LOSS OF LIFE ON COBOURG BEACH; WAVE EDITING

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Many many years ago, I was smitten by a beautiful young woman; Kathryn McGlynn. One night when the moon was full of itself, bloated with shine, and the poet was full of himself, bloated with romantic inspiration, an sugarless non-fat organic twig became a quill pen for the poet to script a message in a meter-high font along the entire shoreline of Victoria Beach. “Wally and Kathryn, as simple as that, for what is more perfect than that which is truly simple.” The sentence began near the playground and … by the Breaker’s Motel !V! O T E L. !V! O ! E L. !V! O ! E ! !!!!!i!i!i!iiiiii~~~~

This memory strolled along the beach last fall when a wave of eurekas splashed my ankles. The waves were gentle, tantalizing. They convinced me to collaborate with them on a concept that toys with the dialogue between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’.

I scripted words/phrases into the sand where waves lick. I wanted to photo-document the before and after images of the waves editing the script. I only had a couple hours to learn the language of waves, particularly with a Lake Ontario accent. It’s one thing to eureka; it’s another to execute it.

Words would go into the sand and just as I lifted up my camera, it was wave-edited. Words would go into the sand and … wave-edited. There was a rhythm to wave-tongue that was necessary to learn in order to execute my eureka. It’s not clockwork. It’s T & E. [Trial & Error]

So my baggy jeans have their cuffs rolled up and I’m standing in the water taking pictures from a tripod, which made the rhythm of wave-speak a bit more complicated -- it added a bit of time [2 sec] to the set-up & record. It is quite apparent that I am unskilled with photography. My skill extends to the taking of snapshots 101. I have recently begun to learn a bit of Photoshop, I think its course 102.

[I have been fortunate to have had Mr Doug Curran as FOTOTEK for the Peoples Republic of Poetry from its inception to currently. Several different people photographed the activities of the Peoples Republic of Poetry ever since Loyalist College of Applied Arts & Technology hosted TECHNOROTICA, a 1972 poly-media poetry performance billed as the ‘first safe landing of the Peoples Republic of Poetry’].

Poetry circles and triangles of the day were resistant to the concept of the Peoples Republic of Poetry, so I found myself hanging out with conceptual artists rather than poets, but poets eventually evolved. WAVE EDITING is manifested on this blog as conceptual poetry. Nothing heavy, just a bit of creative whimsy.

Nevertheless, the bottom line is whether you get it or not. But I hope you get it.

Scroll below on the beach…

And the soul wears out the breast
And the heart must pause to breathe

And love itself have rest.

Is the shoreline a sure thing?