I think "Moments of Pleasure," from Kate Bush's 1993 album The Red Shoes, is a perfect example of how art can transform even the extremely personal into something universal. Kate sings about moments and people specific to her life, celebrating those she's loved and lost over the years, without bothering to explain the context to her listeners. It feels like reading a diary entry meant for her eyes only, all fragments and glimpses and fleeting references. She knows what she means, and that's all that matters to her.
And yet WE know what she means as well, or at least we understand the feeling of it. We can Google who George the Wipe was, or Maureen, or Bubba who danced down the aisle of a plane, or Bill who turned the lights up, but it's not strictly necessary. These are people tenderly remembered, and we know how that is. We recognize the bruised and beating human heart behind the particulars. We have Maureens and Bubbas and Bills of our own.
This song moved me in another way too. Kate fondly remembers scenes from an already-full life -- adventures already had, deep bonds already formed. But when I first heard it, newly an adult and still relatively new to the US, I felt that all of that was still ahead of me. For all the memories I'd made and friendships I'd left behind and mourned, I knew I had more people to meet, and more living yet to do. This song made me hungry not just to have those experiences, but to have already had them, and to be looking back on them. It made me long for -- to borrow the title of Dua Lipa's latest album -- future nostalgia. When Kate sings, stirringly, "the buildings of New York / look just like mountains through the snow," it felt to me like a promise: that I too would have such a moment, and its memory.
Here's the song. (I'm linking to a fan-made video with better audio quality, but you might also want to check out the official video, which features the song in an excerpt from Kate's short film The Line, The Cross and the Curve.)
The chorus lyrics, I think, also speak poignantly to our time:
Just being alive
It can really hurt
And these moments given
Are a gift from time
Just let us try
To give these moments back
To those we love
To those who will survive
Here's to more cherished moments with loved ones, and letting those moments become the memories that sustain us in the long years to come.
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