The Elgy of Emptyness - The Boat
Elgy of Emptiness - "I grant to you a soldier who has no heart. One who will not falter in the darkness. This soldier who has no heart is your twin image. A shell of yourself who you will shed when your song commands it."
- Igos du Incana (The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask)
Falling Boat, oil on canvas, 16"x54", Argyle Fine Art
I recall years ago, I think it was in 1991, going to a reading of Alistar Macleod's The Boat in Canso Nova Scotia. The reading was by Robbie O'Neill, from the Mulgrave Road Theatre Company. It took place in a contemporary prefab fire hall (with a corrugated metal roof ) which the community used for fundraisers, or town meetings among other things.
The crowd was sparse. Canso had just lost their fish plant so I think being further depressed by a story lamenting the loss of a son's father to the sea, or the conflict of losing their fishing tradition to the value of post secondary education, probably accounted for the paltry thirty or so people who turned out for this literary dirge.
The evening was about turning tragedy into art; about participating in an historical elgyizing of sombre events. Events which have plagued coastal communities for longer than I wish to define. Readers of Alistar Macleod's work will be familiar with the abiding qualities of lament or elgy for a traditional way of life in his now universal stories. I know I was rivited to my seat as the boat unfolded for a a group of people with truer insights into the gradual decline and loss of their values, than I as a new comer, could fathom at the time.
But, through O'Neill's reading, and a slow and gradual build up of rain outside on the aluminium roof which intensified as the story evolved, there was produced a sense of engagement with the collective process a good story and reader elicits. I would think it highly unlikely that anyone from that community left that night without privately examining their fundamental sense of self - it was that poetic and strong an experience.
Red Boat on a Coastal Road, oil on canvas, 32"x54", Roberts Gallery
The collective need to work through deep generational feelings of loss can haunt the emotions of a community (or an individual for that matter) for years to come and are characteristic of the maritime ethos. The urban cry to abandon support for rural mills and fish plants in favour of the innovative economy will produce the spectre of more decline to come for the regional identity. More than anything this will test the resiliance of small communities in the tewnty first century.
Memorializing loss through art or public ritual, is one way to explore discord in a community that is subject to the external pressures of changing economies, geography, and regional disparity common to most contemporary coastal regions in Nova Scotia.
However, as humans we all witness it and face it; just like in the boat, where isolation threatens to reduce community hope to an existential and uniform conclusion which is meaningless, yet one through process we are compelled to explore.
Steven Rhude, January 15th, 2012
- Igos du Incana (The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask)
I recall years ago, I think it was in 1991, going to a reading of Alistar Macleod's The Boat in Canso Nova Scotia. The reading was by Robbie O'Neill, from the Mulgrave Road Theatre Company. It took place in a contemporary prefab fire hall (with a corrugated metal roof ) which the community used for fundraisers, or town meetings among other things.
The crowd was sparse. Canso had just lost their fish plant so I think being further depressed by a story lamenting the loss of a son's father to the sea, or the conflict of losing their fishing tradition to the value of post secondary education, probably accounted for the paltry thirty or so people who turned out for this literary dirge.
The evening was about turning tragedy into art; about participating in an historical elgyizing of sombre events. Events which have plagued coastal communities for longer than I wish to define. Readers of Alistar Macleod's work will be familiar with the abiding qualities of lament or elgy for a traditional way of life in his now universal stories. I know I was rivited to my seat as the boat unfolded for a a group of people with truer insights into the gradual decline and loss of their values, than I as a new comer, could fathom at the time.
But, through O'Neill's reading, and a slow and gradual build up of rain outside on the aluminium roof which intensified as the story evolved, there was produced a sense of engagement with the collective process a good story and reader elicits. I would think it highly unlikely that anyone from that community left that night without privately examining their fundamental sense of self - it was that poetic and strong an experience.
The collective need to work through deep generational feelings of loss can haunt the emotions of a community (or an individual for that matter) for years to come and are characteristic of the maritime ethos. The urban cry to abandon support for rural mills and fish plants in favour of the innovative economy will produce the spectre of more decline to come for the regional identity. More than anything this will test the resiliance of small communities in the tewnty first century.
Memorializing loss through art or public ritual, is one way to explore discord in a community that is subject to the external pressures of changing economies, geography, and regional disparity common to most contemporary coastal regions in Nova Scotia.
However, as humans we all witness it and face it; just like in the boat, where isolation threatens to reduce community hope to an existential and uniform conclusion which is meaningless, yet one through process we are compelled to explore.
Steven Rhude, January 15th, 2012
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