Music // Wuthering Heights

The 20th of January 2023

Today it is officially 45 years ago that Kate Bush released her very first single; Wuthering Heights! It is in my personal opinion the best debut single of all time, and also my favorite song of all time. It's been my favorite song for such a long time that there isn't a part of my left that doesn't remember knowing this song. It's really just awfully important to me. Every single time I listen to it I am transported somewhere completely different. It's hard to believe that this is the first piece of her art that she presented to the world, and that she was only twenty years old when it was released! 

 

Personally I believe everything about this particular song, and all of the imagery that it conjures up is just perfection. I love the shrill vocals, the dramatic yet gentle instrumentals and the deep intensity in the lyrics. It sounds perfectly haunting, comforting, romantic and also desperate. I could listen to it forever and ever. The fact that the guitar solo slowly fades away to me essentially means that the song does literally, somewhere, goes on forever! 

There were two official music videos released for the song. Both are excellent and while the "Red Dress" version is the most important one for many other fans my personal favorite has to be the 'White Dress" version. There is something absolutely magical about that music video. 

The video just accompanies the song wonderfully, it's equally haunting. Her face is so expressive, her hair is so wild and unruly, the fluid movements that she makes, the choreography and the marvelous video effects really make it a wonderful video. It really had a very profound effect on me as a child, it really affected everything that I love in life. The aesthetics that I enjoy, the way I love dressing, the way I'd love to be able to move to music and many many more things.

In that first year she performed the song a few times on a variety of television shows, some of those versions are quite rare! And quite awful quality as well, hopefully they'll pop up in better shape in the future! She also performed it as the encore to her wildly successful Tour of Life shows. Imagine having the balls to perform such a vocally complicated song at the end of a nearly two hour very active show!

However my favorite performance is the following one;

This beautiful and dramatic performance was filmed in the Efteling amusement park, which is a place I visited a few times as a child. She was invited to perform a selection of songs to promote the opening of Het Spookslot (The Haunted Castle) in a move that can genuinely only be described as the best idea in music promotion history. 

She performed a couple of other songs as well in different areas of the park. She performed Moving, Them Heavy People, The Man With the Child in His Eyes, Strange Phenomena and The Kick Inside. All of which are absolutely a recommended watch as well! It's genuinely a really strong series of videos that really show how well her music marries to the beautiful fantasy of this park. 

However that performance of Wuthering Heights is the true pinnacle of the whole set. Frankly it's ready to go into a museum dedicated to music history. The set is perfect for the song and she performs it incredibly well. It's just a wonderful and very memorable performance of Kate.

To be honest I could go on forever. Kate her music in general is very important to me and very close to my heart. She's an artist unlike any other. Obviously she doesn't need any promotion at this point (Or in general, her music speaks for her) but I do hope to be able to convey some of my love for her music to other people as well. Her full discography is astounding, full of wonderful jewels and a lifetime of new sounds that you hadn't noticed on the last listen just waiting to be discovered! But for me it all begins and ends with this song.

Happy Birthday to Wuthering Heights!

- Kate performing in 1978, likely either at Toppop (NL) or Szene (DE) -

Life // New Years Resolutions 2023

I'd like to clear up some space in my head by writing down my resolutions for the new year. It would be pleasant to note it down so that I can remove it from my head as I keep adding more and more things that I'd like to pursue this year and well, I will simply do none of it if it's not organized. This past year, more than ever, I learned that I love to organize information so that it's clear for me. Making lists in google sheets is one of my favorite hobbies because of that. It's really terribly mundane but it works for me. 

 

So let's note down some things that I'd like to do this year; 

• Be more active physically, long walks in the city are my favorite.
• Attempt to eat healthier, perhaps more emotionally fulfilling salads and surely less cheese (I love cheese, but sadly it's not a reciprocated love) 
• Sort out which albums I'd like to own on vinyl and make attempts to procure them. Preferably for a lovely price. 
• Make an effort to go to more museums. 
• Try to read some of the slightly more challenging books on my to read list. 
• Perhaps attempt to finish reading Infinite Jest (It's such a behemoth of a book, it deserves its own bullet point really) 
• Pursue some creative hobbies, like painting or making simple jewelry. 
• Collect more interesting vintage items. In general, try to shop more second hand. 
• Try my hand at dancing, likely in the living room with the curtains closed. 
• Be a little more social with a larger variety of people. 
• Write more song lyrics and/or short stories. 

It would probably be easy to conjure up a few more ideas but I feel like this is a very decent list for the year. Most of the points are vague enough that I feel no amount of pressure to reach a specific end goal. Overall I am quite pleased with my ideas and I'd like to see where future me will end up. If anyone is still reading this, I'd love to know what type of things you would like to do this year? 

Life // No Self Control

It's been a while but I'll try to refrain from making excuses. A lot has happened since the last update, after all it's been more than a year. I had tried to update earlier but for some reason it didn't really work out very well so I never finished that draft. It's still sitting there though but right now I don't want to look at it. It's weird but I feel it was written by someone that's no longer with me.

I always feel very distanced from what I have written very quickly, maybe a little too quick. After all, how much can I have possibly changed in a little more than a month? But somehow I start nitpicking at random sentences, thinking they are weirdly worded or too difficult. The problem is that my mind runs much faster than my mouth or hands can keep up.

