point, although they didn't want to go to sleep, of course they do. [Laughs] And this is the dream, and it's really meant to be quite nightmarish. And this was all kinda coming together by itself, I didn't have much to do with this, I just sat down and wrote this little tune on the Fairlight with the cello sound. And it sounded very operatic and I thought "well, great" because it, you know, it conjured up the image of ice and was really simple to record. I mean we did the whole thing in a day, I guess.
K: Again it's very lonely, it's terribly lonely, they're all alone on like this frozen lake. And at the end of it, it's the idea of seeing themselves under the ice in the river, so I mean we're talking real nightmare stuff here. And at this point, when they say, you know, "my god, it's me," you know, "it's me under the ice. Ahhhh" [laughs] These sort of visitors come to wake them up, to bring them out of this dream so that they don't drown.
My mother's in there, my father, my brothers Paddy and John, Brian Tench - the guy that mixed the album with us - is in the there, Del is in there, Robbie Coltrane does one of the voices. It was just trying to get lots of different characters and all the ways that people wake you up, like you know, you sorta fall asleep at your desk at school and the teacher says [song cut's in at "Wake up child, pay attention!" line]
K: Couldn't get a helicopter anywhere and in the end I asked permission to use the helicopter from The Wall from The Floyd, it was the best helicopter I'd heard for years for years [laughs].
I think it's very interesting the whole concept of witch-hunting and the fear of women's power. In a way it's very sexist behavior, and I feel that female intuition and instincts are very strong, and are still put down, really. And in this song, this women is being persecuted by the witch-hunter and the whole jury, although she's committed no crime, and they're trying to push her under the water to see if she'll sink or float. Uooo, ah. [Laughs]
A: And the next track on "Hounds of Love" is "Watching You Without Me".
K: Now, this poor sod [laughs], has been in the water for hours and been witch-hunted and everything. Suddenly, they're kind of at home, in spirit, seeing their loved one sitting there waiting for them to come home. And, you know, watching the clock, and obviously very worried about where they are, maybe making phone calls and things. But there's no way that you can actually communicate, because they can't see you, they can't you. And I find this really horrific, [laughs] these are all like my own personal worst nightmares, I guess, put into song.
And when we started putting the track together, I had the idea for these backing vocals, you know, [sings] "you can't hear me". And I thought that maybe to disguise them so that, you know, you couldn't actually hear what the backing vocals were saying.
A: "Watching You Without Me". Next is "The Jig of Life".
K: At this point in the story, it's the future self of this person coming to visit them to give them a bit of help here. I mean, it's about time they have a bit of help. So it's their future self saying, "look," you know, "don't give up, you've got to stay alive, 'cause if you don't stay alive, that means I don't." You know, "and I'm alive, I've had kids [laughs]. I've been through years and years of life, so you have to survive, you mustn't give up."
K: This was written in Ireland. At one point I did quite a lot of writing, you know, I mean lyrically, particularly. And again it was a tremendous sort of elemental dose I was getting, you know, all this beautiful countryside. Spending a lot of time outside and walking, so it had this tremendous sort of stimulus from the outside. And this was one of the tracks that the Irish musicians that we worked with was featured on.
There was a tune that my brother Paddy found which... he said "you've got to hear this, you'll love it." And he was right [laughs], he played it to me and I just thought, you know, "this would be fantastic somehow to incorporate here."
Was just sort of, pull this person up out of despair.
"Hello Earth" was a very difficult track to write, as well, because it was... in some ways it was too big for me. [Laughs] And I ended up with this song that had two huge great holes in the choruses, where the drums stopped, and everything stopped, and people would say to me, "what's going to happen in these choruses," and I hadn't got a clue.
We had the whole song, it was all there, but these huge, great holes in the choruses. And I knew I wanted to put something in there, and I'd had this idea to put a vocal piece in there, that was like this traditional tune I'd heard used in the film Nosferatu. And really everything I came up with, it with was rubbish really compared to what this piece was saying. So we did some research to find out if it was possible to use it. And it was, so that's what we did, we re-recorded the piece and I kind of made up words that sounded like what I could hear was happening on the original. And suddenly there was these beautiful voices in these chorus that had just been like two black holes.
In some ways I thought of it as a lullaby for the Earth. And it was the idea of turning the whole thing upside down and looking at it from completely above. You know, that image of if you were lying in water at night and you were looking up at the sky all the time, I wonder if you wouldn't get the sense of as the stars were reflected in the water, you know, a sense of like, you could be looking up at water that's reflecting the stars from the sky that you're in. And the idea of them looking down at the earth and seeing these storms forming over America and moving around the globe, and they have this like huge fantasticly overseeing view of everything, everything is in total perspective. And way, way down there somewhere there's this little dot in the ocean that is them.
IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: Dave Hogan/Getty Images
A: The Ninth Wave song sequence concludes with "The Morning Fog"
K: Well, that's really meant to be the rescue of the whole situation, where now suddenly out of all this darkness and weight comes light. You know, the weightiness is gone and here's the morning, and it's meant to feel very positive and bright and uplifting from the rest of dense, darkness of the previous track. And although it doesn't say so, in my mind this was the song where they were rescued, where they get pulled out of the water. And it's very much a song of seeing perspective, of really, you know, of being so grateful for everything that you have, that you're never grateful of in ordinary life because you just abuse it totally. And it was also meant to be one of those kind of "thank you and goodnight" songs. You know, the little finale where everyone does a little dance and then the bow and then they leave the stage. [laughs]
K: I never was so pleased to finish anything if my life. There were times I never thought it would be finished. It was just such a lot of work, all of it was so much work, you know, the lyrics, trying to piece the thing together. But I did love it, I did enjoy it and everyone that worked on the album was wonderful. And it was really, in some ways, I think, the happiest I've been when I'd been writing and making an album. And I know there's a big theory that goes 'round that you must suffer for your art, you know, "it's not real art unless you suffer." And I don't believe this, because I think in some ways this is the most complete work that I've done, in some ways it is the best and I was the happiest that I'd been compared to making other albums”.
I do think that we are long overdue The Ninth Wave coming to the screen. Bush did perform the suite at her Before the Dawn residency. That will only be seen by those who were at one of the dates in 2014. There has not been any representation of The Ninth Wave that can be accessed by the public. Aside from a Before the Dawn promotional video for And Dream of Sheep, it is all in the imagination of the listener. In my feature from January, I pitched a single drama that would star Saoirse Ronan as the heroine. As the women who gets lost at sea. I wanted to add and muse. I think it could be set in New York in the modern day. The New York-born Irish actor would be a perfect choice. She can do comedy and drama very well. The Ninth Wave film would have comedic moments. I like the idea of Kate Bush doing an audio cameo. Either as a voice on the end of a phone that gets a bit profane, or something like an audio guide at a museum of some description. I see this being a story of two recently married people going on a late honeymoon. That is how we get them onto a ship. It would leave from New York and be bound for the Caribbean. Playing opposite Domhnal Gleeson, Ronan’s character would work in New York (set in New York City/Manhattan) as a director. I think of her character as someone being loosely based around Greta Gerwig (a director she has worked with before). The first third of the film would see her in her job – there would be drama and comedy (I imagine a physical scene that is left for a couple of minutes to build an unfold; like getting stuck in a rotating door or on a conveyor belt and there being this awkwardness) – and conversations around her latest project. Back after her wedding and feeling stress in her job, she is angry that her husband ruined their planned honeymoon.
PHOTO CREDIT: Saoirse Ronan/PHOTO CREDIT: Agata Pospieszynska for Harper’s Bazaar
We do see his life and work. How the two interact and their lives together. The main focus is on Saoirse Ronan and her life. How she interacts with her parents (her mother played by Gillian Anderson) and sisters. Her character is experiencing an illness too, so there is an extra strain. The main body of the film takes us to the water and her struggle to be rescued. The songs would be played out though, between them, there are flashbacks and cuts. A mixture of backstory and some stylised pieces. A mixture of fantasy and dream-like sequences. The final act/part of the film takes us back to land and the end. It seems like everything worked out and she was rescued, though there is that potential of twists and possibilities. Is it a dream? Is this a film project of hers? Did Saoirse Ronan’s character die at sea and this is a fantasy? Is it simply straightforward and she is okay, or is the end of the film actually taking us back to the beginning and the narrative and timeline is skewed? I want it to be a mystery. Bush said around the time of Hounds of Love’s release that the ending was happy and the woman was rescued. The Before the Dawn mounting is more ambiguous. Maybe the heroine sadly died. I think Kate Bush would suggest it is a happy ending, though fans have always debated the truth of The Ninth Wave and how it ends. I would love to see this film come to life. Maybe a Netflix or Amazon Prime production. I am keen for there to be a female director. I am not sure who, though.
IN THIS PHOTO: The award-winning composer and musician, Hannah Peel
I see a soundtrack existing for the first and third part of the film. A score too that could be composed by both Hannah Peel and Anna Calvi. Maybe a joint collaboration that would bring their talents to a rich and ambitious production. More than anything, I feel there would be a definite audience for a film. The budget might be quite high – especially the scenes at sea and on the ship -, though no more expensive than most medium-budget films. Getting the idea to Kate Bush is key. I have no reason to suggest she would turn it down. Once was the time she would refuse the idea, though she has been revising her old work and knows how much people connect with Hounds of Love. As she has reissued the album recently and an additional Baskerville Edition, there is no doubt how much she loves her fifth studio album. Also, Hounds of Love turns forty next year. It would be great to have something like a film to accompany it. In terms of title, I think The Ninth Wave would be simple enough. Though that is subject to change. With another writer, it would be a pleasure to start in New York and then take us to the sea (The Caribbean Sea). A 2025 film about The Ninth Wave would be epic and filled with potential. If there was a willing production company, producer, director and writer who could help make it a reality, it would be the first time that this suite has been brought to the screen – forty years after it was first released. I also feel that it is something that Kate Bush…
WOULD love to see.