![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/lakeitascamississippisource_sm.jpg?resize=500%2C223&ssl=1\" "\\"Lake")
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From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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?\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Kobun Chino<\/a>)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n [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.”]<\/em><\/p>\n The gods are gentle: when the king confessed The king went where the god had ordered him: (from Ovid’s Metamorphoses<\/em>, translated by Charles Martin [source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n …and:<\/p>\n A River<\/strong><\/p>\n God knows the law of life is death, (John Poch [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” has been covered by a lot of performers, including Talking Heads. Why would a (per Wikipedia<\/a>) “New Wave, art punk, post-punk, worldbeat” band like Talking Heads tackle this song? From This Must Be the Place<\/a>: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century<\/em>, by David Bowman:<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n “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.<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’m not exactly picking up “teenage lust” in Green’s account, but whadda I know?<\/p>\n Anyway, here’s Talking Heads’ version of “Take Me to the River,” from the soundtrack of their great performance film, Stop Making Sense<\/em>. (You can also see the full version<\/a> from the film on YouTube, in a non-embeddable video.)<\/p>\n
\nto having sinned, Bacchus repaired his case,
\nreleased him from the gift that he had given
\nto keep his pledge, and said, “Lest you remain
\nsurrounded by the gold you wrongly wished for,
\ngo to the stream that flows past mighty Sardis<\/span>
\nas swiftly as you can, and climb upstream
\nuntil you come upon the river’s source,
\nthen plunge your head and body both at once
\nbeneath the fountain that it burbles from,
\nand in that moment you will purge your crime.”<\/p>\n
\nthe stream was colored by the force of gold
\nas it exchanged his body for the river;
\nand even now, the seed of that old vein
\nis taken up by the surrounding fields
\nwhose soil, in hardness and in golden color,
\nstill shows the influence of Midas’ touch.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nand you can feel it in your warbler neck,
\nyour river-quick high stick wrist
\nat the end of day. But the trophies:
\na goldfinch tearing up a pink thistle,
\na magpie dipping her wing tips
\nin a white cloud, an ouzel barreling
\nhip-high upstream with a warning.
\nYou wish you had a river. To make
\na river, it takes some mountains.
\nSome rain to watershed. You wish
\nyou had a steady meadow and pink thistles
\nbobbing at the border for your horizons,
\npale robins bouncing their good postures
\nin the spruce shadows. Instead, the law
\nof life comes for you like three men
\nand a car. In your dreams, you win them over
\nwith your dreams: a goldfinch tearing up
\na pink thistle. A magpie so slow
\nshe knows how to keep death at bay,
\nshe takes her time with argument
\nand hides her royal blue in black.
\nShy as a blue grouse, nevertheless God
\ndoesn\u2019t forget his green mountains.
\nYou wish you had a river.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n