Watching You Without Me Lyrics
You can't hear me
You can't hear what I'm saying
You can't hear what I'm saying to you.
Move the slow hand
I should have been home
Hours ago - but I'm not here,
But I'm not here,
You can't hear me
You can't hear me
You can't feel me
Here in the room with you now,
You can't hear what I'm saying,
You don't hear what I'm saying do you?
What's been happening
There's a ghost in our home
Just watching you without me
I'm not here, but I'm not here, but I'm not here.
You can't hear me, you can't hear what I'm saying
You didn't hear me come in
You won't hear me leaving.

Full lyrics:
("What's that?") ("It's four, five, six, seven...")
You can't hear me. You can't hear me. You can't hear what I'm saying. You can't hear what I'm saying to you.
You watch the clock Move the slow hand. I should have been home Hours ago, But I'm not here. But I'm not here.
You can't hear me. You can't hear me. You can't feel me Here in the room with you now. You can't hear what I'm saying. You don't hear what I'm saying, do you?
Can't let you know What's been happening. There's a ghost in our home, Just watching you without me. I'm not here.
("You don't hear me.") [backwards] But I'm not here. (You can't hear me.) But I'm not here. (You don't hear what I'm saying.)
"Don't ignore, don't ignore me, Let mein, don't ignore me, no." "Don't ignore, don't ignore me, Let me in, don't ignore me, no." "Don't ignore, don't ignore me, Let me in, don't ignore me, no."
"We see you here." [backwards] "We see you here." "We see you here." "We see you here." "We see you here." "We see you here." "We see you here." "We see you here."
You don't hear me come in. "Help me, baby! Help me, baby! Talk to me! Listen to me, listen to me! Talk to me! Help--" ("You can't hear me.") [backwards] "Listen, baby! Listen to me, baby! Help me, help me, baby! Talk to me! Talk to me! Please, baby, talk to me!" ("You can't hear me.") [backwards]
You won't hear me leaving.
This song is incredibly crafty. Kate has always been ahead of her time, hasn't she? To me, this song is about someone you love and how this person died and you still have no idea what happened. ("Can't let you know what's been happening"- "I died and there is no possible way I can let you know") You are just expecting this person to arrive, but they never will, at least not in body, because they are dead. But they are there, with you, in a ghost-like kind of way.
"Can't let you know what's been happening. There's a ghost in our HOME just watching you without me. But I'm not here". "I can see this ghost, who is heere, in our home [not house]. But it's not me. I'm not here- I'm not dead".
You can't hear me. Bollocks! I'm dead! Don't ignore me! Um. You can't help it. Oh, well. You won't hear me leaving.

Kate: "...like sensory deprivation, where you've been in the water a while, you start losing all sense of where you are, who you are, whether you're upside down or whatever… Although The Ninth Wave is about a very physical event, it's very much a mental event as well in that you are travelling in your head, even though your body is just floating in water."
"We talked together, and talked and talked all the time to keep our spirits up." - Egil Hafsas, Bourbon Dolphin Survivor.

Odysseus also survived by telling stories. For the Ancient Greeks, death by drowning meant no glory. Drowning was to disappear without trace, with no tale of how you died. You simply disappeared, unseen and unheard of. Friends and loved ones lacked the comfort of closure… Hence (if she drowns): ‘You won't hear me leaving…’

Yes, Kate is incredibly crafty! I think the protagonist of The Ninth Wave drowns with ‘Hello, Earth’… Wikipedia - Kübler-Ross: Five Stages of Grief: Denial - "And Dream of Sheep" Anger .: "Waking the Witch" Bargaining .: "Jig of Life" Depression .: "Watching You Without Me" Acceptance .: "Hello Earth" "The Morning Fog" - our life-affirming lesson from that tragedy!

I remember reading once that, when Kate was quite young, her mother had a spell of some sort. When Mrs. Bush recovered, she related that she had something of an out-of-body experience. I can only imagine that this had a certain significance for young Kate, and, for me, it does seem to shed a certain light on what this song means.
Unfortunately, the lyric foundation of this song, though telling and supportive, in many ways, of why I related the story about Kate's mother, is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of providing clues to the songs overall meaning.
To really appreciate the song, one MUST hear it. Kate does an incredible job of aurally recreating a place between here and there, a space in between moments, a whole land/seascape wedged in the crack between one half-spoken word and the next.
And how like Kate Bush to set the simple but powerful act of reaching out to and reassuring a loved one from "the beyond" against a mind-bending backdrop of backmasking, sampling, and world-music (Javanese gamelan), of sorts. "The medium roams and rambles..." delightfully, IMHO...

"Watching You Without Me" - A low point of intense (physical) aloneness. The character has slipped into a semi-unconscious hallucinatory state. But her relationship with herself and her will-to-survive are ‘talking all the time’, telling stories to maintain spirits... formulating abstract theories and hypotheses to deal with the situation…
A ghost story, an out-of-body story, a wandering soul story… This love-song is a story about her ‘talking to’ her loved one to overcome her sense of aloneness… She brings the two of them together, serving her need to comfort herself and her need to comfort (reassure) the other that helps to define that self… Her extreme situation makes her physically weak but mentally expansive…
In WYwoM, we ‘float’ between several (hypothetical) realities/stories/‘worlds’ - the anxious loved one, the desperate protagonist, the rescue search mission (sound of waves & SOS code)…
The song is a state of unknowing, between this world and the next… Between what should have been and what is, etc. Hence: ‘But I’m not here…’ = denial (this isn’t happening); acceptance (‘reality’ of drowning/not being); fear (partner’s ‘reality’); sense of change; etc.
"Watching You Without Me" - A low point of intense (physical) aloneness. The character has slipped into a semi-unconscious hallucinatory state. But her relationship with herself and her will-to-survive are ‘talking all the time’, telling stories to maintain spirits... formulating abstract theories and hypotheses to deal with the situation…
"Watching You Without Me" - A low point of intense (physical) aloneness. The character has slipped into a semi-unconscious hallucinatory state. But her relationship with herself and her will-to-survive are ‘talking all the time’, telling stories to maintain spirits... formulating abstract theories and hypotheses to deal with the situation…
You're on to something there.
You're on to something there.

"Watching You Without Me" - She anticipates she is going to drown… She is rocking between life and ‘the other side’… The song is ‘divided’ into (at least) two parts: her-as-a-ghost and her-in-the-water (and her-frightened-of-being-as-a-ghost? her hope/help/SOS?)… ‘There's a ghost in our home…’ - She can already see her ghost in her home… Like the ghost-form is already there, waiting for her to inhabit…To go home to…
The song reminds me of Odysseus in the Underworld - Our heroine imagines herself on the other side and unable to communicate to her loved one…

i think it is about a dead woman who has to watch her husband live life without her. and it sucks for her, because she's a ghost, and she wants nothing more than to talk to him and be with him, but she can't since she's not alive. and it kills her.

Sad. :(

From first listening to this song and hearing the lyrics, I assumed it was about a woman who was murdered, I could be wrong! but it's my interpretation of it!