This Land

EXODUS

This land is mine, God gave this land to me
This brave and ancient land to me
And when the morning sun reveals her hills and plain
Then I see a land where children can run free

So take my hand and walk this land with me
And walk this lovely land with me
Though I am just a man, when you are by my side
With the help of God, I know I can be strong

Though I am just a man, when you are by my side
With the help of God, I know I can be strong

To make this land our home
If I must fight, I'll fight to make this land our own
Until I die, this land is mine

Ernest Gold

This land is your land,

This land is my land,

From Bonavista

To Vancouver Island,

From the Arctic Circle,

To the Great Lake waters,

This land was made for you and me.

Woody Guthrie

Yabba Dabba Doo.

F. Flintstone

Land. It’s a strange concept. The dirt we walk upon, the place we build a house, the house we make into a home. The land is where our home is. For thousands of years people have fought, killed and died for land. For what they perceive as their homeland.

I am reminded of the scene in Woody Allen’s film Love and Death.

“This land is not for sale. Some day, I hope to build on it. (My Father) He was an idiot but I loved him.”

What is it about land that drives people so crazy? In the land, there are memories buried in dirt and time. There are also people buried. People like my grandfather’s first wife, who died in her teens. It is unclear exactly what she died of- Spanish Flu? Childbirth?

They had only been married a short time, maybe a year. Their child was a girl, who after her mother’s death, went to live with my grandfather’s mother and unmarried sister. They looked after her for about 20 years, then placed her in a mental institution. We never talked about her or her mother. She died on her 40’s and was buried in a different cemetery than her mother.

Everyone is buried in different cemeteries in my family. We have no family plot. My parents wanted to be cremated and donated their bodies to science. We put their ashes into the ocean in the same place, so they could drift with the waves between Vancouver and Hawaii. But even that is magical thinking as ocean currents are mighty and changing. They could be stuck in an eddy, or marooned just of the coast of Chile. Perhaps they ended up in Antarctica. On Saturday, we went to an art gallery, and stopped for a $4 cookie. The bakery was selling what they called “Everyday Salt”, harvested from the shores of Antarctica.

Frozen in time. Lips landlocked. Fun in the tundra. Sounds like the lost Jethro Tull album- FUN IN THE TUNDRA.

In Vancouver at the opening of any event, including opening a door, or the opening words of a conversation, we have what they call a land acknowledgment.

Land Acknowledgement is spoken recognition of the Traditional Owners, OEM, the original part owners of the land we stand upon. The land acknowledgement is somewhat of a performative white gesture, meant to show awareness of, and respect for, the Aboriginal Traditional Owners of the land on which a meeting or event is being held. It’s not like all the proceeds of the event will be going back to the owners.

Artist Cliff Cardinal gave a performance that I had fortune of seeing at the Push festival, called Shakespeare's As You Like It: A Radical Retelling. There was no actual Shakespearean content, but instead a monologue by Cardinal on Indigenous issues seen through a framework of a satirical land acknowledgement, which would precede the Shakespeare play that wasn't really being performed.

The show worked by artfully exposing the hypocrisy of the Acknowledgement, which might make sensitive white people feel engaged in a serious discussion, but in the end, has become somewhat meaningless.

Still l, there is much anger in the land. Anger is a perennial crop, never put if season. Anger grows on the most fertile land to the most desolate land.

“Evil grows in cracks and holes and lives in people’s minds.” Terry Jacks.

There are great discussions today on who owns, or should own the surface of the moon, an environment that has no air to breathe, no breezes to speak of, which causes the many flags planted there to hang forlornly rather than flutter. This has not stopped countries and private citizens from trying to land on the moon, to stake out the land, claiming ownership that will become the basis for more discussion and anger.

In 1974, Patti Smith came out with her debut Horses, which featured the song Land.

There is no land but the land (Up there is just a sea of possibilities)
There is no sea but the sea (Up there is a wall of possibilities)
There is no keeper of the key (Up there there are several walls of possibilities)
Except for one who seizes possibilities, one who seizes possibilities. (Up there)
I seize the first possibility, is the sea around me
I was standing there with my legs spread like a sailor
I felt his hand on my knee (On the screen)
And I looked at Johnny and handed him a branch of cold flame (In the heart of man)
The waves were coming in like Arabian stallions
Gradually lapping into sea horses
He picked up the blade and he pressed it against his smooth throat(The spoon)
And let it deep in (The veins)
Dip in to the sea, to the sea of possibilities (It started hardening)
Dip in to the sea, to the sea of possibilities

Other than her mashup with Land of a Thousand Dances, I think Patti’s song was more fluid than land based, what with the nod to Burroughs, and the trans-formation of riot girl-Patti to wild boy-Johnny.

I remember ( oh know, here he goes….. mining the deep thoughts from his muddy minefield) working at the David Y H Lui Theatre in 1976-77. They had a musical revue on ( can’t remember the name) and Leon Bibb sang the song Anyplace I Hang My Hat Is Home.

I tried to find a copy if him singing this song, and it exists on an album called Shenandoah. Alas, it is out of print and hasn’t landed yet on the internet. So we will have to enjoy a rendition by the incomparable Judy Garland.

“As I’ve got to roam, and anyplace I hang my hat is home.” Johnny Mercer

So to paraphrase Broderick Crawford, “Leave your blood in the blood bank, not on the highway, and keep singing those show tunes.”