Georgia Berry Vine

Georgia Berry Vine. Hazy on this one--the origins of the berry vine with the beautiful dried leaves. It was Songs & Places, several years ago, probably just after Thanksgiving, because the student who brought them for me had gone home for the holidays--all the way to Georgia. Which seemed doubly far, because (if I'm remembering correctly) his family were immigrants from Korea who had settled in Georgia on arrival. However, since he was now a transplant Southerner, come to Berkeley, we'd all anticipated that he might have more of a feel for some of the Appalachian songs that figured in the class. He liked the idea, of course, and this became one of the themes for the semester. (Wish I remembered his name!) It was a perfect example of the displacements--and the lucky confluences--that bring good students like this to study here.

I felt at the time (when he gave them to me, at the end of the class, wrapped rather casually in a piece of folded newspaper) that there was a double meaning at work--for the leaves and the red berries did of course connect with one of our songs (Wildwood Flower) and in a poignant way (Oh, I'll twine with my mingles and waving black hair...) but in addition, they seemed to speak of all the ways that plants from daily life figured in the Korean tradition as well (I'm thinking of some beautiful paintings of flowers and small creatures by Shin Saimdang, a female artist from the 16th century.)

Also, by chance, the red twine visible just below is a traditional Asian book binding pattern--made by a student in another of the classes... (I probably liked the reds together...)

These correspondences...

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