Calypso

I recently heard an interview with the late John Denver. I am not really a big fan which is probably why i didn't know he wrote a song about one of my all-time heroes Jacques Cousteau. He even got to go and spend time on the great man's ship; The Calypso, while writing the song.



In case you have never heard of him; Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a French underwater explorer and filmmaker who studied the oceans and all the life in them. During my childhood I must have watched his documentaries hundreds of times and they always filled me with a feeling of wonderment at the oceans of the world.

When he died in 1997, shortly after his 87th birthday, he left behind a legacy of more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books, and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members.

Personally, he always had a way of making everything he showed to me from the depths of the oceans so interesting. Although, in reality, he was a sophisticated man (he developed the aqualung) he had a simple way of sharing scientific concepts which appealed to the academic and ordinary people alike. He filled me with an interest for the sea and the life within it.



To sail on a dream on a crystal clear ocean
to ride on the crest of a wild raging storm
To work in the service of life and the living
In search of the answers to questions unknown
To be part of the movement and part of the growing
Part of beginning to understand

Aye, calypso, the places you've been to
The things that you've shown us
The stories you tell
Aye, calypso, I sing to your spirit
The men who have served you
So long and so well

Like the dolphin who guides you
You bring us beside you
To light up the darkness and show us the way
For though we are strangers in your silent world
To live on the land we must learn from the sea
To be true as the tide
And free as the wind-swell
Joyful and loving in letting it be

Aye, calypso, the places you've been to
The things that you've shown us
The stories you tell
Aye, calypso, I sing to your spirit
The men who have served you
So long and so well

It appears from the John Denver song, and from musical works from artists such as Vangelis (who was heavily involved with Cousteau in the 1990s), Jean Michel Jarre and Blue Öyster Cult that I am not alone in holding the man in such high esteem.

The phrase; "They broke the mold when they made him", is very heavily over-used, but they certainly don't make people like Jacques Cousteau anymore!