Il n'y a plus de déserts. Il n'y a plus d'iles. Le besoin pourtant s'en fait sentir. Pour comprendre le monde, il faut parfois se détourner; pour mieux servir les hommes, les tenir un moment à distance. Mais où trouver la solitude nécessaire à la force, la longue respiration où l'esprit se rassemble et le courage se mesure?
There are no more deserts. There are no more islands. Yet there is a need for them. In order to understand the world, one needs to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve men better, one needs to hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and gauges its strength?
- Camus (from l'ete, 1954)
Lake Superior Fireball – The Muldoons (Sycamore Smith and Scotty Alan)
Cassie Marketos over at Kickstarter posted a few follow-up questions/answers about some of our summer projects. Lots of good everyday island stuff in here as told by Andrew.
Good poster. It is all over New York right now. Reorganization is definitely destined to become a central idea in our civic lives. Conservation as the endpoint needs to give way to the broader idea of reorganization as we more fully realize the historical misalignment of land development relative to science and art by society. It is pretty clear that in the context of a globe that has been crisscrossed by subdivision at every temperate latitude, the low hanging fruit of simple conservation has been picked and the results have been only partially successful in terms of any larger conceptual framework. The argument for a movement towards reorganization (in America especially) is pretty basic; our national westward development trend and historical culture of subdivision (and individual liberty) outpaced our scientific knowledge and governmental organization by several hundred years, leaving us with an undesigned hodge-podge mosaic that is not aligned with contemporary understanding of ecological fundamentals. (Who knew at the time that the picket fence dream and a middle finger towards anything collective would slowly undermine the equally American pillar of nature?) It isn’t very stylish. It isn’t organized neatly. It isn’t serving the spirit of the people well. We need a redo. This is especially so east of the Rockies and west of the Sierras. Maybe the Guggenheim Lab could make a stop at Rabbit Island. There isn’t a Whole Foods across the street but whatever. We’ll figure something out.
Thomas Transtromer won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature for poetry inspired by a small Scandinavian island in the Swedish archipelago. His work explores the idea of city vs. country. In his case the city is Stockholm while contrast is found on the remote island of Runmarö.
Further In
On the main road into the city
when the sun is low.
The traffic thickens, crawls.
It is a sluggish dragon glittering.
I am one of the dragon’s scales.
Suddenly the red sun is
right in the middle of the windscreen
streaming in.
I am transparent
and writing becomes visible
inside me
words in invisible ink
which appear
when the paper is held to the fire!
I know I must get far away
straight through the city and then
further until it is time to go out
and walk far in the forest.
Walk in the footprints of the badger.
It gets dark, difficult to see.
In there on the moss lie stones.
One of the stones is precious.
It can change everything
it can make the darkness shine.
It is a switch for the whole country.
Everything depends on it.
Look at it, touch it…
A Place in the Forest
On the way there a pair of startled wings clattered up — that was all. You go alone. A tall building that consists entirely of cracks, a building that is perpetually toppling but can never collapse. The thousandfold sun floats in through the cracks. In this play of light an inverted law of gravity prevails: the house is anchored in the sky and whatever falls, falls upward. There you can turn around. There you are allowed to grieve. You can dare to face certain old truths kept packed, in storage. The roles I have, deep down, float up, hang like dried skulls in the ancestral cabin on some out-of-the-way Melanesian islet. A childlike aura circles the gruesome trophies. So mild it is, in the forest.
From March 1979
Tired of all who come with words, words but no language
I went to the snow-covered island.
The wild does not have words.
The unwritten pages spread themselves out in all directions!
I come across the marks of roe-deer’s hooves in the snow.
Language but no words.
The first european known to have set foot on Rabbit Island was a Swedish immigrant known from the remaining historical records as Berg. The island was originally named Berg Saari–a combination of his surname and the Finnish word for island. Last July we found the remnants of his wood stove from the late 1880’s, several mason jars (one which was still capped and filled with liquid), tin pans and the few remaining logs that he used for the walls of his primitive cabin.
Becoming familiar with Tomas Transtromer’s work 130 years later in the context of Rabbit Island will be nice. The source of his inspiration is no doubt the same, wherever it exists.
Nice one Graham. Another tune from early August shot by Steven Michael Holmes of www.mostlymidwest.com. Graham Parsons grew up on the Keweenaw and organizes the annual Farm Block music festival on his family’s land. Good guy. Hopefully these tracks are the beginning of an island tradition. Maybe we’ll start a little Rabbit Island label.
Behind Graham, in the distance, is the rocky southwestern point of the island where the eagles often perch on a prominent dead tree and where a fisherman named “Berg" (a Swedish immigrant and first European to set foot on Rabbit Island) attempted to homestead in a primitive log cabin for 3 entire seasons in the late 1880’s. As the camera pans back a fallen white pine is seen on the small sandstone cliff. It came down in a storm about 6 years ago according to friends across the lake who know the island well. Some of the flowering wild Lupines are also seen behind where Graham is playing. It is nice to watch them bloom in late July and the bees often fly amongst them.
Chris Bathgate, Graham Parsons, Samantha Cooper and Michelle Brosius on the island in August, filmed by Steven Michael Holmes of Mostly Midwest (the Vincent Moon of the Great Lakes). This came together last minute but turned into one of the most memorable evenings of the summer. Music. Skinny dipping. Fiddles. A ride back to land after dark. No doubt the first of many. NPR’s Michigan Radio is airing a piece about the island featuring this tune on Morning Edition and All Things Considered this morning.
Update: NPR story here.