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Dark Sky Preserve

by Ian Ferrier / Louise Campbell

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1.
Rail Music 08:41
Rail Music You can hear it from a long way off Coming down the pass Horn echoing off the mountainside And the love you had You let it go It slips away Bonds all cut And there it is: Barrier between worlds: Billions wandering the other side Are they all ghosts? Are you the ghost? How can we know? We’re standing in the station Looking down at the crowd on the platform We can stare all we like Look down the tracks We still won’t know when it comes Until WHOOSH (blow on the mic) You wake up Find yourself on a train No memory of how you got on No knowledge of where you’re going And the headlight’s on And the clouds are thudding across the sky in the dark And the silver of the rails It’s like the moon thrown across dark water More clouds than the single headlight of the moon can unravel And on this train we may not ever know all the stops Or even the places we’ve been And there will be no one No conductor to tell us whether we only have seconds left Or whether it’s hardly begun I know who you are Seen you before Just a flash, something I saw in a window Face on the subway Gone so fast ****
2.
Incantation 07:57
This is the incantation that rings in the halls of the homeless Rains down on subway platforms in the dead of winter Empties into the river and is gone. The snow last night has buried every one of us We look up from the hollows where we live And there on the snowy rooftop sits the stone Buddha with his eyes downcast chanting the names of the fallen and the still to fall Syllables never catch up to the birthrate now. We are just too many. And born too fast. sarah and will and james and dina and ian and john and eric and marie douce and liz and will and sarah and john Michael and dina and tadhg and james kelly and marie douce, michael and will and bryan and pierre, raymond and jacques eric and liz and marie douce and on and on and on and on names they tumble, whirling past the streetlights in the night So many fall. We need more buddhas to be calling, calling calling all the wild corners of winter fall down on your knees We are the fallen who walk in the halls of the homeless chanting the names of the present into the past, like snow melting into the river the past forgotten as the moment becomes. This is the incantation that swells in the halls of the homeless Rains down on subway platforms in the dead of winter melts into the river and is gone.
3.
Perseids As I write this we are in the midst of the Perseid meteor shower, comet Swift-Tuttle streaking into our atmosphere. Its orbit intersects ours in August each year Its orbit strewn with debris broken from the main body. And the place it intersects our orbit? We call that August. Each piece of debris that touches our atmosphere burns. And every 133 years the comet itself streaks into our lives. In 1992 the last time Then 2126 But this time it will come a few thousand miles from here Big enough to take out life on this planet And you and I, we’re circling each other now. In orbits 5000 kilometers apart What happens when we touch again? What kind of debris rains down? I am feeling the fire of your touch on my body, the touches of you in my life, multiple images I have of you, how from out of nowhere you appear so ferociously beautiful. Each of those little streaks is a mark you’ve made on me, and on this day they are everywhere, sixty or seventy per hour, from all parts of the sky streak into our atmosphere touching me, changing me, burned into my life.
4.
Dark Skies 03:01
5.
She is kind enough when she needs me. The life she struggles to maintain more precious to her than mine, even on the night I was born. Yet I am still her daughter, do what I can. It is only a month, only a week, only one more weekend till I set out for still waters. But then a year’s gone by, and were it not for what I make I would not survive. It would all be way too dark, and friends too faraway, and I would feel torn in two with desire to run, obligation to stay. And still waters would be an illusion, receding, down past the end of the driveway, past the self-same houses of suburban somewhere hell. And so I have set out for still waters, waters so calm and deep they mediate the anguish and the rage, the oil on water on the boil. Beyond the love and rage of a broken marriage how is it I am so alive? When I arrive at still waters the jumble of my life will fold into water and water fold into itself, and slowly, slowly motion will halt, and only the ripple of thought will well up from the depths: Silence without, meet silence within. Now I am at still waters and hauling rocks I work my arms and shoulders till the muscles twine like cables cross my neck. Even at still waters the wind kicks up in the aspens and the soil’s half frozen in winter. And there are still rocks to move, and the moss garden is an old fool’s beard, tossed snow white and disordered. The wind chimes in the garden ring the windy hours twelve by twelve.. Chalky winter sun meshed in bare branches. Alone at still waters I see that star still burning in the southern sky, care less and less how men have come and gone. Nothing is as it should be, except, strangely, me. Soon I will leave still waters, wander north into the world of snow And when we merge the two—my spinning world and his the whirling one— gold sparks will crackle where the two wheels touch, where our heels kick up Now the wheeling world drops seasons in its wake, turns gold into straw, pulls water to itself. And from this whorl of life the branches toss up leaves at every turn, and every one attentive to our little yellow ever-burning star. And out of these days in motion I feel my muscles stretch against A lifetime wound so tightly around me it’s a fabric, a sari, binding me to all I know and all I’ve seen. . I weave the fabric into straw, stilling my thoughts, blessing myself and the spirit from whence I came. And he, what does he feel? the one who wrote these words? It’s not so faraway, his land of frozen water. His thoughts go quiet at my touch. It takes such heat when ice melts into water.

about

The Words & Music show will feature the book and album launch for Dark Sky Preserve, a collaboration between Ian Ferrier, Louise Campbell and Sarah Beth Goncarova.

Featured performers include:
Spoken word: Ian Ferrier, Sarah Beth Goncarova, Rachel McCrum, Jason Selman
Music: Louise Campbell, Dina Cindric, piano, Elizabeth Lima, John Stuart, Jason Camlot

When: February 19, 5:00-8:00pm,

Where: Les sans-taverne
1900 rue Le Ber, suite 101
Montréal, Québec H3K 2A4

Admission: Pay what you can

The venue is wheelchair accessible and child-friendly.
Looking forward to seeing you there!

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. This event is co-produced by Words & Music, the Quebec Writers' Federation and

credits

released February 19, 2023

Voice, verse and guitar by Ian Ferrier; clarinet and fx by Louise Campbell; synth on Rail Music by Ian Ferrier and Drew Barnet; voice on When I Arrive at Still Waters by Esbie Goncarova; mix by Drew Barnet; mastered by Harris Newman.

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Ian Ferrier / Louise Campbell Montreal, Québec

Ian Ferrier and Louise Campbell have been improvising and performing together for the last six years. Ian is a well-known poet, performer and musician; Louise is a musician, composer and improviser.

Dark Sky Preserve is also a book from Clay Grouse Press. It includes the poetry, prose and musical scores for this work.
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