Cloudbusters

OKLAHOMA CITY – We are deep into the Dog Days of Summer. The star Sirius seems to be taking a grip on our sunbaked landscape. Just go outside (if you live away from the cities) and just look … up! It’s quite breathtaking taking in the night sky, with its stars and satellites and who-knows-what-all spinning around in the infinite.

It’s hot. Damn hot. But oddly gloomy out there. It’s like that feeling when you are cringing, waiting for the proverbial other “shoe” to drop. It’s a stinky, size 14 shoe that is just filthy. That shoe. We have dimwitted dullards running the Punch n’ Judy shitshow and it just makes me nauseous.

And to top it off, Kate Bush’s 37-year old hit “Running Up That Hill (Deal With God)” is back on the charts. It’s a rage with all the kids, with my own son telling me this morning that it’s “stuck in his head.” Say what? A Kate Bush song released when I was 13 years old? We have the most recent season of Stranger Things to thank for that, I reckon.

What I’d love to see is the kids pick up that Hounds of Love record and take note of the other big single from that record called “Cloudbusting.”

“Cloudbusting” is the song that was inspired by a reading of Peter Reich’s Book Of Dreams, released in the early 1970’s and basically Peter’s reminisces of his time with his father – psychoanalyst and former Sigmund Freud colleague Wilhelm Reich – and their time at both Orgonon in Maine and their time in the desert wastes around Tucson, Arizona, bringing much-needed rain to ranches and farms in the area. Oh, and his father using a “spacegun” to shoot down UFOs that were common in the area.

But back to “Running Up That Hill.” It’s a song that was “of the past.” Up until a few months ago, the song was relegating to regular spins on satellite radio stations catering to fans of New Wave and Alternative rock from the 1980’s. And now? My 14-year old is listening to it on repeat!

It’s funny. I recall when I was 14 really liking Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” and The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” due to their inclusion on the Stand By Me and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off soundtracks, respectively, back in 1986. I mean, my mom was surprised I loved The Monkees TV show due to it being resurrected by MTV and Nickelodeon in ’86, a year after “Running Up That Hill” had first appeared.

Everything old is new again, the saying goes. And seeing mid-80’s-set Stranger Things TV series resonating so deeply with the younger generation is quite telling. It tells me that the kids feel as thought they missed out on something important. That the answers to that gaping hole in their souls lies somewhere in the Reagan era. But I can tell them, it’s fleeting. It’s not there. It’s here and in the “now.” This planet needs the young generation to take the reins from the decrepit oldsters who selfishly refuse to let go of their power.

With the spreading drought here in Oklahoma and Texas and beyond, Reich’s cloudbuster should be in high demand. But the government goons – as featured in Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting” music video with Donald Sutherland playing Wilhelm Reich – got the genius and his creation and now humanity knows next to nothing about orgone.

A sad statement about humanity.