Aug 24: 'The Lark Ascending' #5: Wilhelm Reich and 'Cloudbusting'

Richard King's 2019 book explores British music and its link with the landscape of Britain. Here's the 4th post connected with the book.

In a chapter exploring mystical connections, he focusses on Kate Bush's music and the video for the song 'Cloudbusting'.

The Uffington White Horse is three thousand years old. I visited back in 2010.

This pile of chalk is ready to be used to re-chalk the figure and keep it white and visible from a distance.

The Uffington White Horse sits below Dragon Hill.

This was the scene for the video of 'Cloudbusting'.

The music video, directed by Julian Doyle, was conceived by Terry Gilliam and Kate Bush. 

The video features Canadian actor Donald Sutherland playing the role of Wilhelm Reich, and Bush playing the part of his young son, Peter, wearing a short wig.

In the book, King explains how the video features imagery of rural England

• a blue sky over a green hill
• a Fair Isle cardigan worn by Bush
• Sutherland's tweed jacket
• a vintage car

It's inspired by Peter Reich's book 'A Book of Dreams'. He built a house in Oregon called Organon in 1948, named after his discovery of 'orgone': a universal libidinal life force. He built instruments to try to capture this force. He believed orgone was responsible for drought and started to build a rain making / stopping machine. Reich was worried that in the wrong hands this could become a weapon. A model features in the video.

By the mid-1950s, Reich linked orgone with the presence of UFOs.

He was arrested and his work destroyed. The authorities are present in the video.

The book mentions her use of the Fairlight (also used by Peter Gabriel).
This was particularly evident on her suite of songs: 'The Ninth Wave' on the 'Hounds of Love' album.

This ends with 'Morning Fog'....

The White Horse was featured on the cover of the 1982 XTC album 'English Settlement'.

The book is available from all the usual places and comes highly recommended.