this song has been on repeat for me lately so i tried translating the opening verse from vietnamese, which wasn’t easy since the original lyrics are more suggestive than literal. i ended up reading about the story behind the song and tried to translate it as faithfully as I could while staying true to what I felt.

here’s the original:

Ngày em thắp sao trời
Chờ trăng gió lên khơi
Mà mưa bão tơi bời
Một ngày mưa bão không rời

Trên đôi vai thanh xuân
Ướp hôn nồng bên gối đắm say
Ánh sao trời theo gió rụng rơi đầy

Cùng rót bao nhiêu ngày hoang
Cùng đếm bao nhiêu mộng tàn 
Ru người yêu dấu trong vùng trời đêm

and my translation, likely imperfect:

the day you kindled the stars
waiting for the moon and wind to set sail 
yet the storms tore through 
a day the storm wouldn't cease

on the shoulders of youth 
steeping ardent kisses beside the love-drunk pillow 
starlight following the wind, strewn everywhere

together pouring so many wild days 
together counting so many spent dreams 
lulling the beloved within the realm of the night sky

I found a Hounds of Love t-shirt on Etsy a while back. Four hounds sketched in a loose style. Each moving in a different direction. none of them still, creating the sense of a circular chase, as if they’re hunting. Around them, scattered strokes of orange-red suggesting falling leaves; or maybe traces left behind by the hunt. the artwork has this distinct feeling of being caught in something wild. and impossible to outrun. I really wanted it. But it costs a thousand bucks.

In a 1985 interview with Tony Myatt, Kate Bush was asked about the meaning behind the song hounds of love. She said: “the hounds of love are an image, really: someone who’s afraid of being captured by love; and the imagery is of love taking the form of hounds that are hunting them, so they run away because they’re afraid of being caught by the hounds and ripped to shreds.”

I’ve been listening to Hounds of Love again lately. This has always been one of my favourites. There is an energy of despair in Kate’s voice and the entire production - the kind of despair that consumed the teenager I once was, standing at the edge of love’s first stirrings. I have always had a hard time facing my own feelings; not the fear of rejection (being rejected has rarely felt like a loss to me; love, I think, remains whole inside you regardless of whether the other person accepts it or not), but the uncertainty of living alongside love once it has found you. What happens after love catches you? After you lie beneath its claws and teeth?

My answer, I suppose, has always been the same: keep running. Running from things uncertain. And what is more uncertain than yourself, when in love? It takes a particular kind of courage to take your shoes off. To throw them in the lake.

To be two steps on the cold cold water.

and me?

I’ve always been a coward.