Head Waters

From whiskey river:

Have you been to the source of a river? It’s a very mystic place. You get dizzy when you stay for a while. An especially big river has several sources, and the real source, the farthest point which turns to the major stream, is moist and misty, with some kind of ancient smell, and you feel cold.

You feel, “This isn’t the place to go in.” There is no springing water, so you don’t know where the source is. Actually, such a place exists in everyone; the center of us is like that. From such a place, the ancient call appears, “Why don’t you know me? Living so many years with me, why can’t you call my real name?”

The more your understanding of life becomes clearer and more exact and painfully joyful, the more you feel, “I’m so bad.” The one that appears and says, “No, you are not bad at all,” that is the way to go, that is your teacher.

Don’t misunderstand, this teacher is not always a person. It can embrace you like morning dew in a field, and you get a strange feeling, “Oh, this is it, my teacher is this field.”

(Kobun Chino)

Not from whiskey river:

[The god Bacchus, in gratitude for a favor, offers King Midas whatever he wants, no matter how “gratifying, although useless.” Greedy Midas famously asks that everything he touches be transformed into gold. But then Midas learns that he can no longer eat, and asks Bacchus to forgive him for his greed and save him from “this ruinous extravagance.”]

The gods are gentle: when the king confessed
to having sinned, Bacchus repaired his case,
released him from the gift that he had given
to keep his pledge, and said, “Lest you remain
surrounded by the gold you wrongly wished for,
go to the stream that flows past mighty Sardis
as swiftly as you can, and climb upstream
until you come upon the river’s source,
then plunge your head and body both at once
beneath the fountain that it burbles from,
and in that moment you will purge your crime.”

The king went where the god had ordered him:
the stream was colored by the force of gold
as it exchanged his body for the river;
and even now, the seed of that old vein
is taken up by the surrounding fields
whose soil, in hardness and in golden color,
still shows the influence of Midas’ touch.

(from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translated by Charles Martin [source])

…and:

A River

God knows the law of life is death,
and you can feel it in your warbler neck,
your river-quick high stick wrist
at the end of day. But the trophies:
a goldfinch tearing up a pink thistle,
a magpie dipping her wing tips
in a white cloud, an ouzel barreling
hip-high upstream with a warning.
You wish you had a river. To make
a river, it takes some mountains.
Some rain to watershed. You wish
you had a steady meadow and pink thistles
bobbing at the border for your horizons,
pale robins bouncing their good postures
in the spruce shadows. Instead, the law
of life comes for you like three men
and a car. In your dreams, you win them over
with your dreams: a goldfinch tearing up
a pink thistle. A magpie so slow
she knows how to keep death at bay,
she takes her time with argument
and hides her royal blue in black.
Shy as a blue grouse, nevertheless God
doesn’t forget his green mountains.
You wish you had a river.

(John Poch [source])

Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” has been covered by a lot of performers, including Talking Heads. Why would a (per Wikipedia) “New Wave, art punk, post-punk, worldbeat” band like Talking Heads tackle this song? From This Must Be the Place: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century, by David Bowman:

“Take Me to the River” went over well when Talking Heads played it at clubs. It was a great world-weary Sinatra-ish kind of song. A man’s woman takes his money, his cigarettes. Then she teases him. Squeezes him. And all he wants is to be dunked in a river. David [Byrne] got the song. “It combines teenage lust with baptism. Not equates, you understand, but throws them in the same stew.”

“I wrote ‘Take Me to the River’ in 1973,” Al Green recalls… “Me and Teenie Hodges — my guitar player — were at Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs, Arkansas… You’re down by the lake. You go and open the sliding door, and there’s a screen there, and the lake is out front there, and the whole thing going and going — it’s gorgeous.

“We’d stayed out there three days to write songs. That’s why we wrote ‘Take Me to the River,’ because I was down by the river. We wrote it without music really. I was trying to get more stability in my life at the time. I wrote, ‘Take me to the river. Wash me down. Cleanse my soul. Put my feet on the ground.’ Teenie and I worked out the music when we got back to Memphis.”

I’m not exactly picking up “teenage lust” in Green’s account, but whadda I know?

Anyway, here’s Talking Heads’ version of “Take Me to the River,” from the soundtrack of their great performance film, Stop Making Sense. (You can also see the full version from the film on YouTube, in a non-embeddable video.)

[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 5:33 long.]

Lyrics:

Take Me to the River
(by Al Green and Mabon Hodges; performance by Talking Heads)

I don’t know why I love her like I do
All the trouble you put me through
Take my money, my cigarettes
I haven’t seen the worst of it yet
I wanna know can you tell me
I love to stay
Take me to the river (x2), drop me in the water (x2)
dip me in the river, take me to the river
drop me in the water, drop me in the water (water)

I don’t know why you treat me so bad
Think of all the things we could have had
Love is an ocean that I can’t forget
My sweet sixteen I would never regret

I wanna know can you tell me
I love to stay
Take me to the river (x2), drop me in the water (x2)
Dip me in the river,
Take me to the river
Push me in the water, drop me in the water (water)

Hug me, squeeze me, love me, tease me
Till I can’t, till I can’t, I can’t take no more of it
Take me to the river (x2), drop me in the water (x2)
dip me in the river, take me to the river
push me in the water
Drop me in the water (water)

I don’t know why I love you like I do
All the changes you put me through
Sixteen candles there on my wall
And here am I the biggest fool of them all

I wanna know can you tell me
I love to stay
Take me to the river (x2), drop me in the water (x2)
Dip me in the river, take me to the river
Take me to the river drop me in the water (x19)

_____________________

Note: The image at the top of this post depicts the Mississippi River headwaters along Lake Itasca, Minnesota. The exact location of the source on the lake’s perimeter has been identified, but in the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps moved the channel (!) to a spot less swampy — to satisfy tourists’ need for scenic photographs.

Even the lake’s name is bogus. It seems vaguely Native American-ish, but was coined by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, the 19th-century geographer credited as the source’s discoverer. There was some dispute about exactly where in the region the river’s waters originated, but Schoolcraft put it all to rest with his explorations. But rather than accepting the Ojibwe name for the lake, or its English translation — Elk Lake — he turned to Latin to name it, awkwardly cobbling together parts of two words: veritas + caput: “truth” + “head” (or “source”).