{"id":4742,"date":"2009-06-05T10:45:12","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T14:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=4742"},"modified":"2009-06-05T10:45:12","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T14:45:12","slug":"aqua-vitae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/aqua-vitae\/","title":{"rendered":"Aqua Vitae"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[A modified version of the image above appears as the cover of Pascale Petit’s 2008
\ncollection, <\/em>The Treekeeper’s Tale<\/a>. It also pretty much perfectly accompanies
\nPetit’s poem appearing below, as the first <\/em>whiskey river entry in today’s post.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

What She Wanted<\/strong><\/p>\n

What she wanted was to return
\nto the original rainforest<\/p>\n

hear water pushing
\nthrough the sapwood<\/p>\n

and leaves eating light
\nas she wanted to eat light.<\/p>\n

She knew her nature
\nwas to be water, not wood.<\/p>\n

She knew there was a grove
\nof vertical rivers<\/p>\n

of roaring waterfall-trees,
\nand a grove of whirlpool-trees<\/p>\n

with vortices she could dive through,
\npast the hollow years of her life<\/p>\n

right back to the roots.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Pascale Petit<\/a>)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

On those occasions when one’s serenity seems about to collapse, I recommend that one step out into the backyard and vigorously spit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(David Huddle<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>… a poet catalogues the waters and other landmarks on the map of her life:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A Map of the Western Part of the County of Essex in England<\/strong><\/p>\n

Something forgotten for twenty years: though my fathers
\nand mothers came from Cordova and Vitepsk and Caernarvon,
\nand though I am a citizen of the United States and less a
\nstranger here than anywhere else, perhaps,
\nI am Essex-born:
\nCranbrook Wash called me into its dark tunnel,
\nthe little streams of Valentines heard my resolves,
\nRoding held my head above water when I thought it was
\ndrowning me; in Hainault only a haze of thin trees
\nstood between the red doubledecker buses and the boar-hunt,
\nthe spirit of merciful Phillipa glimmered there.
\nPergo Park knew me, and Clavering, and Havering-atte-Bower,
\nStanford Rivers lost me in osier<\/span> beds, Stapleford Abbots
\nsent me safe home on the dark road after Simeon-quiet evensong,
\nWanstead drew me over and over into its basic poetry,
\nin its serpentine lake I saw bass-viols among the golden
\ndead leaves,<\/span>
\nthrough its trees the ghost of a great house. In
\nIlford High Road I saw the multitudes passing pale under the
\nlight of flaring sundown, seven kings
\nin somber starry robes gathered at Seven Kings
\nthe place of law
\nwhere my birth and marriage are recorded
\nand the death of my father. Woodford Wells
\nwhere an old house was called The Naked Beauty (a white
\nstatue forlorn in its garden)
\nsaw the meeting and parting of two sisters,
\n(forgotten? and further away
\nthe hill before Thaxted? where peace befell us? not once
\nbut many times?).
\nAll the Ivans dreaming of their villages
\nall the Marias dreaming of their walled cities,
\npicking up fragments of New World slowly,
\nnot knowing how to put them together nor how to join
\nimage with image, now I know how it was with you, an old map
\nmade long before I was born shows ancient
\nrights of way where I walked when I was ten burning with desire
\nfor the world’s great splendors, a child who traced voyages
\nindelibly all over the atlas, who now in a far country
\nremembers the first river, the first
\nfield, bricks and lumber dumped in it ready for building,
\nthat new smell, and remembers
\nthe walls of the garden, the first light.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Denise Levertov [source<\/a>]<\/em>)<\/p>\n

The Negro spiritual<\/a> “Wade in the Water” has a long and marginally controversial history. Ostensibly, it’s based on the New Testament verse John 5:4 which, in the King James Version, reads as follows:<\/p>\n

For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It turns out, however, that many more recent versions omit this verse entirely: it may or may not be part of the book of John as originally written. (If you really I mean reeeeally<\/em> want to know why, this analysis<\/a> [125KB PDF] will give you more background than you can possibly swallow at a single sitting. Apparently one of the venues in which the Lord moves mysteriously is the halls of Biblical scholarship.)<\/p>\n

In its full version, the song also may — or may not — be a “coded” explanation to Civil War-era slaves of how to escape by evading pursuing bloodhounds, i.e., take to the water<\/em>. (For more on this, and other “coded” slave songs, here<\/a>‘s a good place to start.)<\/p>\n

Regardless what it may or may not mean, authentically or not, “Wade in the Water” is one heck of a song. Among others, it’s been a hit for Ramsey Lewis (jazz instrumental) and Eva Cassidy (vocal); their versions might be the definitive ones. And yet, jazz organist Rhoda Scott<\/a> (who is known — sorry, Ina Garten — as the “barefoot contessa,” for what will be obvious reasons) lays a pretty solid claim to it, too:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[A modified version of the image above appears as the cover of Pascale Petit’s 2008 collection, The Treekeeper’s Tale. It also pretty much perfectly accompanies Petit’s poem appearing below, as the first whiskey river entry in today’s post.] From whiskey river: What She Wanted What she wanted was to return to the original rainforest hear […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1eu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4742","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=4742"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4764,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4742\/revisions\/4764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}