SONG:
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: This is a penitential cover. I was late with the last song. This is a song about Wilhelm Reich’s tragic life (through the eyes of his son), written by Kate Bush, although I kinda favor Gemma Hayes’ version.
ABSTRACT: I was never that big of a Kate Bush fan at the time all of my friends were listening to her. But man, she’s composed some great grist for great covers. I guess it takes repeated exposure for this virus to take hold.
What’s strange, maybe, is that at the time all of my friends were listening to Kate Bush, I was reading plays about Wilhelm Reich, the disciple of Freud who this song is about. Now, some folks might say this isn’t so much a song about science as about pseudoscience. Reich, they might say, was a charlatan or a loon. I’m not so sure about that. He was certainly unconventional, but his therapeutic model (we’re all wearing virtual “armor” because of emotional damage, the armor causes physical ailments, sex is one way to strip this armor away) seems pretty sound, and even his weather weirdness (focusing life energy – he called it “orgone” – from clouds to make rain) got some kind of results.
But whatever you think of his research, he absolutely didn’t deserve to die in jail, have his equipment destroyed and his books burned. This was in 1957, in the United States.
It’s a free country?
We’re a reasonable society?