So just now listening just to TR American Rivers song while reading the (K's) lyrics. I like the way he equates the rivers with his dreams and his mama at the same time, while noting the native American names and 'our guilt'. You can't kill the wisdom of indigenous people, that the river is both sacred (a dream) and our source of life (mama). Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it, as Norman Maclean said.
Bequia wrote Tom Russell wrote: A river is a carrier of dreams. "The water is wide…I can’t make it over…nor do I have…the wings to fly." We are stuck inside the river dream. For a moment. "Until human voices wake us, and we drown….." (Eliot.)
Eliot also wrote,
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the April dooryard,
In the smell of grapes on the autumn table,
And the evening circle in the winter gaslight.
'Mockingbird' racism is unfortunately very much alive and well against many of the world's indigenous people outside of the US. South Amercian tribes have to live with the ever increasing threat of their governments' complicity with oil and logging companies to ruin their lands. Once their rivers are 'clogged and defiled', they are finished. Whether or not the earth undergoes environmental catastrophe is inseparable from the fate of the remaining indigenous peoples (and their worldwide number amounts to at least half the population of the US). By the way there is a new film, Birdwatchers, that looks interesting, featuring the threatened Guarani Indians of Brazil http://www.birdwatchersfilm.com/. http://movies.sky.com/review/birdwatchers.
The river though, is the ultimate symbol of renewal and of the constant flux of everything, ol' man river he just keeps rollin, and it's most likely that even if humanity is wiped from the earth, it (the earth) will not be left sterile but simply enter a new phase and it will 'turn back wild'. If you stand back and look at the history of the earth, in the grand scheme we don't matter much.
On a personal level though they (we) are definitely 'poisoning our dreams', and I feel it every time I see plastic carrier bags floating in my local river or the scum from the local sewerage works being borne in on the sea tide or read the latest incident of illegal industrial dumping of toxins into waterways.
I've never seen an American river. The US land mass supports far longer and grander rivers than we have over here, but all the names of the earth's great rivers have a mythic ring to them. I always feel drawn to listen carefully to Bruce singing that wonderful old song I'd never have heard if not for him, Oh Shenandoah I love your daughter, away you rolling river...I'm bound away cross the wide Missouri. I was saying to Joe Way when he was over here how smallscale the UK must seem compared to what he is used to. You don't get a sense of big sky vastness on our small island, that you get in Africa, even in the mountains of Northern Spain, and no doubt, the wide open parts of the US.
I like the little plant photos, Kush. Great mythical agave. Is that what they make tequila from? I am a lover of deserts and I think I shall have to re-visit the wonderful writings of Edward Abbey.
Steven I have forgotten what I was going to say about what Sharon said, will have to re-listen to your interview. I was listening to you more than her, just fascinated by how you had her talking about her 'internal landscape'. My own preferred songs I think are those where the internal landscape plays out on an actual landscape.
I'll listen to the rest of TR later, plus the extra notes and enthusiasm from Bequia and Kush about other songs. At the moment the music sounds fairly uninteresting, but the lyrics look very good so I'll get into the album from the words, and he does have a strong voice. Also, have my first cd of Ba Cissoko (another West African griot plus band), and my second Etran Finatawa (a collaboration of two desert tribal people). Saw both groups at WOMAD last year (next womad here 23 - 25 July 2010), and they were both unbelievably good. Enough music now to keep me going until Christmas.
