Story
WE DIVE IN
Montreal is rainy this spring – nothing but rain, dreariness, river and streams overflowing, and when poet Shawn Cotton takes to the small stage of the lodge in La Fontaine Park, he forgets to remove his blue hood, which resembles a wave flowing across his curly hair. He is followed by the storyteller Maude Nepveu-Villeneuve with her clear voice, her chestnut glow, her childish face both pale and inspired. They read excerpts from their work entitled Objets flottants, the texts combined in two hand-printed booklets by the Atelier Abricot using “risography and a printing press”.
They chose to write about the river, or rather the love/hate relationship between Montrealers and the St. Lawrence River; the former wishing more immediacy, while the latter continues to evade their desires, captive in its role as an industrial highway and a refuge for floating objects.
(....) In three days, it will have been two months since my brother’s boat sank to the bottom of the river after colliding with a container ship. The investigations did not yield much; we did not find Alexandre, only debris (…). The river swallows people and spits out objects.
(Objets flottants, Maude Nepveu-Villeneuve, ARCMTL, 2017.)
Maude’s father, a skilled navigator, told her how his kayak capsized when he collided with the construction site of the future Champlain Bridge. The tale inspired Maude to write a fluid, sensitive short story. In language that is both delicate and crude, she depicts the emotional hardships of a teenager whose brother is engulfed forever by the St. Lawrence River. The story is poignant and luminous. It is an appeal to connect people with the river, and also for shared use of the river.
When Shawn was 14 or15 years old, he spent his weekends as an amateur musician playing with his band in a rehearsal studio in Pointe aux Trembles near the water. Rather than writing about nights spent smoking on the small beach until it was too late to catch the last bus, he chose a metaphor. He is an island surrounded by water, an isolated young Montreal poet who avoids movement, noise and others.
(....) I am sitting inside
a narcoleptic world
the streets unload
their cabinets of snow
in our home;
no longer worried
by the tremendous noise
coming from outside –
and the rainy days
extend across the map
of the area.
(Objets flottants, Shawn Cotton, ARCMTL, 2017.)
They read as the rain falls, and the crowd listens, huddled. Later, between drinks and discussions, Atelier Abricot is on site to print posters of life vests and lifebuoys floating on the surface of the water. We leave with our hands held tightly around the words of Shawn and Maude, emotionally charged and eager to read them in their entirety.
The river won’t defeat me. It is I who will defeat the river. Tomorrow I will be leaving for Rimouski and when I return to Montreal, it will be as one who walks on conquered land, standing upright on the deck of a ship.
(Objets flottants, Maude Nepveu-Villeneuve, ARCMTL, 2017.)
