Melancholy Mentor Podcast
Welcome to Melancholy Mentor where classic literature meets the vibrant world of radio plays.
Melancholy Mentor Podcast
The Kate Bush Connection: A Journey Through Wuthering Heights
Step back in time with us as we unravel the haunting beauty of Emily Brontë's masterpiece through a forgotten medium. Our journey begins with the timeless tale of Wuthering Heights – that sweeping saga of passion and revenge unfolding across the windswept Yorkshire moors – before taking a fascinating detour through musical history.
Did you know that Kate Bush and Emily Brontë share the exact same birthday, July 30th, born precisely 140 years apart? This cosmic coincidence feels almost predestined when you consider how Bush's ethereal interpretation of Catherine's ghost has become inextricably linked with Brontë's literary universe. We explore how a 19-year-old Kate, after watching a BBC adaptation, created what would become her breakthrough hit in 1978, forever changing how generations would experience this classic story.
The heart of our episode revolves around a remarkable 1944 radio drama adaptation we've featured on our Melancholy Mentor YouTube channel. Despite being nearly 80 years old, this 27-minute production captures the essence of Brontë's gothic romance with the quintessentially theatrical delivery that defined the Golden Age of Radio. We've paired this audio treasure with serene visuals filmed along the Dorset coastline, creating a multisensory experience that bridges centuries of storytelling. For those seeking the perfect sleep aid, we also offer a black screen version.
As we reflect on what draws us to these melancholic tales, we delve into the very meaning of melancholy itself – not as depression, but as that peculiarly romantic state of contemplation that comes from gazing across misty moorlands, feeling both connected to and separate from the landscape before you. Much like Catherine and Heathcliff themselves.
Ready to experience this classic in a whole new way? Visit our Melancholy Mentor YouTube channel and transport yourself to the wild, windswept world of Wuthering Heights. Leave us a comment sharing your favorite classic novel adaptation – we'd love to hear which stories still haunt your imagination.
Send us an email to let us know your thoughts or if you have anything to add at ⏬⏬
info@melancholymentor.com
You can watch the radio drama episode we are discussing on our YouTube channel :
https://youtube.com/@melancholy_mentor
Hello everyone and welcome to Melancholy Mentor, where classic literature meets the vibrant world of radio plays. I'm Fran and I'm joined by Evan from Mystery Mythos. Together, we're your guides on this creative journey. During each episode, we'll dive into stories featured on the Melancholy Mentor channel, allowing fresh ideas to flourish, inspiring you to dream big and unlock your creative potential. Get comfy, open your mind and embrace curiosity. Let's get started. Hello, I'm Fran.
Speaker 2:And I'm Evan.
Speaker 1:Hello, I'm Fran and I'm Evan, and today we're going to be highlighting radio drama on our YouTube channel of Melancholy Mentor, and the radio drama is Wuthering Heights. Yes, I really like this one. So a little bit about Wuthering Heights. So Wuthering Heights is an iconic novel by Emily Bronte. Wuthering Heights explores themes of passion, revenge and the destructive nature of love through the tumultuous relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine, so they're the two main characters in it. Catherine also gets called kathy yeah, kathy yeah, shortened version of katherine. Wuthering heights was first published in 1847. It has inspired numerous film, stage and television adaptations. All right, okay, so we simply cannot mention Wuthering Heights without Kate.
Speaker 2:Bush. No, I was just about to say the wonderful Kate Bush.
Speaker 1:Wonderful Kate Bush. So we're going to have a slight detour away from the actual original classic novel and mention Kate Bush. So Kate Bush is an iconic English singer songwriter known for distinctive vocal and theatrical um performances. So Kate was born on the 30th right hold on a moment. This. This actually gets really interesting. I found this fascinating. So Kate was born on the 30th of july in 1958 in bexley heath. Okay, and I'm going to reference her birthday. That came in a bit. Her last live performance was in 2014 at the hammersmith apollo, which is in london. It was her first series of live shows since 1979. Yeah, so this was a really big thing. So when she announced doing live shows again because she's been quiet for a very long time, she's been recording still and she's a bit of a recluse, isn't she?
Speaker 2:she went to a recluse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right been recording still so. She announced the um live show dates for the hammersmith apollo and the tickets. When the tickets went on sale, they sold out like yeah nearly instantly so quick wasn't? It so quick. People had multiple phones going and all sorts trying to get these tickets and they sold out. I got a ticket so envious.
Speaker 2:I wanted a ticket, I couldn't get a ticket.
Speaker 1:That was actually gifted to me, yeah, and at the time I was working in the county of Devon, which for some perspective it's nowhere near London, and I'd finished a night shift, I'd done a 12-hour night shift, finished work in the morning, um, and then drove to brighton, got a train, went into london basically only just made it in time, yeah, like I was running through I think it was paddington station train station. I was running actually got to hammersmith apollo and there was a massive queue outside waiting to go in. So I joined the queue thinking, oh, that's it now, because they'd said if anybody was late they wouldn't let them enter. No, would disrupt the performance, because the venue, um, for a recording artist like Kate Bush, the venue's fairly intimate, fairly small. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I was in the queue and some people in front of me said oh, you know, wouldn't it be wonderful if, like, they let us in, if we, if we got tickets? I said I've got a ticket. And they went, she's got a ticket. And then the next person, and they literally paid half the way for me to run through going she's got a ticket, she's got a ticket right the way through this line. It was like pretty epic at the time. Yeah, let me into the venue, wow, whilst waving my ticket, and they let me in. But I had to. I missed the first song, um, and I was like in a bit of a holding area until she went on to her second song and then they let me in. Yeah, so I was really grateful for that. So, anyway, that was my. That was the time I saw Kate Bush perform live.
