There are strange things going on…
A person that lives in a rainforest should never have to buy snow boots
It snowed when it should of rained this winter. For most of Canada the snow thing is normal. It is not normal on the Pacific West Coast, or Vancouver and even stranger where I live on a Gulf Island. It is… frankly perverse. Even stranger, it didn’t snow when and where it was supposed to in other parts of our country. It was uncannily warm creating a deep suspicion nationwide that what we know as boot-wearers in our own specific region may no longer be true.
I know that global warming is upon us and I know why. I should be depressed but strangely, it makes everything seem more possible, so not far fetched. If we know that our universal greed, ignorance, denial, and consumption can literally change the temperature and reaction of the earth, it makes our individual actions, however small, seem globally important. That being said, and in the same breath, it should be possible without being accused of being naïve, to believe that our own will to survive will bring about universal generosity, knowing, acceptance, and compassion, that can and will, manifest as change, as a means of continuum.
Like global warming cultural warming is motivated by the ultimate high stakes of survival. At the same time that the National Arts Centre is building a season of all-Canadian works, Aboriginal and culturally diverse works are finding audiences in this country by taking ownership of their own brands of Canadian identity. Both groundswells have erupted to create a cultural warming that is about identity generating its own dramatic climatic shift. Nationally it is hot and getting hotter. Footwear optional.
Save the world and shut the lights out
I say to my seven- year old son a dozen times a day “Save the world and shut the lights out”. It is a bit theatrical but I want him to understand that the nuisance, and effort it takes to climb the stairs and turn off the lights is what it will take to stay connected. That change is not comfortable but it is our responsibility. Saving the world is the same way I feel when the lights go to black opening night — that it has taken everything to do the kind of theatre I need to do to be a part of a larger movement — a part of saving the world.
Aboriginal children in Canada should not have to be saved by an international relief organization or should they?
Away I was basking in the glory of creation. Workshopping and rehearsing my play Copper Thunderbird for a staged reading at Vancouver’s Push festival, that will go on to be produced at The National Arts Centre (an all Aboriginal cast, written by an Aboriginal playwright — the second production in Canadian history to premiere an Aboriginal work on a main-stage in Canada.) I was basking as a poor person does eating quality chocolate. Art can be so delicious with resources. It doesn’t make it less hard, it just makes it more of what it is. So it was with this sublime ecstasy I read in the Globe and Mail, that a vast majority of Aboriginal children are living in third world conditions and that “Save the World” is coming here to do just that, save our children. It is devastating to practice art when children in my own country, my own reflection, are without clean drinking water, without food, safe lodging, without hope. It is a genetic reminder over and over again that the past is not far from the present, and in fact, for many us it is enacting at the same time, as if nothing has changed, as if, there has been no revolution or evolution — artistic, cultural, or human. And yet… I know there has to have been because I am here. I am doing what I do. And like… other Aboriginal creators there is an honest accountability to take our space, and our place as artists with conscience. We know we are here because we are still on the backs of our ancestors, past and present. We know the cost and that it has been a long time coming.
There are strange things going on.
Take the saving where you can get it.
Where you can give it.
In Spirit, Marie Clements |
