Month: June 2013
Music over the waters of Port Madison Bay
Hove to off Indianola listening to beautiful singing and drumming from members of the Suquamish Tribe.
Sailing the Bardo of Rebirth with McWhirr
Cats paws darkened the blue reach of Puget Sound beyond Skiff Point to the north. I went below to shut down Phyllis, my Norwegian diesel engine (named after my mother,) trusting the breeze would hold and keep us off the shallow bank south of Fay Bainbridge park. There’s nothing so peaceful as that moment when the wind lifts and the engine is shut off. Old Hand sails better without human interference close-hauled, so I sit back and listen to the sound of water moving along her hull as she gathers speed along Bainbridge Island’s east shore.
It was lovely. We had attained a state of harmonious accord between man and boat in the mandala of winds, and that single point we occupied at that particular moment in time and space was golden perfection. I try to seize such moments on the fly and, by retelling them, prolong existence itself and sail with the generous breeze into eternity.
“Look sharp, Mister Spencer.”
The resonant voice was hoarse, as if graveled by long watches in the north Atlantic-as if it emerged from the very depths of the bilges.
“Ready about.”
“Ready about.”
McWhirr paused then called:
“Helm’s alee!”
I let go the jib sheet as the bow came across the wind and hauled in for a port tack toward deeper water northeast.
“Nicely done, lad. Ye’ll be a sailor before long.”
McWhirr is a pain in the neck sometimes. He’s a relic of working sail and can be as dark as Ahab in rehab on a bad hair day.
But such a breeze can soften a heart encrusted by long watches over icy seas. McWhirr stood stark against the red sky like a weathered piling on a rocky cape. Light flickered through the dark shrouds behind him as if projected on a movie screen.
“What do you make of the Ancient Mariner’s yarn, lad?”
– through soul’s stations he sails…sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze…sigh of compassion that pervades all creation… repents his cruel slaughter of the innocent bird and sees divinity in all beings… it raised my hair, it fanned my cheek…essential reality…wisdom and compassion combined…
“It’s a strange tale.”
McWhirr brooded as if some heavy recollection had made him grow, if it were possible, even more saturnine.
“Aye, we all carry the albatross’ weight around our necks.”
-tangled lines lost in fouled line-lockers…it mingled strangely with my fears…endless dream pilgrimages through foreign city streets looking for misplaced baggage… He loved the bird who loved the man… all those times too slow on the uptake, clueless or proud... who shot him with his bow..neglect of kin…Mom’s eyes…executors of karmic law…archons of the muddy sphere in which my life is, more or less, firmly moored …Oh, my neck.
“What about that part where he must repeat his tale endlessly to strangers?”
“I don’t know. It sounds like a writer I know. But I won’t mention any names.”
The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner
I shot this video yesterday while cruising slowly down Bainbridge Island’s east shore toward Point Monroe and Port Madison beyond. Although my speed was a mere 2 knots, it was one of those days where all came together in a perfect moment. The only sign of wind I saw wind was along my course-
…on me, alone, it blew.
A reading from Ulysses
In honor of Bloomsday
A summons to set out
At ebb tide the water swirls toward a North forever receding beyond the gray headland. Shadows of cedars stretch along the foreshore where tanned humans tourists roast mammals on spits; their gaudy shirts billowing like the capes of fishwives on a storm-wracked shore. Otters writhe on the grassy bank.
I hear the north wind as a summons to set out. From the wheelhouse, my eye is led toward the harbor entrance where it opens into Port Madison Bay. Knowing such an expanse of open sea lies just around the bend gives me a sense of spaciousness and freedom. The immensity is continuous with the confined space of the harbor.
I suppose it also has to do with the long history of this historic mill town and shipyard where lumber schooners were built on the west shore in the late 1800’s. The 1906 tug, Noreen, lies at Halvorson’s dock just off the mouth of Salmon Creek, her high pilot house tilted back haughtily as if in defiance of the steep waves of the inland sea.
I’ve been working on two versions of the Vickers memorial, trying to get that feeling of expansiveness the sculpture seems to generate. I wonder how much this has to do with the harmonious distribution of masses and voids, and how much is due to her angelic status-what she represents.
There is too much emphasis on the precious object in art-on its monetary value, as if that were the sole end of art. The art scene is a big Antiques Roadshow. This fixation doesn’t see beyond the material product to the more ineffable virtues of what art does, how it feels and whether it confers upon the environment a greater sense of spaciousness. For greater spaciousness is always a virtue, and good art amplifies that poetic space which is continuous with the spaciousness inside ourselves we find in moments of revery.
Ovoids and Northwest Coast Indian Art
In my last post I cited Johnathan Raban’s observation in The sea and it’s meanings about the elongated oval motif seen in Northwest Coast Indian art. He said that the image was inspired by wave patterns on the water’s surface. Though I wasn’t that impressed by Raban’s book, I think of this idea whenever I contemplate the play of light flitting over the water.
Then I began I began reading The Way of the Masks by Claude Levi-Strauss.
