THE SKY ABOVE HAMILTON, ONTARIO WAS EMPTY

ambition, looking up, birds, interactivity and installation

[STILL FROM THE AMBITIOUS SKY]

Sarah Imrisek and I exhibited an interactive video work (BIRD FICTION) at the recent Hamilton Arts Week. I wrote music and poems and Sarah worked her visual and programming wizardry and made a very cool and beautiful projection that responded to the audience’s hand movements.

Our installation also included the video that I’m sharing here. It takes a text about Hamilton, Ontario that I’ve posted below and turns it into the flight of flying birds—the birds are made of text. If you don’t want to watch the entire thing, you can watch a bit and then skip forward to past halfway where the way the birds are made of text changes. By the way, for non-Hamiltonians, “The Ambitious City” used to be the nickname for Hamilton (coined in 1847 by a Hamilton Spectator reporter.)

THE AMBITIOUS SKY

The sky above Hamilton, Ontario was empty. No moon, no stars, not even darkness. Unless, of course, the sky was so far away, so distant that the stars and moon and darkness could not be seen. When was this? It was such a distant time, a time so far away that time itself could not be seen. There was not even nothingness. Or the absence of nothingness.

So here we have a city in the province of Ontario, the city of Hamilton, Ontario, a city bigger than many, smaller than some, a city with many homes housing many people, some without homes, some without houses, some below the Escarpment, some above, a city with nothing above it. Not time, nor darkness, moon nor stars. Not nothingness itself. They used to call the city “the ambitious city,” but when this story begins, this city didn’t have the ambition to even have a sky, or to have a sky that was anything at all. A sky filled with nothing, not even plumes of steam, smoke from its factories, patients from its hospitals, students from its schools, dishes with one spoon.

What was below the city of Hamilton, Ontario? Dirt. Mysterious dirt. And below that? There was rock below the mysterious dirt. And below the rock that was below the mysterious dirt? Below that was fire. There was mysterious fire. When isn’t fire mysterious? But also, when isn’t dirt mysterious?

But we’ve become distracted. We’ve become distracted by the inarguable mystery of the underground. The dirt, the rock, the fire. The bits of old cups and bottles, rusted-out old car parts and shoes. The mystery. But let’s return to what this story is really about. Before it’s too late. Before we’ve run out of time and nothingness, out of moonlessness and darklessness, out of the nothing that isn’t there, the time that never was.

What is this story about? Is it about winter? No. About missing limbs? Not exactly. About the contingency of life in a late capitalist post-industrial urban centre? About an oblique joke concerning pine forests and dental floss? A conscientiously applied routine of oral hygiene and watershed management?

This story is about what wasn’t above Hamilton, Ontario. The missing sky. The faraway sky. Or a sky so devoid of content that it seemed as if it weren’t there. Imagine if you were watching television and there was absolutely nothing on the screen. You’d assume that there was nothing on, no broadcast, no transmission. Not even a screen or a television. The sky above Hamilton, Ontario was like this. It was a vastness, a dark, timeless, mysterious vastness with nothing on. The screen of the sky was empty. It was Netflixless and void. No transmission. No signal. There was neither time no mysteriousness nor television above the city of Hamilton, Ontario.

But as time passed in this timeless sky, time began to pass. It always does. That’s why it’s time. And not, say, a couch. It’s a mystery that is so far away, it’s a mystery. Gradually the sky began to come closer. People in Hamilton, Ontario whether on the mountain or in the lower city crouched down, they ducked like we did when we were kids and Dad drove under a bridge. We ducked down and the people of Hamilton, Ontario, as if ducking down while going under a bridge, crouched because it felt like the ceiling above the city was getting lower, like the sky was coming closer, as if the sky itself were crouching. As if there were a sky. As if the sky was ducking down like when we were kids. But the thing is, it wasn’t, it just seemed like it was. Like that bridge, it was always perfectly high enough for the family car to drive safely under but the bridge felt like it was crouching down and so we crouched down. Like holding our breaths past a graveyard when time became even more mysterious. But to the people of Hamilton, Ontario, the sky seemed like it was crouching down, like it was getting closer because the dark that wasn’t there got darker. And the time that didn’t seem like it had been there got timier and we all felt more keenly the absence of moon and stars and also clouds. We haven’t mentioned clouds before but we should have said that they weren’t there in the absent sky either.

