anyway, águas de março in the hodgson playlist. why am i freaking out? besides that fact that it’s a brazil mention, of course. well, you see, águas de março (waters of march, as translated by tom jobim himself) is a song from the point of view of someone tired, hopeful about what’s to come.

the lyricism is very calm and repetitive, overall, but most of all, it is filled with mentions of things at their ends, the rest, death. until you get to the chorus, where there’s hope, hope that this will end and good things are coming.

in the og/port version, it’s about the waters of march ending summer (‘são as águas de março fechando o verão’, or ‘it’s the waters of march closing the summer’, literal translation), and in the translated/english version, it’s about talks of the waters of march (‘and the riverbank talks of the waters of march’), but in both versions these lines are followed by hope of good things to come (‘é a promessa de vida no teu coração’ in the og, and ‘it's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart’ in the translation, almost identical). (side note, tom jobim wrote a portuguese and english version of águas de março, so if you’d like to listen to it, there’s many english covers and they’re all very good, so highly recommend it!)

what you get is (sorry for being a broken record, but this is what the song is about!) a tired man hoping for better times. which, great description of the franklin expedition, stuck in arctic, hoping for better times.

but what really gets me going is that waters of march is in hodgson’s playlist. i keep thinking about hodgson’s ‘i’m hungry and i want to live’, and recontextualizing the song to that line, to hodgson’s persoective, and reviewing hodgson’s words with what i know of the song.