Speaker 2:Amazing. I bet it was epic. It was really epic yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. So now to get some relevance as to why we're talking about Kate Bush. So Kate gained acclaim with her debut single Wuthering Heights 1978. Her debut single Wuthering Heights 1978. She was 19 years old and she was inspired to write the song apparently after watching the 1967 BBC adaptation of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Yeah, yeah. Kate Bush and Emily Bronte share a birthday.
Speaker 2:Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:That's where the birthday reference comes back into it. That's brilliant. So Emily Bronte was born on the 30th of July in 1818, and Kate Bush was born 30th of July 1958.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:In a previous podcast episode we actually talked about jane eyre, which was by charlotte bronte yeah because we've also got um the radio drama of jane eyre on our youtube channel.
Speaker 1:Um, since charlotte bronte was born in 1816 and she's the sister of Emily Bronte yeah, emily died aged 30 of tuberculosis and the sisters were from Yorkshire and the sisters are buried in the family vault at Hayworth in West Yorkshire. I've mentioned this before, and Hayworth is a place that's been on my list of places to visit for many years and I still haven't done it need to get it done, I know, because it would be absolutely wonderful to actually go there and get some film of it and, you know, just really kind of um be inspired by being in that area this year do it this year, yeah let's do it this year.
Speaker 1:Do it this year, all right. So the radio drama that we feature on the melancholy mental youtube channel. Have you got some more information about that, evan?
Speaker 2:yeah, I do. Um, this is like a weird circle adaptation. We've got a. There's a fair few of these on our channel, um, but, um, yeah, and they kind of did supernatural horror fantasy um radio dramas, and they aired from 1943 to 1945. It's pretty old, um. There was a total of 78 episodes all together, um, spread out over two seasons, so it's quite, quite a lot of episodes. It was produced in new york and then it was broadcast onto, like, various radio stations across the country. Uh, this episode aired on 26th of march 1944 and this was number 31. Wow, so yeah, and the video itself that we've got to go with it was filmed at sunbanks, uh, and it's, um, the radio drama's 27 minutes long, so just under half an hour. So it's, it's a pretty cool one yes, by film.
Speaker 1:It's usually me that goes out with a camera and a tripod. I literally just use my mobile phone. Yeah, I film a lot of the coastline or woodland because I'm actually based on the coast, um, in the county of dorset in the uk, so I film a lot of the coastline and it's it's literally just to see or some boats or a bit of beach. Um, sometimes we feature in it like walking the dog or something like that. So, yeah, the videos are there to accompany the radio dramas, so that there's just something visual to watch. But we also provide a black screen version for sleep. Yeah, because not everybody's got kind of premium versions on YouTube. So if you'd like to go and check out our YouTube channel. I was going to say something else about the radio drama. I've actually listened to this radio drama a couple of times and it's really really good yeah, yeah hasn't got many views.
Speaker 1:I think it got under 50 views, 40 something views yeah, I think I've written down 44 44 views. It's actually very nice, so for anybody listening, thank you very much. Firstly, and if you'd like to find this episode and listen to it, the voices in it are just, they're just perfection yeah because you know, obviously, for when it was recorded and remind me of the date of the recording 1940 1944.
Speaker 2:26th of March 1944.
Speaker 1:1944. So it's all kind of oh, heathcliff, yeah, you know, the voices are just so quaint. It's actually a very good recording for its time. Yeah, yeah it is, and it also features a bit a little bit of a spoiler alert here, but a bit of where Kathy's at the window and she's like come home, which also a bit overexcited about that because it also features in the Kate Bush song. Um, you know, it's me, kathy, I've come home.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, brilliant, I know. So I really really like this radio drama. I love the story of Wofferin Heights. It's set on the Yorkshire Moors, you know, very, very desolate, and a lot of that is where the name of Melancholy comes from. So we kind of do I'm an nlp coach, so neurolinguistic programming, um, we kind of do that under um. When I say we, I mean me and evan do that under melancholy coaching. And then our youtube channel one of the youtube channels is melancholy mentor. Yeah, um, and it's that feeling of just that kind of the melancholy of looking out across the moors yeah with the mist rolling in and like from classic literature.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's how it's meant. Um, it's a word that slightly divides people. I've um had some unsavory messages about it, people telling me that it's um very depressive and you know that's okay then. Then it's not for you. Melancholy to me means kind of melancholic. It just means that state of um, possibly slight disassociation, but just where you're, it's like a kind of um. It's a romantic word to me really. Yeah, yeah, back in the day, um, you know, I've I've had a lot of depression over the years myself and I think that historically, back in the day, I would have been diagnosed with melancholy, yeah, kind of a word. That um doesn't mean something negative to me. No, I mean either. But then the power of words say you know, and how people interpret them and then what it means to them, according to their beliefs and their values. And that's why, on occasion, people feel that they have the right or the entitlement to have a go at us. You know, yeah, just let them say their thing.
Speaker 2:Like you say it's not for them, is it? No, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's fine, that's fine.
Speaker 2:It's all right.
Speaker 1:You're not our audience, so off you go. Yeah, right, okay, so that's that for Wuthering Heights. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in. Contact us at melancholimentorcom. Until next time, keep your minds open and stay curious.
