{"id":428,"date":"2011-07-26T06:09:31","date_gmt":"2011-07-26T11:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisaallen-agostini.com\/?p=428"},"modified":"2011-07-26T06:11:22","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T11:11:22","slug":"back-to-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisaallen-agostini.com\/?p=428","title":{"rendered":"Back to black"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Amy Winehouse. Photo by nuflicks\/Flickr Creative Commons License<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

On Saturday I was in a sailing boat in St George’s, Grenada, getting ready to cast off when the skipper announced that Amy Winehouse had been found dead<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’ve never met Amy Winehouse. I’m not a musician. I’m not British or anything even remotely connected to her. I only discovered her music about three years ago and, honestly, there were people who were more ardent fans. I do know, however, that hearing the news of her death made me deeply sad. She was an epic talent, writing songs that cut sharply into the pain of love and loving and singing them in a voice that wrung each drop of that pain from the poignant lyrics, the voice that her friend Russell Brand described<\/a> as having “rolling, wondrous resonance”. I often put what I consider to be her best song, “Back to Black”<\/a>, on repeat, feeling the music just probing my own pain the way a tongue will probe an aching tooth, flinching from the agony but going back for more and more of it.<\/p>\n

I was in Grenada\u00a0on assignment –I might not be able to make rent every month, so to speak, but I do have a fantastic career that lets me do things like that sometimes. My assignment called for me to experience Grenada’s beauty, and I had my morning tea on a balcony overlooking the two-mile stretch of white sand that is Grand Anse Beach.\u00a0I had woken up Sunday morning with Amy on my mind and I wrote this poem in her memory.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Back to black<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sunspills on Grand Anse<\/p>\n

White sand, white surf<\/p>\n

Sad for her<\/p>\n

Drunken life and death<\/p>\n

Foreseen in black songs<\/p>\n

Drowning in sorrows<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sunspills on Grand Anse<\/p>\n

The surf washes over me<\/p>\n

My heart beats<\/p>\n

In tune to white<\/p>\n

Black songs unsung<\/p>\n

I go snorkeling<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But there are nights, o Amy<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am you<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Scarred and scared<\/p>\n

Learning from Mr Hathaway<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  On Saturday I was in a sailing boat in St George’s, Grenada, getting ready to cast off when the skipper announced that Amy Winehouse had been found dead. I’ve never met Amy Winehouse. I’m not a musician. I’m not British or anything even remotely connected to her. I only discovered her music about three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8],"tags":[139,142,55,143,140,4,6,141,24,61],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-column","category-poetry","tag-amy-winehouse","tag-back-to-black","tag-caribbean","tag-elegy","tag-grenada","tag-lisa-allen-agostini","tag-literature","tag-poem","tag-trinidad-tobago","tag-trinidad-and-tobago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisaallen-agostini.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisaallen-agostini.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisaallen-agostini.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisaallen-agostini.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisaallen-agostini.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lisaallen-agostini.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":435,"href":"https:\/\/lisaallen-agostini.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions\/435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisaallen-agostini.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisaallen-agostini.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisaallen-agostini.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}