Strange Boat — The Waterboys
#365Songs: July 9th
I’m moved by small moments, tiny details. I observe, study body language, search for meaning in unspoken gestures and the contradictions between what we say and how we say it. My eye naturally wanders away from the most obvious to the most inauspicious detail, and then I build narrative around that detail. In fiction, that’s world-building, character-developing, and context for a story. I imagine in life, when being near me, it’s less interesting — as perhaps I come off as restless, distracted, day-dreamy, off on another planet. I am, naturally, but I’m also present, processing far too many details all at once, stringing together meaning.
I imagine this is why I’ve fallen in love with documentary filmmaking, the art of using a small, personal lens to reveal a larger truth or systemic issue.
We’re sailing on a strange boat
Heading for a strange shore
We’re sailing on a strange boat
Heading for a strange shore
Carrying the strangest cargo
That was ever hauled aboard
Back in 2007, I spent a few existentially-magical weeks during my Master of Fine Arts residency in Howth, Ireland. It was my first time on a new continent, and even though Irish culture wasn’t foreign to me, I might as well have been on a different planet. After three decades of dreaming a world bigger than me, I was finally in that bigger world. Buried in folklore and poetry, songs hundreds of years old, alongside poets and grifters, at cemeteries with tombstones older than America — every brick, a story; every story, a new universe.
We’re sailing on a strange sea
Blown by a strange wind
We’re sailing on a strange sea
Blown by a strange wind
Carrying the strangest crew
That ever sinned
The Irish have a way of packing wisdom in every sentence, as if the meaning of everything is buried tight within each detail. A story about a local drunk is a generational epic about poverty; every song an homage to characters who’ll live forever, passed through fiddle strums and clever lyrics.
And that’s why I fell apart, how I came to question my own art. I was a writer writing without wisdom, fueled with the right instincts. I possessed the small, personal lens but missed the bigger idea, that profound way a small, quiet moment can reveal a better way to be. At that time, when I was 30, I’d read more than I’d lived, imagined truths I hadn’t yet processed, a half-formed artist with the right instincts.
We’re riding in a strange car
We’re following a strange star
We’re climbing on the strangest ladder
That was ever there to climb
Now, almost 17 years later, that innocent, naive version of me walks alongside me, a shadow of who I used to be — before loss and grief and change and identity crisis and parenthood and the need to survive and a pandemic and a Trump presidency and all other scars that accumulate in a life lived well.
All that to say, the Irish understand that some wisdom can be inherited — through old folk songs, limericks, poems and novels and histories — but true perspective is earned, and truly layered art requires the processing and repackaging of life moments recolored and expressed in tiny gestures, conversations, interactions, and the sharpest details.
For lack of a better description, I’m a domestic storyteller: I attempt to craft meaning and perspective through character relationships. Years ago, I was a writer who understood the narrative intrigue in small tensions. Today, I’m a writer who can thread small tensions into larger truths, who can weave personal histories into universal meaning.
Now it’s time to prove it.
We’re living in a strange time
Working for a strange goal
We’re living in a strange time
We’re working for a strange goal
We’re turning flesh and body
Into soul
~
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