Of Ninth Waves And Glass Hotels

In 1985, Kate Bush released her fifth studio album, Hounds of Love. Widely regarded as her best album, side A includes such chart toppers as Cloudbusting and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Both tracks enjoyed multi-generational popularity; Utah Saints sampled Cloudbusting on their 1992 electronic dance hit, Something Good, while Stranger Things' excessive use of Running Up That Hill in 2022 introduced sexagenarian Kate Bush to eleven year olds the world over. Side B of Hounds of Love, a conceptual suite subtitled The Ninth Wave, remains one of her greatest achievements in a career that has spanned six decades.

 

The Ninth Wave's seven tracks tell the story of a woman lost at sea, drifting in and out of hypothermia induced sleep. She experiences dreamlike scenarios from her past and future, as well as events witnessed through the eyes of a woman on trial for witchcraft and an astronaut circling the Earth in a satellite.

Each track conjures imagery that almost begs for it to be made into a film; however, doing so would require fleshing out the protagonist's background, her relationships, the events that led to her being lost at sea, and clarification of its resolution. Simply put, it would need to answer two questions - how did she end up floating alone in the middle of the ocean, and at its conclusion, did she survive her ordeal? Emily St John Mandel's 2020 novel, The Glass Hotel, answers both questions in great detail (whether this was her intention or not).

 

A tenuous prequel to Mandel's superior Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel interweaves multiple characters and story lines. Its central plot involves a Ponzi scheme, estranged siblings, shipping routes, addiction and a hotel in a forest. It is bookended by events that are very reminiscent of The Ninth Wave's first song, And Dream of Sheep, and it's coda, Morning Fog. And Dream of Sheep introduces us to Bush's leading lady, adrift in a cold, vast ocean. At the beginning of The Glass Hotel, its heroine, Vincent Smith, finds herself in the same predicament...

 

Have I risen to the surface? The cold is annihilating, the cold is all there is- 

 

In this state, Vincent feels she can 'move between memories like walking from one room to the next'. She sees her brother Paul, slumped in a doorway, and notes how gaunt he looks. At the end of And Dream of Sheep, Bush sings...

 

Their breath is warm

And they smell like sleep,

And they say they take me home

Like poppies heavy with seed

They take me deeper and deeper

 

Coincidentally, Vincent's brother Paul is frequently in and out of rehab due to heroin addiction. 

 

In The Ninth Wave's second track, Under Ice, the protagonist recalls skating across a frozen river in a forest. She sees something moving beneath the ice, then realises it is herself, drowning. This propels her into the next track, a dream within a dream - Waking the Witch. She imagines herself to be the focus of a witch trial. Voices 'question [her] innocence' and condemn her as guilty. In The Glass Hotel, Vincent meets wealthy Jonathon Alkaitis while she is working as a bartender on Vancouver Island. Their union elevates her into a life of luxury, before Alkaitis is eventually convicted of conning investors out of millions of dollars. Vincent exiles herself to the Neptune Cumberland, a shipping vessel where she works as a cook. Although she played no part in Alkaitis' criminal activities, she benefited from the money he stole and may have harboured feelings of guilt by association. 

Track 4 of The Ninth Wave, Watching You Without Me, is very similar to Vincent's first and final scenes in The Glass Hotel. In the song, the protagonist attempts to communicate with a loved one at home, but is unable to as she is not really there. Vincent has slightly better luck. Her ghost is witnessed by her brother on two occasions, and she is able to enter Alkaitis' dreams as he languishes in prison.

 

 

The song Hello Earth begins from the point of view of an astronaut, looking down at the Earth and musing that he can blot it out with 'just one hand held up high'. Storm clouds form over America and, at this point, it is clear that Bush's protagonist was out at sea during a heavy storm. By the end of The Glass Hotel, we learn that Vincent was on the deck of the Neptune Cumberland despite storm warnings, and fell overboard after seeing the ghost of one of Alkaitis' victims.

The Morning Fog was written as a happy ending to The Ninth Wave, with Bush's protagonist finally rescued and thinking about what she'll do when she gets home...

I'll kiss the ground

I'll tell my mother

I'll tell my father

I'll tell my loved one

I'll tell my brothers

How much I love them

I’ve always preferred to think of this as a fantasy list of what she would have done if she'd survived. Mandel apparently felt the same. Vincent is never rescued in The Glass Hotel; instead, she appears as a ghost to Paul and gains some closure before she is welcomed home by her dead mother.

The events that transpire between the opening and closing chapters of The Glass Hotel are the memories and imaginings of its heroine, Vincent, as she slowly sinks beneath the waves. The Ninth Wave's structure is identical. Whether intentional or not, Emily St John Mandel has answered the questions raised by The Ninth Wave, and with the success of HBO Max's excellent adaptation of Station Eleven, given us hope that we might soon see Kate Bush's concept album brought to life.