Miguasha. It has to Start with Miguasha. It's where I spent a good part of my childhood and where I acquired the large ideas that would guide me as I became an adult. It's where I developed my first views of the universe and to where I go back to in my memories when I need to refresh my view of that universe and my views on art. It's a push pin on both a geological and psycho-cultural map that tells me who I am and where I come from when I see myself as an artist, as a writer on art or as a writer period.
The name for Miguasha, a small point of land on the south side of the Gaspé peninsula is derived from the Mi'kmaq (pronounced Mig Maw) word Megouasag which translates to red earth or red cliffs. It refers to the Devonian cliffs overlooking the Baie des Chaleurs on the south side of the Gaspé Coast.
My siblings and my parents referred to Miguasha as "across the river" for the 45 minute ferry boat ride that took us across the Restigouche River from Dalhousie on the New Brunswick side where we lived. "Across the river" has now aquired a rather Odyssian resonance for me in my personal mythology. What classical education will do to our otherwise simple lives. The ferry boat that took us there possessed an "Argo" dimension that has turned my childhood into a heroic story of personal awakening. The ferry was named Romeo and Annette by its captain Romeo Leblanc, who was at least capable of punning on Shakespeare if not on Homer.
It was to my father I owe credit for allowing Homer to enter my imagination. But that was a little later. At Miguasha, his influence on me had more to do with seeing the scale of the universe, a scale that ultimately made me question every man made superstition or fairy tale whether it was by Homer or any other prophet. Stories were a thing people told each other but science was the filter through which I ultimately decided the veracity of those stories. You see, at Miguasha my father introduced me to fossils. Fossil fishes..
You see. the cliffs of Miguasha have concealed, for millions of years, the sea bottom of the Devonian era when the only living things on earth were fish, plants, and arthropods. So in the company of my father I dug up fossils from the Miguasha cliffs. Having found a fish, I ask my father how old it was to which he answered "350 million years." My initial response was "wow" but after many years I have understood that the "wow" would have to be sufficient. I would never need the crutch of a creation construct ever. I have learned since that wow must be enough to behold our smallness in the universe and that only our meager science can provide answers to any questions beyond that.
So I learned from that, at Miguasha that mine would be a life of contemplation and not one of acquisition or aspiration to power or wealth. But also the difference between science and well...stories. That penchant for contemplation took me to art and the role art plays in our lives. Whether it be the stories of Homer or the Pyramids of Egypt, or the paintings of Edgar Degas. It started as near as I can tell on a ferry ride across a river.
It isn't that I want to bore you with you with my atheism. Frankly I don't spend much time thinking about it or arguing about it. It's simply that faced with the overwhelming oddity of our existence I have decided that consciousness and the apprehension and expression of its beauty and its diversity is the richest thing we can enjoy on earth for the short time we have here. Everything else is a waste of time. Sure. I need my piece of the wooly mammoth to survive too, and to have time for my art. But that's a discussion about economics. In his later arguments my father used to say "Art is for the rich." My answer was that Homer too was making art, not history. But I have a streak of Marxism in me that came to me from his lessons. I'm a cynical artist at times. But I nevertheless prefer aesthetics over conceptualism and politics. I attribute that to being French. I'm not interested in practicality. That runs headlong into my more Newtonian side. But if I start that...well, I'd have to quit art. Art is a kind of resistance. Neitsche worded it differently. "We have art in order not to die of the truth."
We lost our brother James this year. This is a photograph made of him at Wafer's farm at Miguasha. ( in or bout 1966) The brownie camera moved around between my parents and my siblings. It was a collective photographic project. I can't swear I made the photograph of James. But I remember the day and the moment. But it's an important picture in my life as an artist. It situates me. Tells me where I come from. Tells me who I am. So I can tell you who I am.
