John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

Bloomsday

Thirty years ago today, I remember being a bit excited about Bloomsday and the Joyce centennial ... it wasn't quite the centenary of his birth (that happened in February), but the amalgam with Bloomsday, which comes each June 16, marking the date on which all of Ulysses takes part. In 1982, a friend of mine in Halifax and I sent each other letters; nowadays, we'd send texts, or just Skype, but it was kind of cool getting something in the mail a bit later. 

I was really into James Joyce at the time. I had read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, was very much enjoying Dubliners, and was struggling, struggling to get through Ulysses. Finnegans Wake came later, and that was a brain-ache, too. 

But I still love Joyce, and think Bloomsday is a day on the calendar to celebrate. 

To help mark it, here's a fan-made video to accompany last year's release of Flower of the Mountain, in which Kate Bush took the Molly Bloom soliloquy from Ulysses and adapted it to music. The Joyce estate prohibited her from doing this when she wanted to release it, in 1989; instead, she wrote her own words, called it the Sensusal World, and released it on the album of that name. By last year, when her Director's Cut album was released, she had evidently won the estate's approval. 

The video includes scenes from the movie Bloom; stick around at the end of the video to see the soliloquy from the movie. 

Have a nice Bloomsday

Today is June 16, which is one of those nice literary anniversaries, as it's the day that the events in James Joyce's novel Ulysses unfold. 

To mark the occasion, here's the recently released remake Kate Bush did of her song The Sensusal World, this time as she meant to record it: with the lyrics of the Molly Bloom soliloquy at the novel's close. The James Joyce Estate had denied her permission for the original project, in 1989, but obviously came around. 

The new version is called Flower of the Mountain: 

Here's what the song sounded like when Bush wrote her own words; it's one of my favourites, and a great literary tip of the hat, too.