kate bush - "pi" (from the aerial lp, available for purchase here.)

in brief : and suddenly math seems like a sexy idea ...

two days ago, kate bush released her first album in twelve years, entitled aerial. "pi," on which she recites that number to the one-hundred-fourteenth place, is sexier than anything to be found on the album of the other forty-seven year-old mom to release an album this month. (did you know they were born seventeen days apart? prince, a noted bush fan--pun unintended, but left in anyway--would probably make something of that. he, too, was born in 1958, and so was michael jackson. quite a foursome.)

for me, kate bush doesn't have one of those voices i'd listen to even if she recited the phonebook, so the idea of her reciting pi held little appeal to me. but, jesus, it is a sexy number, kate taking to flights of fancy, creating indelible melodies from the numbers comprising the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. i mean, read that again--dry, right? just a lot of numbers, but it is golden and sunkissed, lightly funky. there are other bits to it, and it's all probably v. clever, b/c it is kate bush after all, and she's had twelve years to think about it. i mean, i'm not even a math dork and i love it. i am, however, a lit geek, and so she had me from "wuthering heights." when that phonebook album does come along, i'll be waiting on line.