In late July and early Aug of 2018 I was invited to stay for 2 weeks at the Halls’ Island Artist Residency in the Halliburton Highlands of Ontario. I had committed to finish a text about climate and natural spaces, about how there is no escape, about the encroachment of disaster on those hallowed spaces and our guilt surrounding the public secret. I was trying to trace the guilt that we manifest as individuals about the effects that our collective lifestyle has on the world at large, how powerless we are when we are alone, how to commune with the natural space about the loss of it, about what that loss is for us, about how we often (esp. in the literary sense) project our own safety and timelessness and escapism into these spaces/outside of modernity.
I finished this text and a few others during the two weeks on the island. It was a practice to stay present with the space, and I failed more often than not. The silence was deafening to my ears so accustom to the noise of cities. I relied on a little battery powered radio to play classic rock songs when i was too much in my own noise and needed the background to drown out and into. I was beholden to the chug of a generator to charge my phone and my little ipad at least once a day. I caught only what felt like fleeting minutes of deep quiet with the moss breathing, sitting on a slab in the full moon, the lake slapping calmly, the wind across the water moving through the trees and across me. I was reminded and always pushing against my want for certain forms of stimulation, how the noise of american anxiety demands constant distraction. It took time to settle into the place, each step into it came with a panicked pivot, clutching the sounds of modernity through the radio and occasional motorboats. It has taken me a few months to process this experience in its entirely. I left Haliburton and immediately went to the charged frenzy of Toronto for a few days. I think at the time there was a relief that occluded the sadness of leaving, the walking away from the practice of intention and quiet painful process. I traveled back with my dear friend and we talked about the pleasure and pitfalls of revelutionary violence on a GO BUS with a broken air conditioner in the august heat, and i was hoisted back into the stink of it.
I am thankful for my time on this island, thankful for the time to create and to focus on working through the noise of daily elsewhere. Even though I had the feeling while being there that i was failing to focus myself, and that i was so far from slowing to the pace of the place: Looking back on what i have to hold from this experience… I accomplished more than i set out to and learned more of my process and how the frenetic vertigo of worry works within my art. I am crafting these things into books over the next year or less and hope to share them with you, talk with you about them perhaps. I hope also to try my hand again at intentional time to produce and refine, i hope the end result seems benefitted from the fact.
big thanks to Kathleen, Bill and Jennifer Hughes and to Toronto based writer and curator Vanessa Barnier for spending some time there with me. For more information or to apply visit https://www.hallsisland.ca/