Sometimes I will start on a story (Or in real life, when I am talking) and I feel the need to add unnecessary details because to me, it feels like they are important. But the more I talk the more I lose the plot of my story and it just doesn't make sense anymore. So I try to keep things short, but then they no longer feel like they were mine. Someone once told me that part of my charm is that you don't know what I am going to say next but the reality is that I often don't really know either.

I don't remember this well but somehow an image was shared with me somewhere, and it said something along the lines of 'Sometimes after a social interaction I think; well that wasn't my best work'. It's a bit sad but I think it describes me perfectly. Sometimes I think I could have done better but I can't expect to deliver a perfect score every single time. 

Anyhow, recently I've been watching some French New Wave movies and although they are very pretty I find them a bit difficult to watch. Some are very detached from life in the sense that genuine people probably wouldn't act that way at all. However some are a too realistic, and due to that they become so deeply depressing. They can really be devastating. The soundtrack is usually very charming though.

Last year (Or maybe also this year, I don't remember time well these days) I also watched a lot of cheap action flicks from the eighties. They're a lot of fun and they amuse me very much. It seems my childhood was somehow lacking because I never watched a lot of the classics so I have some catching up to do. Who should we blame for this? It doesn't matter, I am working on fixing the damage that has been done.

I think it would be cute to buy a projector so that I can watch these movies projected on a blank wall like you are in some kind of hole in the wall art house cinema. It would be very casually elegant but Sylvester Stallone would also be involved (Who, as I recently found out, is apparently deeply into painting?)

My next challenge at the moment is to watch a movie that a friend recommended to me. As it was a suggestion I do want to watch it. I think suggestions from people close to me are very important to entertain but financial plots in movies are very dull to me and this movie is sadly based fully on the financial market. I think after watching this movie I will experience a sense of accomplishment that simply cannot be rivalled (Or at least, until I finish reading Infinite Jest which has a thorn on the other side of my body)

At the moment I am feeling a bit tired, so I will lounge around in bed and I will contemplate my life for a little bit. Tomorrow is another working day and I am very much looking forward to my weekend which will start on Monday.

Life // Blank Slate

Lately I've been struggling to 'put pen to paper' and actually write something on this miniature platform that I have created here. It's a bit tedious to try and follow my train of thought to see where it will lead me this time. It's not like I have particular issues putting my thoughts into words but it just seems like when I actually do start typing the sentences just go nowhere in particular. It's been this way for as long as I can remember so I suppose it's now an integral part of my personality.

When I was a little bit younger I tried my hand at writing little stories about series or video games that I liked at the time. The internet was a new big unexplored world and I didn't have anybody to talk to at the time so I kind of lost myself in reading story upon story that forayed into subjects that the original material didn't even think about touching upon (Likely for many good reasons). Looking back at that, I wish I could read like I did back then.

In any case, I wanted to join their circles and also write my own stories. But I just couldn't get on the right track to do so. I'd think of an engaging title and wrote away at one or two chapters with extreme enthusiasm. It never went beyond that though as I quickly realized that I had no plot to speak of whatsoever. Lining out plot guidelines and seeing where the story would actually go wasn't my forte apparently but it would actually be considered something unavoidable. I'm still unable to do so though.

So I just abandoned that part of my life and didn't look back. At some later point I'd thought a blog might be more my style but I always deleted all my entries after some time. I became embarrassed of who I was at that point in time and the thought of people viewing it was absolutely horrid. At this point in my life I'd like to think I am approximately the person I will be for the rest of my life so I would like to try again.

Personally I think a blog would suit me the best since it's small stories or anecdotes contained in one singular post. Of-course I could write short stories but that would still involve some type of literary planning on my side which is as mentioned earlier, simply not one of my strengths. Usually I would tell myself I'm not intelligent enough to fabricate something fantastical that people want to read. That is however very rude of myself. I'm certainly not as clever as other people I know but I am also not the emptiest person.

It would basically be the best to find the platform that is suited to yourself the most. At some point in time I also attempted to use Twitter to make sure my thoughts could go somewhere but that wasn't a grand success either. The amount of characters are too low to properly express yourself and I found it difficult to decide how to divide up a narrative to fit these separated spaces. At some point the thread became very long and just excessively convoluted.

There have been people who said that part of my charm is the fact that my brain seems to be a complete and utter mess. Skipping from one subject straight to the other without any obvious connection until I explain to them why I thought of it. In the past I've also been chided for it. People tell me 'Why are you always changing the subject?' but I just find it difficult to stick to one topic. It's not like I am doing it on purpose either so I become a bit dejected when people go on and on about it. I can understand it as well though.

For example, I know another person who always turns a subject into something negative which can be a bit disheartening. If I would ask them if they want to travel to Cambodia they would advise against air travel since it has negative effects for the environment. If I tell them I'd love to go to Venice they would speak about the fact that I would have to do so soon since it will be the new Atlantis in the future! Lost civilizations are a great passion of mine by the way but I'll try to keep that as a subject for a future entry because I don't want to stray into another subject. I told you it wouldn't be easy for me to keep my thoughts in one spot right?

Essentially it appears that making entries here suits my style the most. Even if nobody reads it, it is not what matters to me. It is useful to have a space to store your thoughts. I'll make an exceptional effort to try and keep it up.