Kate Bush, Caspar Friedrich, & the Fading of Memories

I was a freshman in high school the first time I heard Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush. This was 1999, so she wasn't mainstream anymore, so I am not entirely sure how I came across this song. I do know it was during a random poking around the dawning of the internet. Though, come to think of it, I had just finished reading Emily Bronte's gothic novel, Wuthering Heights, so maybe I was searching for something, and it led me to the track? 

Ahh, I remember those early days of the internet. I spent so much time looking up artwork and researching art history and I was going through a Caspar David Friedrich and a pre-Raphaelites phase, though I don't think I've ever really left those phases. Side note, a couple years later, I would find myself in Munich, Germany at the Neau Pinakothek Museum and looking at an actual Friedrich painting with tears rolling down my cheeks imploring to my friends to take notice of how Friedrich painted the moonlight. (I was slightly dramatic in high school.) I can't remember who exactly went with us into Munich that day, fairly sure Tomas was there, though he might have had to work, but Alex was there and also Sebastian. I have lost touch with all of them now. 

This was the time before digital cameras, well at least I didn't have one. I did have a disposable film camera, and we did take photos, though where that album is now, I haven't a clue. It often catches me off guard and feeling sadly wistful when I realize how about half of my life, I don't have photographs to remember anything by. I was born in the Philippines and grew up very, very poor. I have zero photos of me as a baby in my possession. At the age of 8, my mother and I immigrated to the US. There are a few photographs of me during these years of my childhood, and these photos were given to me by one of my aunts who took photos of my cousin (her daughter) and I during summers I spent with them in Vermont.

After that, I sort of just don't exist, except for one or two photos when I was 10 or so. I wish there were more photos, I wish childhood me and pre-teen me was better documented, but it's not. I have my own fading memories and then memories others have of me. Did you ever stop and wonder, "I wonder if this will be something I will remember?" when things were happening to you and around you as a child? I thought this all the time when I was younger, and still do this now. Often times, I feel like I've hit the pause button on life and observe the scenery around me hovering a few feet above where I'm standing and going "Hmmm, I wonder if I'll remember this when I'm old."

Anyhow, let's go back to Kate Bush and Wuthering Heights. God, I was really into Bronte novels around this time period. I loved the moodiness, I remember one of my favorite words was "Moors", and with the power of the internet, I would go into deep research dives on the Bronte sisters. Not sure how my friends utilized their time on the internet, but certainly they found my usage so boring. Oh! Another museum link, many (many) years later, in 2018, I would actually be standing in front of the most probable portrait of Emily Bronte at London's National Gallery and remember thinking "Oh, my God, 16-year-old me would be absolutely beside herself." I mean, I was beside myself right then in my mid 30s. 

I think in the mid to late 2000s was the first time I came across the music video for Wuthering Heights on the internet. I was transfixed! The red dress! The dance! Side note, I was a dancer throughout my youth and had very lofty plans to become a professional dancer and possibly move to New York or LA and my part time job would be to work for a fashion magazine or be a journalist while also studying art history (i.e. I wanted to be a Nora Ephron movie heroine) at a liberal arts school. My favorite form of dancing was modern so you can bet your tush I was obsessed with the video. How wonderful, absolutely wonderful it was to have loved a song for so many years and then to finally see a visual representation of the song and love it ever more?! 

I never did move to New York. I did eventually find my way to Los Angeles, where I met my now husband. I never became a professional dancer; a serious injury my junior year really disabled my chances. I remember I had auditioned in Houston for a dance company based in Los Angeles and made the first cut. One of their principal dancers/choreographers was the person who choreographed all those iconic Gap commercials. I was to fly to L.A. that summer and audition again, but a couple weeks later I suffered a back injury after doing barrel turns during rehearsals and slipped on the stage. Farewell dance dreams. 

I applied to a Liberal Arts college in New Hampshire, I received a letter and never opened it. I'm not sure why. I don't know if that letter said I was accepted or not. I'd like to think I was accepted. I did hold a 4.3 GPA, was Captain of my dance team (two years in a row), editor of my yearbook, was involved in student council, and I'm pretty sure the essay I submitted was more than sufficient. Instead, I lazily applied to a state school and then plunged into a deep depression. I would eventually come out of it after a year living in Budapest. But that's another story, for another day.