Hello Earth haiku (10th of April 2015)

-- Kate Bush

Haiku is a fast, but strong sketch and as such can be a part of a larger poem. But several lines in that poem may look like a special whole, entity, scene. This was exactly the way how haiku separated from larger, "beaded" forms, and later on from waka / tanka (they have two additional lines wrt haiku).

When I listen to "Hello Earth" from Kate Bush, after just a few world I start to feel strongly the loneliness of a space station. Through the window I see Earth, I raise my hand, close one eye, and my hand completely hides a little Earth, a little bit of something that still ties me to this world. Now I am completely alone. These few verses is haiku (above), admittedly, excellently magnified by her voice and music.

One of the strongest part of the song is performed by male (English) choir, following closely traditional Georgian song "Tsintskaro", which is traditionally performed by a male vocalist with a subtle help from mail choir. Tsintskaro means "near the spring", and in southern Georgia there is also a village with that name. The translation of the Tsintskaro lyrics would be something like:

For those of you who don't know about this phenomenal Georgian song, >> here is a link to YouTube video. The song was used by Werner Hezog in the movie "Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht" (1979), and Kate Bush probably heard it there ("Hello Earth" is from year 1985). For all those who know Kate Bush magic (and I also wrote a >> thrilled essay on her music), inclusion of traditional music is not a surprise - she did it with Trio Bulgarka, impressive female folk singers from Bulgaria (in case you didn't hear about that, then >> listen to it, by all means).

They say that Georgians have great wine, their traditional music is obviously something very special - one should go there and see it once the world settles a bit. Regardless of Dzhugashvili.

Last updated on 10th of April 2015.