The Ridiculous And The Sublime

Barbara: What a weekend.

I mean, really. Was there something in the air? Some kind of kinetic gale wind that blew through these parts and wreaked havoc and beauty in almost equal measure?

So much happened this weekend that instead of feeling prepared to share something profound and clear with you, there is a riot of stuff swirling around in my mind. It makes clarity, succinctness and sleep pretty damn hard! There is—literally—too much to tell.

I’m not a journalist (as you well know!) and this won’t be your one-stop shop for all things factual. But I can prism this world for you from my own perspective and sum up what, for me, was an amazing, magical, seismic, strange and transformative few days.

On the side of “sublime”, I spent from Friday morning until Sunday night in the quaint city of Guelph to attend and do the PR for my sister’s dance organization—the Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival. As I said the other day, if you know anything about contemporary dance, you know that it is never the same, never the “expected”, it doesn’t follow any rules (other than the fundamental one: you must tell the truth), and it lives to challenge you. This weekend was no exception as dancers from all over Canada brought works so diverse that in one moment you would be watching two hilarious/tragic dancers clipped to a tree on bungees interpreting their final moments as they drown at sea, to four muscular men tearing up the stage, 500 newspapers, and each other, to five suited male dancers in reverential prayer-dance reinterpreting the “davening” ritual of the Jewish faith, to an exquisite and intensely personal and powerful duet between two people grappling with love.

Dress rehearsal shot of Kaeja d'Dance at the GCDF 2012; Armour/Amour.

Not only did we get to witness artistry at its finest and most electrifying, I got to meet all these amazing artists afterward and hear firsthand what dance means to them, what it means to perform in Guelph, and what it means to create despite so many obstacles. My daughter, Michele, was at my side the whole time, filming each artist as they shared their thoughts. We intend to amalgamate this footage over the next few months into a short documentary about the festival. I already told you how wonderful it was to be part of my sister’s extraordinary work, but to be able to also work with my daughter on something so special was an unbelievable experience!

It really made me realize how “storytelling” comes in many shapes. For me, this recent experience of being behind-the-scenes in a creative project has offered—surprise, surprise!—just as many opportunities to tell stories as sitting at my computer and writing them down from my own perspective. The stories we collected for the film have the bonus of incorporating other people’s voices and experiences, other ideas and visions, other viewpoints. In the end, we are all “writing the story” together.

But not very far away and at the same time, there was also another, wholly different, horribly dark story unfolding. While all this sublime, intense, cathartic creativity was going on, I would hear these spurts of information from the “real world”. Back home in Toronto, rain was stopping traffic and filling sewers past capacity and then bursting into the main subway line. Then the next day, a shooter let loose in the Eaton Centre—our most central and crowded shopping mall—killing his target while injuring several innocent bystanders. It didn’t seem possible that suddenly this world that was—in that same second—filled with exquisite beauty, honesty, and insight, with the language of artistry and wonder and cooperation was the same world filled with random, violent, and incomprehensible destruction.

But it is always thus, isn’t it?

It has filled my mind to capacity. I am a bruise today: blued and sensitive, aching, wary, but also smitten and loving, intensely aware of my humanity and the other bruised and aching people near and far.

Deb: Yes, the violence was so shocking. I am glad that it is still a shocking thing to hear these stories, but that doesn’t remove the shock. It has also been a weekend of peace in a funny way as we have taken a well-needed break from reality and have not strayed more than a mile from home. Your experience sounds like pure heaven and next year I am soooooo going. 

The Rituals That Sustain Us

Deb: The other day as we got ready to go to our friend’s funeral I was struck by ritual. Certainly not ritual in any religious or traditional way, but the rituals in our lives that keep us from ripping and tearing in two. I’m talking about the rituals that escape our notice—the daily tasks that are like breathing to us. I thought as I stood in front of my closet, choosing shoes and a dress, “What are you doing, what does it matter!!?” As I styled my hair and put on eye-shadow, I looked into the mirror and was stopped by the ludicrous nature of the moment. I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Why the hell am I putting makeup on? Why in hell am I reaching for earrings?”

Dressing for a friend’s funeral... I cannot conceive of a sadder thought. As my husband and I walked back and forth silently in our bedroom as we prepared ourselves to leave, it seemed like a most bizarre empty exercise. And then I thought, “What is the alternative? Do we wake up on the day of a loved one’s funeral and go out the door, unfed and unclothed?” Of course not. But still it felt banal.

And afterwards as we piled into the car, the lumps returning to our stomachs in anticipation of what lay ahead, I realized that the ritual of getting ready to go was a kind of glue that was holding us together. There for a few minutes, in a painful world full of minutes, the ritual was our friend. We were making choices and as a result we were grounding ourselves in our lives, the only lives we know, the lives we can be sure of at this nanosecond in time. We were clinging to the normalcy, grateful for the silent comfort in each other’s eyes in this specific second in time. 

In the last days we have been reminded once again that it is only in the seconds of now that we can find any sure peace. It is only in the very moment of a glance into your loved ones eyes that you know you have each other. That is all we ever have, and we have been reminded of that fact in our friend’s untimely death. So we hug and touch each other as we pass from shower to front door without saying a word. We are locked in the understanding of how much we appreciate this moment in time that we still have, however painful it is.

And I wondered if the ritual didn’t act as our first friend as we return gratefully and reluctantly to the land of the living. I pondered that maybe ritual is always the first step from the moment someone you love dies. You are shocked and bloody grief-stricken, but in the hours following the news, you will put on the kettle and pick up the phone and pull something out of the fridge for dinner. You will live. Your stomach will feel like lead and your head will swirl with images and memories. You will take a shower, dry off and dress, without even noticing, so far will your mind be from reality. But you will do it.

I have always observed that generally North Americans are not good at the grieving process and have acknowledged that many other countries and cultures are good at it. I have always thought how healing it must be to be able to weep and wail and scream with fellow mourners and to do little else in the way of functioning. But then I got to thinking. When the weeping and wailing is over, aren’t we all the same? Don’t we all go into that place of great void. Doesn’t our emptiness consume us as we realize finally after the formal mourning period that our loved one is not coming back? We go through the shock, the pain, the divulging, the guilt, the regret and the agony of it. We’re tossed like empty shells washed up on the shore, into the funeral and reception where we have scraps of well-meaning but empty forgotten conversation with each other. We search each other’s eyes for meaning and for explanation, and then we go home saddened at finding none. And we put on the kettle and make tea and toast and we find ourselves comforted whether we want to be or not. And in those moments we are back to living. We are reminded again that life is so very fragile.

But we are also reminded that life is in these moments.

Barbara: Deb, it’s funny that you should speak of this. Because I totally remember thinking the same thing when I was getting ready for Paul’s funeral. It felt so bizarre and weird and wrong. And yet, I did find some solace in it—which then made me feel guilty!

You have expressed this process with such beauty and eloquence it actually hurts my heart. And then you take it one step further and find the grace in it. The imperative necessity to the living. I want to thank you for that. So utterly breathtaking, I want to weep and wail and then laugh and cheer. Just … thank you.