how might we celebrate?
There are fireworks and feasts. And then there is freedom. Release. Grace.
I like to celebrate the big holidays by getting out in Nature, whether on earth or water, a trail or a river drifting towards ocean or lake. Going with the flow is a rare escape from deadlines, responsibilities, and pressures. Going at the pace of breath. Heartbeat.
Creating this animation was a journey in more ways than one.
the music
Water Lily comes from SoundPath by the gifted Naaz Hosseini, a performing artist who worked with American composer and choreographer Meredith Monk. Naaz is an enduring friend, one of the few I count on the fingers of one hand. We used to chat hours-long in the car after a hike, unable to part until the sun set and stars came out. Today, we continue our rich interchange over Zoom: Naaz reads her poetry aloud while I close my eyes and enter her provocative and heart-opening realm. Then I share the latest vision-in-progress.
I am honored to have been part of SoundPath, not just doing the album’s visual design, but being an artistic “midwife” as Naaz returned to the recording studio and birthed these free-flowing currents of vocal ballet.
In the labor pains before the final songs emerged — after Naaz’s beloved father and my precious Bengal cat had passed — we recorded a wailing chorus in the studio, both of us weeping, beating our chests, sobbing until it hurt our throats to breathe.
the album art
In 1999, the font du jour for spiritual graphics was Papyrus. Light caustics and ridges of sand on the shallow eastern shores of Georgian Bay lent visuals to the main message.
Working with my photo library, I hoped to echo Naaz’s voiced rhythms with clouds and iridescence in an abalone shell.
When I visited the Forbidden City in 1993, I took many photos of the lotus garden from the surrounding covered walkways.
the video
I learned to canoe at Camp Calumet in the Algonquin Highlands when I was twelve. That summer I went on a rite-of-passage canoe trip in Algonquin Park, as the bow and occasional middle paddler in a three-person cedar strip canoe. I counted eleven loons wailing as a thunderstorm darkened the sky after supper. Its deluge soaked our bedding. We all survived a long, difficult portage, with counsellors carrying the sixty-pound canoes and us twelve-year-olds assigned to bedding and the monstrous food pack. Back at the civilization of camp, though covered in insect bites, I was overjoyed and victorious.
The next summer, I returned to camp to learn how to solo canoe, which included the survival skills of portage, flipping the canoe, then righting it and climbing back aboard, never losing the paddle. I had found my watersport!
When my husband and I lived in Nyack, New York, we got a fifteen-foot kevlar canoe. We started in the marshlands at Piermont, then paddled out in the shelter of the pier into the tidal currents of the brackish Hudson River: difficult paddling, to be sure! I was always the stern paddler with Tim in the bow, but I never had the strength to keep control of the boat once we left the marsh. Yikes!
Given my love of canoeing, I decided to be the talent for Water Lily. We shot at Big Elk Meadows on the way to Estes Park, Colorado. That day, I slipped into a long black wig from the wardrobe and packing a basketful of food. How easily I can imagine paddling and portaging as a way of life, spending the day island hopping, gathering edibles, watching for shallow rocks, and converting the canoe to my shelter overnight. To me, there are few better experiences in life than drifting through a water lily patch.
I hope you find your way to celebrate Canada Day, the Fourth of July — to experience your connection with the Land, your independence and freedom, and to enjoy whatever sport or activity best suits your body outdoors in Nature.
I could absolutely feel into the impact your early canoeing days made within you ~ what a beautiful, powerful memory. So lovely to learn of all the connections with this piece!
What an inspiring and meaningful way to celebrate these solstice holidays. Your animation is beautifully serene.