Echoes of Anacostia

[AineteEkaterini]

Who can I share this with but you?

Yesterday I was at Southwark Cathedral for a meeting. As we milled around the meeting rooms over lunchtime we noticed there was a school group visiting the cathedral: a private secondary school, to judge by the elaborate blazers. They moved around the courtyard and passage below the meeting rooms, looking perfectly innocuous.

Suddenly everyone became aware they were singing – lined up in the courtyard where visitors were having lunch, being conducted in something I couldn’t at first identify. And then suddenly it became clear what it was: it was ‘Wade in the Water’. Wade in the bloody water. It swooped up and down around the old stones (and the newer ones).

I’ve no idea why they were breaking into song, especially not this. Considering ‘River Anacostia’ had been in my headphones on the train to London, it was as strange as it was unexpected, coming from these twenty-or-so teenagers. I couldn’t start weeping in front of everybody, could I? So I wiped my eyes, bit away the tears, and when they’d finished applauded louder than anyone else, and carried on with the mundane business of the day feeling very peculiar indeed.

[bruise]

Ahaha that's cool!
And I checked Southwark Cathedral on google, looks like a pretty suggestive place for such a coincidence to take place

[Mr. Badmouth]

This is funny, I had a very similar experience actually, and it happened just a few days after I'd seen Polly live in Zagreb. My brother was in a jazz summer camp and we all went to see the finale concert they performed, and in the middle of old standards etc. they stormed into a rendition of Wade in the Water! I actually jumped up in my chair a bit when I recognized it.

[somme]

I was watching the HBO show 'The Leftovers' and saw two different Polly connections. The first is in season one, in the second or third episode someone is rooting through CDs in a car and you can plainly see Polly's 'Let England Shake'. And in the second season one of the songs of the soundtrack is 'Wade in the Water'. Not her version, but still!