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.
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.
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.
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
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ReplyDeleteBeautiful and rich with feeling. Thank you!
ReplyDelete