The Life Aquatic

The green mountains
Tell me
To live silently.
The blue skies
Tell me
To live flawlessly.
Cast away your greed
And remove your anger,
And live like water
And like wind,
And go.

--Master Naong (1320-1376)


We are saying our good-byes and letting go of each other, but we each contain residues of one another in our streams of consciousness. I began with bottles of water and so shall I end. I will be wrapping up and taking home two souvenir water bottles from Rita Kamacho's performance. One says "love" and the other "gratitude". We were encouraged to take them home and fill them up, meditate on those words and use the water in our daily lives--to drink, to wash, to bathe. I have two other souvenir bottles I keep on my bathroom shelf. One is a bottle of spring water from a tiny hamlet called Springwater Saskatchewan, and the other is from a performance artist named "nation" in Glasgow. That bottle is filled with water from the river Clyde, and reminds me of my love for that vital city.

Surprisingly, Rita Kamacho's piece, as described by Todd Janes below reminded me of death, and how our bodies are constantly being renewed by the water cycle, right down to the cellular level. I was thinking how that instead of ashes being the main concern of a funeral as the remains of a beloved, it should really be the image of water.

Shall we gather at the virtual river? I don't enter the hot tub of Face Book, fearing it might all go viral. I eschew the chatter of Twitterfalls. Performance artists do need a home at the Canada Council as Todd stated below and I think it's time we did develop some kind of online forum that works as a gathering place and gets us working towards the sustainability of the art form. I also hope for an online performance journal of some kind so that more people have opportunities to write about performance.

Finally, I want to thank everyone at Latitude 53 for working so hard to create such a wonderful festival. I hope you all get some spa time soon!