The Perfect Swimming Soundtrack

"I'm a self-destructive fool."

May 01, 2020

(Passage Creek in the Fort Valley area of Virginia.)

We’re shaking things up this week by starting with a soundtrack. Find a way to listen to The Swimming Song — from album Attempted Mustache by prolific Grammy-winning folk troubadour Loudon Wainwright III.

This is the song I openly sing to myself almost every time I swim alone, or internally whenever I have company. And I’m leaving it on repeat for the first draft of this essay.

The song (which, again, you should be listening to right now) is an earnest melody about the joys of swimming wherever you can find a place to dip your feet. And it is the anthem of my soul.

My parents made sure I learned to swim early. There were lessons, mostly at a college natatorium that left the entire building—locker-rooms, hallways, and all—flooded with the scent of chlorine.

Summers first meant pool passes, then after we moved, hours swirling underwater in a backyard pool. Some nights my entire family would get in the pool, creating a whirlpool around the deep-end through our coordinated movements as though we were summoning some deep elder god to our mid-sized University town.

Then, water was always an escape from heat. But now, I will take to the water whenever I can.

Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker story on her own immersion into cold water swimming culture in the U.K. and finding a compatriot who was equally eager to take the plunge—at least until my in-person social sphere collapsed to my husband, cats, and plants—led to a New Year baptized anew in every natural body of water I could backstroke through.

Plunging myself into waters of unsure temperature is not a totally novel idea. There were many, unplanned stops along the West Coast in the winter after the 2010 election cycle. A solo plunge into the summer, but still iceberg-laden, waters of Lake Superior. Group plunges into oceans and lakes, clothed and otherwise.

This summer I swam in a public place
And a reservoir, to boot
At the latter I was informal
At the former I wore my suit
I wore my swimming suit, yeah

Hot springs, in areas hot and cold: In Costa Rica, with frozen drinks in pools of all temperatures; In Virginia, wading through the run-off of the Jefferson Pools; In Colorado, at a desert nudist resort; In Iceland, after a hike to a thermal river, two pools lined by hand-stacked stones with a lone shack surrounded by otherworldly hills, and a complex of ethereal (and ultimately artificial) blue waters attached to the the most expensive hotel stay of my life.

But with life seeming in such short supply this spring, my thirst for the water is now unquenchable.

I go questing weekly for some spot to soak—sometimes submerging for just a few seconds in fresh snow run off, other times floating adrift in swimming holes until I feel immune to the chill.

It is my (now solo) essential self-care activity. There is, of course, some debate about whether my now habitual plunges are actually a healthy or even safe activity. But I will say that the shock does what I need it to do most right now: make me for, at least some period of time, focus on something other than the darkness of our timeline.

And that feeling lasts longer than just when I’m in the water.

My pre-plague swimming compatriot and I call the full-body sensation after you get out the “good burn,” which is a pleasant euphemism for “my body is trying to make sure I don’t die of exposure.” Almost as pleasant as the feeling itself, which comes in waves is best accompanied by at least dappled sunshine.

It’s a feeling of survival.

And that cuts us back to our soundtrack.

This summer I went swimming
This summer I might have drowned
But I held my breath and I kicked my feet
And I moved my arms around
I moved my arms around

The Swimming Song starts with the inherent risks, then jumps to self-psychoanalyzing.

This summer I swam in the ocean
And I swam in a swimming pool
Salt my wounds, chlorine my eyes
I'm a self-destructive fool
I'm a self-destructive fool

However, Wainwright himself says I might be reading too much into things.

“For me, it’s just about the joy of swimming,” Wainwright said in a 2012 interview with the AV Club.

Wainwright clearly does take a lot of joy in the act of swimming—including the frigid dip. Song aside, he devotes a chapter of his 2017 memoir Liner Notes to the activity, including starting a list of his top ten swimming spots “not in any particular order of preference” with a vivid description of the Forty Foot in Sandycove, near Dublin, Ireland.

Throughout the chapter, Wainwright shares anecdotes about everything from his mother’s attempts to overcome her hydrophobia to the alleged disposal of an circus elephant in a lake.

But he ends the chapter with a postmortem request related to his swimming spot list.

Is that it?

Basically! I can’t release a card game every week. If you’re interesting hearing more of Wainwright—which you should be—I’d recommend the Netflix special of his solo musical and storytelling show Surviving Twin. It’s a humorous and heartfelt special that combines Loudon III’s songwriting with stories written by his father, London Wainwright, Jr — a longtime Life Magazine columnist.

As you’re gearing up for a summer where staying distant is probably the best option, I also encourage you to avoid popular places and find a special secluded spot to soak in.

Need help? Don’t be fooled by Swimmingholes.org’s somewhat retro digital design, it’s a fantastic resource for finding places to dip across the U.S. If you’re around Washington, DC, I also keep my own running list of swimming spots.

And, just for motivation, I’m including a scattering of shots below of places where I’ve swam already in 2020.

(The main swimming hole on the Overall Run Trail in Shenandoah National Park, which is now sadly closed.)

(Gunpowder Falls River in MD.)

(Seneca Creek in Monongahela National Forest.)

(At the slide of in Cedar Run canyon in Shenandoah National Park.)

(At Henryton, MD—a spot less than an hour from my house.)

What else is great?

First, my sister, who was born on this day many moons ago. But related to this newsletter:

Obviously, read Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker story: “The Subversive Joy of Cold-Water Swimming.”
Read Wainwright’s memoir Liner Notes.
Watch Wainwright ’s live musical Netflix special, Surviving Twin.
Check out the full 2012 Set List interview with Wainwright at the AV Club.
For Wainwright’s take on these latest times, check out his “Toilet Roll Blues.”

Outside of that, I recommend tuning into At the Table—a (sometimes nominally) political podcast from my friend Jared Rizzi. Specifically, I’d suggest his recent “Not Okay, Together” conversation with author Chuck Wendig.

Wanderers, Wendig’s acclaimed 2019 novel about an epidemic of sleepwalking and so much more is this week’s “cursed monkey paw” recommendation, because that’s a feature I guess we’re all committed to now.

Pets, Plants, and Partings

My pets and plants are always great and frequently make cameos on my @kansasalps Twitter. This week, my gray and black cats even role-played as Sith apprentices, battling for Lord Vader’s favor.

In the garden, the irises are still dominating—and the yellow and white buds came through!

That’s it for this week! Great job surviving, I’m really proud of all of us!

Find this online or through a forward? Sign yourself up for future updates on strangeness and sincerity below:

Plain Great Stuff

Discussion about this post