For years, I have seen the term “seventh wave” used in marketing, literature, and even in music. Examples: Sting’s “Love Is The Seventh Wave,” and a line from Sheila E.'s “Glamorous Life” (“by the seventh wave, she knew she had a problem”)
What does the “seventh wave” mean? And were there six waves before the seventh?
Russell Shaw
Portland, Oregon
I have edited the topic title to be more helpful to readers-- Dex.
[Edited by C K Dexter Haven on 08-07-2001 at 07:52 AM]
I know we assume that if Sting wrote about it, it must be an obscure literary or historical reference. But actually the answer is disappointingly prosaic - he’s talking about literal ocean waves. Supposedly every seventh wave is larger than the others.
I don’t know if it’s true (I tend to doubt it). Maybe we have a physics expert or oceanographer/meteorologist who knows?
In a previous thread, we discussed whether the phenomenon is real. Every Seventh wave
I don’t know about every seventh wave, but from living on the north shore of Oahu, I can say with confidence that every “so often” with clockwork regularity a rogue wave comes along quite a bit bigger than the rest. Ask a surfer, they’ll tell ya.
Another possibility is that it’s a reference to an incident which happened in a California high school back in the 70’s. A teacher was discussing the rise of Nazism in the 30’s and a number of students expressed disbelief that anyone would knowingly have joined such a movement.
The teacher let the subject drop but a few weeks later he started telling students about a new club that was recruiting high school students. The club was called “The Seventh Wave” and was intended to gather elite students. Naturally many wanted to join and willingly adopted uniforms, salutes, mass rallies, etc. The teacher then started telling the students that the Seventh Wave was actually a clandestine political organization which planned to use its membership to gain national power. The students had no problem with this and the popularity of the group actually increased. After a few more weeks, the teacher announced there would be a secret rally where the national leaders of the Seventh Wave would appear and reveal their plans for action. There was of course no national leadership and instead the teacher used the rally to point out how willing all of the students had been to surrender their own individualism and join a political movement without even knowing what its goals were.
The incident became a nationally known news story for a while back when it happened. So perhaps some of the artists remember it and are referring to it.
This was featured in the movie “Papillon” with Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen.
They were trying to escape Devil’s Island off French Guyana by throwing themselves with a raft off a cliff. Because there would be a delay hitting the water, they had to just hope the counting would work. But, I thought it was the 9th wave they waited for. Anyway, Dustin lost his nerve and never left.
simulpost said
This can be easily explained. McQueen was a classicist and had read extensively the works of Tennyson
from Beruang’s helpful post from Bib’s link to the previous thread.
Hoffman had only listened to Sting and was a Modernist. He chickened out.
It can be noted that neither was an oceanographer.