Hamiltonians squinted at the sky. Why? Because it was vast and mysterious and far away. Also, because it seemed like it was coming closer. One guy, somewhere up on Garth St, pointed. Hey, he said, isn’t that? What? a second guy said. Isn’t that? What? I think it’s…no, it’s not possible. What? the other guy said. I think it’s a bird. A black bird. A bird as dark as the sky. As timey as time? Not sure, the first guy said, but now it’s getting brighter so it’s brighter than the dark that isn’t there. Wow. Mysterious. If you ask me, I’d say dark that isn’t there is called light, the second guy said. Ok, the first guy said. Cool. The bird is becoming light. It’s as if the moon had wings. And also the bird is becoming timier. That’s also like the moon. You know the way it changes throughout the month and some people even make calendars based on its changes. For sure, the second guy said and pointed into the sky which was even closer and sooner than it was before. Is that what I think it is? Depends. Were you thinking of hockey? No, I was thinking that there were other birds, new birds and that they were gradually getting brighter. That there was less of the dark that wasn’t there? Yes. And more timeliness. It’s like a whole murmuration. A flock. A hive. Like the sky is filling with gradually illuminating birds. A constellation of birds. Isn’t that Orion? And that Cassiopeia? And that the star cluster known as Wayne Gretzky, I mean in the before times?

And it was true that the sky was filling with birds connected together like the internet or embroidery, a filigree, a vast luminescent avian doily, a net gradually falling like time over the city to entwine it in red-winged blackbirds, in Carolina wrens, in pigeons, falcons, Canada geese, in downy woodpeckers, dark-eyed juncos, in northern cardinals, mourning doves, in red-tailed hawks and northern harriers. Every molecule of Hamilton, Ontario filled with birds, birds flying in their configurations between the rings of atoms, within the hopscotch patterns atoms make, joined by atomic bonds, atomic bones, each spinning inside their diadem of electrons and other birds. And between these molecules, there are still other birds. Burlington Bay is a bird and the Niagara Escarpment, its bones hollow as bird bones is a bird. Cootes Paradise which was always a bird is now even more bird. And Beverly Swamp and Spencer Creek. And the outspread wings of the Red Hill Creek Expressway. Sassafras Point is a white-breasted nuthatch, and James St., no longer one-way, is a double-crested cormorant or a white-crowned sparrow. City Hall and the Hamilton Spectator are pie-billed grebes, the black-crowned night heron is the citizens of Stoney Creek and hush, listen. Here on King William, there’s a pine warbler and a red-shouldered hawk, a field sparrow and a snowy owl. Tip tupa teepo tupa teepo. Zee zee zee ziti zee. Weezy weezy weezy. Witchity Witchity Witchity. Deer deer deer deer deer. All language is now bird song. Drivers on the Hamilton Street Railway cheep and hoot. We are sorrowful as larks. Happy as starlings.

What does it mean that the city of Hamilton, Ontario has become birds? That Jackson Square and the Jolley Cut are birds. That the Delta and Burlington Bridge are birds. Our homeless are birds. Our Ravenscliff and Mountain Brow. Preglacial regolith and fluvial incision. Glacial Lake Iroquois. Lapland longspur and tundra swan. Canvas back and sharp-shinned hawk. Pine siskin. The sky is filled with birds and it has become the mysterious ground, the mysterious below ground of rock, fire, of mysterious dirt. The birds are the stars and the citizens of Hamilton, Ontario are owls, and Cooper’s hawks and northern mockingbirds and American kestrels and trumpeter swans. I parked my car at Jackson and John and a northern saw-whet owl took my ticket. A belted kingfisher. A snow bunting. Our children are birds and our parking lots. Our CFL hopefuls and our brown-headed cowbird. Our Somali sunsets and our steel-worker nostalgia. Our raised arms and our rent cheques. Our percolators and our northern shrike. Once there was no sky and now there are American shovelers, buffleheads and green-winged teals. Is that a moon, no it’s a cedar waxwing, a northern flicker. Those aren’t stars they’re egg teeth, gizzards, they’re pin feathers. That’s not a bowling alley it’s a cloaca, the bursa of Fabricius, an oviduct and a keeled breastbone.

There’s a fallen sky in Hamilton, Ontario and it’s the ground, the sky, the mysterious buildings and their people, it’s a canvasback and a cackling goose. A bird fractures like dawn and inside is a girdle, an armature, a craquelure of summer light, the kind that slants across the Corktown Tavern or Desjardins Canal. The city is a mysterious rock that houses a purple quartz, Tom Wilson and a northern pintail. Bobolink, Bobolink, spink spank spink. Cheer cheer cheer. Chickadee-dee-dee. Teacher teacher teacher. Once we had no sky, or a sky that was distant as extinction. Now we have time, the moon, Limeridge Mall, the swamp sparrow and waterfalls rivering and plentiful as daylight. Ring-necked duck. Long-tailed duck. Green-winged teal. The darkness is feathers. In the hollow ribcage of the city, as quick and dark as a bird’s heart, there is time and there is darkness, there is something someone said that houses a purple quartz, the small hips of the city light and hollow as time. Our story ends with a list of birds. And look, here they are.