By The Landlord
“A hot bath! How exquisite a vespertine pleasure, how luxurious, fervid and flagrant a consolation for the rigours, the austerities, the renunciations of the day.” – Rose Macaulay
“Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.’” – Paul McCartney
“I'm always swimming forward like a shark. You just keep going and you don't rest.” – Nile Rodgers
“I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio.” – Joan Rivers
“No, I never sing in the bath. In fact, I've never even practised singing.” – Vera Lynn
“I never feel so much myself as when I'm in a hot bath.” – Sylvia Plath
This place is a favoured destination
For thirst-quenching topical musical libation.
But this week the theme that is applied
Is immersing liquid to the body's outside:
Songs refracted through our glittering spa.
So welcome all, to the Swim-Up Bar!
Perhaps most famous of all baths
As told by Vitrivius, is the splash of mass
Displacing water with expertise
In the Principle body of Archimedes,
Who found a king's crown part gold-plated,
Went down to tell him, forgetting still naked.
Eureka! Statue of Archimedes at Madatech, the National Museum of Science, Technology and Space in Haifa
Shower, quick dip, or slow, hot sinking,
Bathtime's the perfect place for thinking.
There's something linked to water immersion
That frees the mind to lucid diversion,
Lyric and melody, flowing and springing,
And with echoey walls, inspiring singing.
Hot tub, smooth, luxuriant, soothing,
Candled melting, mix-producing,
Power-shower ballad, bubbling funk?
Trickle-stream folk, or ice-shock punk?
Water's flowing, it's inclusive,
To all genres it feels conducive.
Sultan Amir Ahmad Bathhouse, Iran
Life begins in a womb of water,
But when at school we are taught a
Class and forced en masse to swim,
The whole experience can be grim.
Get pushed in, lose your float?
Please, mum, can I have a sicknote?
Swimming lessons were a fight,
A pissy-chlorine veruca-catch plight.
Pick up bricks from the bottom!
Wring your trunks out! Wear wet cotton!
A splash of shouty child piranhas!
Make bosomy floats from knot-pyjamas!
Half-drowning, I, with frantic waving
Got my bronze badge for 'life-saving',
But swimming was a splashy recipe
For gulpy, panicked misery.
Aside from hot beach dips by the sea
For years it felt just bland and fishy.
Then something clicked, some bottled note
Told my aching, older body to get afloat,
And now I swim in lido and lake,
Pool and sea – it makes me awake.
Though I'm not sure I can yet pull off
The icy feats of the wirey Wim Hof.
Wim Hof
The benefits of brief, cold water contact
Bring thoughts that attract, but also, er, contract.
But many great artists fluidly converse
In their creative selves when they immerse.
Grace Jones owes some of her longevity
To fast daily swims in the cold, open sea.
Water woman: Grace Jones, now 74
Some swim the channel, some just dip toes,
Some are baptised, some strike a pose,
But perhaps the strangest of all water feats,
Surreal attempt to avoid all the streets
And swim home through private house pools?
Here Burt Lancaster breaks all the rules:
So then, it's time to immerse in the subject,
Run hot and cold, sprinkle and project,
Sea Power to Marling, Eels, 10cc?
Where might it flow, rubber duck, to the sea?
Severin is here to entice you in willingly
Float your ideas. It will go swimmingly.
So then, please make a splash and suggest your swimming, bathing, showering and other body immersion songs and music in comments below. Deadline is 11pm UK time on Monday for playlists published next week.
Below the Sky Pool
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