The North is a Spirit

Last Thursday night I headed out into the darkness to hear Ian Tamblyn up in Orangeville. Of all the songwriters I know, he seems to work most directly with the ideas that move me both as an artist and as a spiritual seeker. Ian's songs, stories, photos and compositions are expressions of solitude, sublimity, awe, and grace. In a time and a place where these notions are frequently pressed into service as buzzwords, it's a refreshing and at times a deeply moving experience to get back to the heart of the matter.

And what is the heart of the matter, precisely? Ian phrased it as a query that went something like this: is the North in Canadian art and music an idea, which we're applying onto the landscape, or is it a spirit that we're discovering there and then expressing?

Ian's not the first guy to take ask this question, implicitly or explicitly. Artists from the Group of Seven to Glenn Gould have tackled the North, or been tackled by it, and it's never been officially settled. I can't place myself in such noble company, but I can tell you I've been obsessed by the same thing. As a kid from the Canadian Shield near Parry Sound who spent 6 seasons in the bush as a treeplanter, I've been chasing the North in story and song all my life. The more I think I get it, the more it gets me.

Then again, I'm convinced the answer to the question is less important than the effort that goes into trying to work it out. But on the way to Montreal last Friday night, in the dark space between Brockville and Cornwall where many of my songs have been conceived, these words came to me in a dark, ancient-sounding melody. They're only words, and you can make of them what you will. But when I sing them I know what they mean, and I believe these words to be true.

The North is a Spirit
You'll know it when you hear it
In the cry of the loon
Beneath a waning moon
You'd better try to understand it
And when you finally begin to
You'll see the North is a Spirit
And the Spirit gets in you....