Feeling overwhelmed by the world’s current horrors can lead one to strange behaviours and weird gratitudes. These responses tend to arrive unannounced. They’re part of our desire and inclination to find hope in any situation, any adverse circumstance. Like unexpectedly finding a welcome counterpoint to the Orange Half-wit’s capacity for stupidity. He’s taught an evil regime they can monetise a vital asset. How clever is that? And yet you can hope, maybe, that it will help said evil-doers to engage more positively with the rest of us? What arrived unannounced into the heart of these gloomy thoughts for me, was the unexpected joy of yet another listen to Kate Bush’s debut single from her debut album, The Kick Inside.

In 1978, when Wuthering Heights (sorry about the ads) came out, Kate Bush was 19, a wild fragile being swirling about on Top of the Pops to change so much. She knocked ABBA’s Take a Chance on Me from the top of the UK chart and Wuthering Heights stayed at number 1 for four weeks. Apart from the marvellous musical innovation, Kate Bush gave us a song that is probably the BEST therapy for dealing with our terrible times. Find a recording and have a go. Suggestions for what to do and not do are below, but first some background.

This mad ballad apparently has many lines echoing the novel, making it wonderfully gothic. It’s a first person narrative with the dead heroine of Emily Brontë’s only novel, Wuthering Heights, begging her lover, Heathcliff, to let her come back to him. Despite their intense bond (she says “I am Heathcliff” at one point in the book), she’d bogged off and married someone else. Then she died and now wants to make everything right, scratching at his bedroom window and the like. Bit late now dear. Instead Cathy has to do as Heathcliff tells her somewhere in the novel: “You said I killed you, haunt me then!” Powerful stuff.

The immense range of this song is perfect if you need to get things off your chest. It’s like carefully choreographed scream therapy, from the deep lows through to the wild ethereal screeching. And of course Ms Bush’s performance has the added dimension of an English accent. This has to be appealing for Americans who want to use the song as for therapy purposes. They can do a faux English accent with complete abandon and inaccuracy and no one will laugh.

Speaking of choreography, Kate Bush also gave us some hysterical moves to try out, thrashing therapy if you will. Dancing to this song is hard but stalking about the kitchen or living room with the occasional leap and a long floating scarf is entirely possible. You can pull all the faces, make your eyes super-starey and wave your arms about frantically. You can stretch your arms and legs out as far as they’ll go and wiggle your fingers and toes until they cramp up. As you sing along, remember to march madly up and down, but don’t be tempted into doing cartwheels unless you’re in a padded cell already. Even if you can’t do any of this, you can surely manage the old-person-at-a-wedding dance moves which are a fine replacement for youthful athleticism.

Singing and prancing about to this song is deeply satisfying. It leaves you puffed out, slightly exhausted and deeply relieved, de-stressed and maybe slightly dizzy. This is a good thing. This kind of therapy reminds us that something more is always coming, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be more of the same horrible. We’re reminded to trust in the unexpected and the intangible. Sometimes life brings us wonderful surprises and even if it doesn’t, somewhere some artist will add light when we most need it. You can find the lyrics to Wuthering Heights here: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/katebush/wutheringheights.html