The stories of the masks are about preservation of a heritage, the appearance, healing or perpetuation of the ancestors through drama. Since the drama occurs in the timeless realm, its artistic retelling is continuous with the original creation, and the cyclic rehearsal of the masks’ origins is part of a long process establishing it’s status as an ancestor.
Levi-Strauss, using structural analysis of Salish stories, claims the masks (and accompanying stories, songs and dances) originated on the mainland and made their way to Vancouver Island. During migration, the chthonic, submarine origin stories of the mainland are counterpoised by a celestial derivation. As they made their long journey to the islands the stories underwent a structural and thematic inversion:
“Having placed the masks’ origin at the beginning instead of the end of the tale, and having the masks fall from the sky-in contrast with the mainland versions where they are pulled up from the bottom of the water-the island versions literally do not know how to finish the story. They need a conclusion…”
He goes on to say how these contrasting origin stories were resolved:
“…as the story unfolds between the mainland and the island, it always adopts intermediate courses. Instead of falling from the sky or surfacing from the bottom of a lake, the first mask suddenly appears on the roof of a house: halfway between up-above and down-below.”
Another such midpoint is the surface of the water.
Many have remarked on the Northwest Coast artist’s capacity for improvisation within a limited set of design motifs. With this image of the oval, the artist invites us to see above and below simultaneously. The ovoid shape and surrounding areas are interwoven with a fluid dynamism that unifies various elements and vantage points. In addition to the simultaneous views of front and back, left and right, we see a fusion of above and below, uniting not only various views on the horizontal plane, but that along the vertical axis as well. The contrasting viewpoints are artistically realized on a higher plane-a broader prospect that transcends contradiction. Northwest Coast art is animated by the dialectics of height and depth.
In the two origin stories and their resolution we see how myths and art are co-extensive with the tribe’s history, and how the reconciliation of chthonic and celestial origin stories are reflected in the development of artistic styles.
Wandering in Place
A great post. He writes eloquently about the inability to write. Something I’m sure my blogger friends can relate to.
There once was a boy named Dan. He sat down in front of his computer and thought real hard. But on this day, he had nothing really to say. Dan thought, and he frowned, and he even tapped out a word or two, but nothing much came to mind. The big bad delete button ate all his work. Dan pouted and said; “foo on you, bad button.” But the bad delete button just laughed and told Dan it was his own fault.
Silly Dan. Only a Dummy-Butt sits at a computer with nothing to say.
The blank page mocked Mr. Dammit as he sat in silence contemplating this new quandary. Where had the words made off to? China-town? The casino down by the back alley? Perhaps they were sitting right now with a hot dame having a laugh on Dan’s behalf? There may have been a million stale stories to…
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A Goose Story-Dispatch from the front lines
It’s a bright, sunny morning. The north wind freshens, sending diagonal ripples toward Old Hand’s stern as I gaze at reflected ovoid shapes meandering over the surface of Port Madison. The wavetops reflect the cobalt sky, while in the troughs, dark green falls into the depths.
Johnathan Raban, in his book, The Sea and it’s Meanings, says that the fantastic imagery of Northwest Coast Indian art is greatly inspired by this sight- their stylized abstractions emerged from long hours paddling through the Salish Sea Dreamtime. The ancient Northwest Coast artist first saw Thunderbird, Raven and Bear while in becalmed revery, gazing at the sea’s mirror. The bounded yet fluid shapes that contain and release their ovoid imagery are interwoven, like sinuous kelp, with the sea itself. The mythic Hamatsa (cannibal dancer) of the Kwakiutal was descried on that insubstantial realm between surface and depth where images flicker and vanish. This is the intermediate realm between wakefulness and dream. Some of the masks came originally from the deep, while others descended, exact prototypes of masks we see today, from the sky.
Things are quiet in Port Madison. I spend a lot of time watching the Canadian Geese. The other day I witnessed a flock on Reah’s bulkhead repel an alien siege from another group who also desired the choice spot. Perhaps a rabble-rouser was after a female that was serenely perched on one leg under the cherry tree. The invading bunch first tried to look casual as they eased up the old boat ramp. But the locals charged down on them, their beaks lowered aggressively. This was, of course, accompanied by a god-awful din. Always something. They should have a reality TV show.
Then there’s the goats. They would eat my studio if I let them. When I show up they give me this interrogative look, as if I had the answer for their goatish angst. Maybe I am projecting- anthropomorphizing. Try pronouncing that, goats.
Today is clean the goat-shed day, a task to rival Hercules’ distasteful trial.
But I shouldn’t complain. I am ever grateful for the blessed gift of this lovely place, thankful I have found a home in this peaceful harbor.
Here’s a goose video I shot of a diving lesson, a big step in the life of any chick. Sorry for the quality. You can see the little guy on the big rock below the woodpile. The parents on the right call to him with encouraging honks.
Takes me back to my own first leap into the sea. But that is for my next McWhirr story.
A View from the Wheelhouse 