The Sensual World

Bush was inspired to write the song after hearing Irish actress Siobhan McKenna read the closing soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses , in which the character Molly Bloom recalls her earliest sexual experience with husband-to-be Leopold Bloom. The book was published in 1922. Kate, believing the text had fallen to public domain, simply lifted parts from it and sang them on the backing track she’d created. She approached director Jimmy Murakami to make a video for the song, and he expressed doubts because he suspected James Joyce’s grandson Stephen James Joyce had the rights to the book. Kate then contacted him numerous times, but the Joyce estate refused to release the words. She spent over a year trying to gain permission before accepting defeat. In the end, she kept the backing track but “re-approached the words”, writing a lyric that sounded a lot like the original text but also added the dimension of ‘ stepping out of the page / into the sensual world ‘, in effect Molly Bloom stepping out of the book and walking into real life. There are two versions of ‘The Sensual World’: the album version and the instrumental version. The song was re-recorded for the album Director’s Cut after Bush had finally acquired permission from the Joyce estate to use the text from ‘Ulysses’. This version was called Flower Of The Mountain . The video, which features Bush dancing through an enchanted forest in a medieval dress, was co-directed by The Comic Strip co-creator Peter Richardson and Bush herself. The first Kate Bush single in three years was met quite positive reviews. A dazzling return to form after a few slightly indifferent releases. The best song she’s written since ‘Army Dreamers’, even if slightly on the long side. She’s got bloomin’ sexy… in which talk of desire, touching, and Kate’s own breasts is rife. But these aren’t merely shock tactics… a delicate and all-consuming song. She sings of a deep sensuality that ensures that I have to wear baggy trousers when I dance. Beautiful, warm, and ever-lasting. The song is about someone from a book who steps out from this very black and white 2-D world into the real world. The immediate impressions was the sensuality of this world – the fact that you can touch things, that is so sensual – you know… the colours of trees, the feel of the grass on the feet, the touch of this in the hand – the fact that it is such a sensual world. I think for me that’s an incredibly important thing about this planet, that we are surrounded by such sensuality and yet we tend not to see it like that. But I’m sure for someone who had never experienced it before it would be quite a devastating thing. (…) I love the sound of church bells. I think they are extraordinary – such a sound of celebration. The bells were put there because originally the lyrics of the song were taken from the bookUlyssesby James Joyce, the words at the end of the book by Molly Bloom, but we couldn’t get permission to use the words. I tried for a long time – probably about a year – and they wouldn’t let me use them, so I had to create something that sounded like those original word, had the same rhythm, the same kind of feel but obviously not being able to use them. It all kind of turned in to a pastiche of it and that’s why the book character, Molly Bloom, then steps out into the real world and becomes one of us. There’s a few songs that have been difficult to write. I think the most frustrating and difficult to write was the song, ‘The Sensual World’. Uh, you’ve probably heard some of the story, that originally it was written to the lyrics at the end of ‘Ulysses’, and uh, I just couldn’t believe how the whole thing came together, it was so… It was just like it was meant to be. We had this sort of instrumental piece, and uh, I had this idea for like a rhythmic melody, and I just thought of the book, and went and got it, and the words fitted – they justfitted, the whole thing fitted, it was ridiculous. You know the song was saying