{"id":16770,"date":"2015-05-15T12:47:35","date_gmt":"2015-05-15T16:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=16770"},"modified":"2017-04-05T11:46:20","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T15:46:20","slug":"the-soul-and-the-sense-of-all-the-waters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/the-soul-and-the-sense-of-all-the-waters\/","title":{"rendered":"The Soul and the Sense of All the Waters"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R8sLDr47ACI?rel=0\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: The (very recently) late B.B. King with Muddy Waters, recorded at a joint concert in 1973]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From <em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I thought how lovely and how strange a river is. A river is a river, always there, and yet the water flowing through it is never the same water and is never still. It&#8217;s always changing and is always on the move. And over time the river itself changes too. It widens and deepens as it rubs and scours, gnaws and kneads, eats and bores its way through the land. Even the greatest rivers &#8212; the Nile and the Ganges, the Yangtze and the Mississippi, the Amazon and the great grey-green greasy Limpopo all set about with fever trees &#8212; must have been no more than trickles and flickering streams before they grew into mighty rivers.<\/p>\n<p>Are people like that? I wondered. Am I like that? Always me, like the river itself, always flowing but always different, like the water flowing in the river, sometimes walking steadily along <em>andante<\/em>, sometimes surging over rapids <em>furioso<\/em>, sometimes meandering with hardly any visible movement <em>tranquilo<\/em>, <span class=\"explannote\" title=\"playing slowly\"><em>lento<\/em><\/span>, <span class=\"explannote\" title=\"playing very, very softly\"><em>ppp pianissimo<\/em><\/span>, sometimes gurgling <span class=\"explannote\" title=\"playing merrily and light-heartedly\"><em>giacoso<\/em><\/span> with pleasure, sometimes sparkling <em>brillante<\/em> in the sun, sometimes <em>impetuoso<\/em>, sometimes <em>lacrimoso<\/em>, sometimes <em>appassionato<\/em>, sometimes <em>misterioso<\/em>, sometimes <span class=\"explannote\" title=\"playing heavily, ponderously\"><em>pesante<\/em><\/span>, sometimes <span class=\"explannote\" title=\"playing in a smooth, flowing manner\"><em>legato<\/em><\/span>, sometimes <em>staccato<\/em>, sometimes <span class=\"explannote\" title=\"played in a subdued, sighing, doleful manner\"><em>sospirando<\/em><\/span>, sometimes <em>vivace<\/em>, and always, I hope, <em>amoroso<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Do I change like a river, widening and deepening, eddying back on myself sometimes, bursting my banks sometimes when there&#8217;s too much water, too much life in me, and sometimes dried up from lack of rain? Will the I that is me grow and widen and deepen? Or will I stagnate and become an arid riverbed? Will I allow people to dam me up and confine me to a wall so that I flow only where they want? Will I allow them to turn me into a canal to use for their own purposes&#8230;? Or will I make sure I flow freely, coursing my way through the land and ploughing a valley of my own?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Aidan Chambers [<a title=\"Google Books: 'This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn,' by Aidan Chambers\" href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=Jhu8Inw6VfkC&amp;pg=PA371#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Not from <em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Oblivion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I poured a whiskey and soda<br \/>\nwatching the tree outside dissolve:<br \/>\nlight going backward \u00a0 pushed to corners<br \/>\nto the white sliver of wood<br \/>\naround the door.<\/p>\n<p>Where was that river seething with light?<br \/>\nI recall the banks menaced by wasps<br \/>\nswollen on summer sap, a cement hollow<br \/>\nstuck with their strange cradles<br \/>\na woozy stench of damp clay<br \/>\nthe blunt poison of water snakes.<\/p>\n<p>I do remember someone<br \/>\nclose warm flesh pushed to the sand<br \/>\nthe ocean a dark noise<br \/>\nechoing gulls and a wail of forlorn love<br \/>\nmoonlight like yellowed keys<br \/>\non his antique piano<br \/>\nmusic across the water\u00a0 \u00a0 our song<br \/>\ntides pulled awful and endless<br \/>\nas the spine of memory.<\/p>\n<p>The light is lost<br \/>\nmy glass is hollow:<br \/>\nthe door is luminous<br \/>\nlike a firefly at midnight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Rachel Sherwood)<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and (quoting from Anne Cameron&#8217;s <em>Daughters of Copper Woman<\/em>, in which &#8220;an old Nootka woman describes how her forebears would navigate their oceangoing canoes&#8221;):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Everythin&#8217; we ever knew about the movement of the sea was preserved in the verses of a song. For thousands of years we went where we wanted and came home safe because of the song. On clear nights we had the stars to guide us and in the fog we had the streams and creeks that flow into and become <span class=\"explannote\" title=\"the salt water current that ran from California to the Aleutian Islands\">Klin Otto<\/span>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>There was a song for goin&#8217; to China and a song for goin&#8217; to Japan, a song for the big island and a song for the smaller one. All she had to know was the song and she knew where she was. To get back, she just sang the song in reverse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Bruce Chatwin\u00a0 [<a title=\"New York Review of Books (January 19, 1989): 'The Songlines Quartet,' by Bruce Chatwin\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/archives\/1989\/jan\/19\/the-songlines-quartet\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>The Dry Salvages<\/strong><br \/>\n<em><strong>(excerpt)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river<br \/>\nIs a strong brown god &#8212; sullen, untamed and intractable,<br \/>\nPatient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;<br \/>\nUseful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;<br \/>\nThe only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.<br \/>\nThe problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten<br \/>\nBy the dwellers in cities &#8211; ever, however, implacable.<br \/>\nKeeping his seasons, and rages, destroyer, reminder<br \/>\nOf what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated<br \/>\nBy worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.<br \/>\nHis rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,<br \/>\nIn the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,<br \/>\nIn the smell of grapes on the autumn table,<br \/>\nAnd the evening circle in the winter gaslight.<\/p>\n<p>The river is within us, the sea is all about us;<br \/>\nThe sea is the land&#8217;s edge also, the granite,<br \/>\nInto which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses<br \/>\nIts hints of earlier and other creation:<br \/>\nThe starfish, the horseshoe crab, the whale&#8217;s backbone;<br \/>\nThe pools where it offers to our curiosity<br \/>\nThe more delicate algae and the sea anemone.<br \/>\nIt tosses up our losses, the torn seine,<br \/>\nThe shattered lobsterpot, the broken oar<br \/>\nAnd the gear of foreign dead men. The sea has many voices,<br \/>\nMany gods and many voices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(T.S. Eliot)<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>#84:<\/strong> They say time is like a river, and you may find yourself nodding in agreement: the analogy is obvious. But the differences are obvious, too &#8212; chief among them, that you can watch a river from a vantage point of safety.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(JES, <em>Maxims for Nostalgists<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: The (very recently) late B.B. King with Muddy Waters, recorded at a joint concert in 1973] From whiskey river: I thought how lovely and how strange a river is. A river is a river, always there, and yet the water flowing through it is never the same water and is never still. It&#8217;s always [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,74,5,50,36,251],"tags":[566,3285,4044,4045,4046,4047,4048],"class_list":{"0":"post-16770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-music","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-language-writing_cat","11":"category-reading","12":"category-poetry-writing_cat","13":"tag-bb-king","14":"tag-maxims-for-nostalgists","15":"tag-muddy-waters-rachel-sherwood","16":"tag-aidan-chambers","17":"tag-rivers","18":"tag-bruce-chatwin","19":"tag-water","20":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4mu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16770"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19043,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16770\/revisions\/19043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}