Luan Hassett

A couple of days ago, I was leading a small group in Circling and was asked to explain Circling Europe’s principle of ‘Being With the Other in Their World.’ I described it in somatic terms as being like standing in front of an ocean and letting the waves wash up and around you, circling your feet, then letting them recede again. And taking in the vastness of the ocean.

Last night I found out that Kate Bush’s song Cloudbusting is about the son of Wilhelm Reich, Peter, experiencing his father as ever less reachable as Reich senior falls deeper into obsession with orgone, pointing metal tubes at the clouds in Maine in an attempt to extract universal life energy and manipulate the weather.

My impulse as I stood in my bathroom this morning in the aftermath of sobbing was to go find out everything about Kate Bush’s relationship with this story. It would be easy with Claude. But that would not be wonder. It would be curiosity. It would not be taking in the vastness of the ocean. It would be gathering a few details about ocean geography so that I could move on to something else.