For a' That

There’s a moment of settling in.

When the hours at my computer seem to outnumber all other hours, when the view becomes familiar (if not quite taken for granted), when this chair becomes quite well known too, and these afternoon walks are now habit.
  

That moment of moving past tourist to visitor to local.

My days are filled with novel writing, as they’re supposed to be, centered in and on words rather than outward adventures. But, before the week gets lost to only words and walks, I do get the gift of a few excursions when my hosts L and G invite me out first to an exhibition opening at the City Art Center in Edinburgh and then to The String Jam Club in Selkirk. I go along with them like a guest, like a daughter, like a friend, like a local.  

Thursday, in the early evening, L and I take the train to the city and walk across the street from the station to the gallery. We meet up with G under the strength of whose name we’re getting into the invitation-only event, take up our glasses of wine, and mingle with their old friends until the announcements are made and the show officially opened.

Although I’ve done my best to dress up, I’m feeling dowdy and thick in my hiking shoes and think that it’s a funny contrast to the book I’m writing in which the characters are often dressed Black Tie perfect and performing in front of thousands. There’s that Latin phrase: Clothes Make the Man and I always adapt it to myself as: Shoes Make the Outfit. My outfits are seldom “made.” For I dress for comfort rather than style, I pack for lightness rather than for every occasion. Pretending polite invisibility, I stand a step outside the little conversational circle, watching people, observing their dress, mannerisms, behaviors, trying to tune into the discussions without getting involved in them.

We’re here to see Robert Callender: Plastic Beach … poetry of the everyday.

Robert Callender was one of G’s art teachers some years ago. Callender, 1932-2011, was an artist who worked in multiple media; painting, poetry, prose, installation, and more, and often blended his craft with ideas of the environment and the sea.  

Here I see the frame of some old ship, but this one is made of card, paper, paint, peat (as the tiny explanatory sign tells me). I want to touch it to see that it’s really paper and paint rather than wood or metal. But another sign tells me to keep my hands to myself, so I do.

Here I see a mishmash of items, shoes, signs, plastic, plastic, purses, gloves, tools, plastic, toys, a coat hanger, plastic – over 500 pieces that Callender collected from the beach and made into an installation. To remind us perhaps of our impact. To chastise us for our waste. To call attention to the sea. To transform trash into art. Maybe for all of the reasons above, maybe for none of them.

It’s an intriguing exhibition. One of those that makes me wonder: What makes art art?

For in the next room over is more. It’s a room with pieces by student-artists who were a part of a residency program with Robert Callender and who (from what I can glean) also tried to blend art with care for the environment. There on the wall is a series of photographs of the sea, of the beach. There is a video about sustainability, about impact, about farming. There in a corner off by itself, I see a stove with a large pot. A stove that’s not really a stove but only a life-sized replica of a stove. A pot that’s not a real pot. What does it mean? Why did the artist make it? Why is it here in this room? What does it have to do with art and the environment? There’s no sign to tell me what to think. Only a sign that says: Do not touch.

On a walk with L one day, she and I had talked about how too often art is hard to explain, to put all together under one banner, to say definitively “this is what it is” “this is what this means” and I said something like, “People don’t want to think for themselves. They want to be told what to think beforehand and then go look and say ‘yes, I agree’ or ‘no, I don’t agree.’”

Now I find myself wanting to be told what it all means, what to think, how to process what I see.

Instead, I have to think for myself. Which is perhaps the point. 

On Saturday night, G, L, and I drive a few villages over to Selkirk. G parks, we get out of the car, head out of the lot, walk past the statue of Sir Walter Scott, cross the street, and go into the hotel.

We sit in a room with tartan colors hung like paintings, with crowns as chandeliers.

The room has been arranged casually with chairs around long tables. The stage is just there, a small and cozy stage, the bright lights waiting for the musicians to arrive so as to shine down upon them.

“You’re getting the real Scottish experience,” L says.

The opening act sings old time jazz and swing songs, Ella Fitzgerald, Leonard Cohen, that make me forget where I am until one of the singers speaks and her accent is Scottish not American, not Canadian.

“The Scots love Americana,” L had told me. Folk, bluegrass, rock, jazz, country.

And I think of hammer dulcimers, lap dulcimers, harmonicas, and the clapping of hands, the stomping of feet as if I were from the Appalachian Mountains myself.  

Then on comes the main act, the real Scottish Experience wearing black denim and a red flannel shirt. Ewan McLennan singer, song-writer, balladist, storyteller. He opens his set with Robert Burns’ “A Man’s a Man for a’ That.” 

“That song doesn’t need any explanation here,” he says when he’s finished. “You’d be surprised how many places don’t know Robert Burns.” 

I know it’s Robert Burns because L had turned to me when the song began to whisper, “This is Robert Burns.” And I think, ah, yes. So it is. But what it means to be a man and a’ that, I don’t know. For the old Scottish brogue, for the poetry, for the history (I learn later that it was a revolutionary piece talking of the equality of man written by Burns in 1795). 

“Gude faith, he maunna fa’ all that. For a’ that, and a’ that.” What do I know of all that?

But still, I feel it, like the running of blood through veins, long-distant Scottish blood that runs through my veins still. This is home and it’s not home. These are my songs and they’re not my songs. This is what it is to be human, from somewhere, from anywhere, connected by words and chords and thought.

As he plays song to song, McLennan switches from guitar to banjo, from banjo to guitar, from traditional ballads to ones he’s written, tuning his instruments by ear while he talks, while he sings. He tells stories, little anecdotes, and he sings.

At the end of his first set, he plays an instrumental air and the notes rise, fill the room with haunting melancholy, the memory of loves lost, the hope of a beautiful future, an image of a mountain at sunset, the sea at its fullest, a sunrise to break the heart… How does music do that?   

Much like Rabbie Burns, like Robert Callender, Ewan McLennan too is an advocate for social justice and the environment. Playing along the frets of his guitar, he sings a song of his own, a song in which a grandmother and a granddaughter happen upon a beached whale, dying, magnificent even wound up in plastic and battle-scarred from the touch of propellers. “One, love, the last of its kind,” the grandmother says, McLenna sings. In front of me, L wipes away a tear, and I see all the plastic that Robert Callender collected out of the sea for his art and I see in my mind a dying whale and I want to cry too.

Maybe art says, Don’t think, feel. Maybe a song says, Don’t think, remember.

Feel the life around you. Feel the sky above you. Feel the waters of the sea as the last of the whales sound the depths. Pick up the trash. Look out the window. Think of what it is to be a man and a’ that. Remember. Remember. Feel. Stand for a moment in the sun. Paint. Write. Sing. Be.

In the morning, I take my coffee to my chair out in the garden. The sun adds freckles to my face. The bumblebees bumble by. The songbirds sing. The cows lay themselves down in the grass.

There’s a moment of settling in. Of being in a place. Of fitting in my own shoes. A moment of being human, compassionate, kind to the sea, careful with plastic, and touched by music.

There’s a moment of settling in.

*If you’re interested in hearing Ewan McLennan for yourself, you can check out his stuff here: http://www.ewanmclennan.co.uk/video/

*More info about Robert Callender can be found here: http://www.robertcallender.co.uk/about.php

*More info about me can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/amandawhite