Cloudbursting is about Wilhelm Reich’s arrest by government agents and the trauma it caused his son Peter, told from Peter’s POV as an adult “every time it rains.” The yo-yo his father gave him was beautiful because it glowed in the dark, but dangerous because it was radioactive, symbolic to Peter of his father. The video presents the story quite literally, with Donald Sutherland as Wilhelm and Kate as the young (and disturbingly beautiful and sexually attractive) boy Peter. The real cloudbursting machines did not look as cool as the one in the video, though. Nor did they actually work.
It’s a beautiful, heartbreaking song.
