The Canvas

Listen, can you hear that?

The rain is coming down again. Softly, like that song Ben and I once danced to, the soft crackle of needle on vinyl, whispers from the past. I can feel the early waters swelling, clean and fresh, rising up to greet us with silver finned cheer. Just like every morning on the water. It arrives with promises, with hints flashing in the depths and whispers riding in on the currents. It is reliable, dependable, predictable as an ancient clock tick, tick, ticking away in a forgotten school hall, a faithful and reliable old care taker. That dry and dusty hall, where I first saw Ben’s awkward smile and dreamed of holding his hand, has long since welcomed the lap, lap, lapping of the waves.

I can hear the young fisher men, their banter boldly bristling back and forth along the quayside flashing and bright, like the fish they hope to catch on the hooks that they’re now casting into the deep waters.

“See the match then?”

“Bloody disgrace!”

“Ref was an old Neath boy, nuff said!”

In other words, the old and new commerce of our city. The fish and the river weed markets thrive alongside the new docks stretching from St. Fagan’s to Duffryn and beyond. Boats weave their way past the lines and the nets, moving slowly up and down this new coastline. From the shadows on the quayside the hawkers and the barrow boys start to cry out, piercing the dawn, waking the city from its liquid slumber.

I feel alive, older. I am conscious that I’m talking to your ghost, or maybe you’re just a version of myself. Either way I am glad to be here with you and Ben in our glass studio atop our turtle shell boat. My paint brushes clink in their jars as the boat shifts on these early tides. A fresh canvas stands off to the side waiting to be worked on. Landscapes at the moment, yes, I’m dabbling again, finding my way through this water-logged geography, creating new maps with old memories and tentative brush strokes. Considered steps wandering along paths almost washed away.  Of course, Ben doesn’t cling to such sentiment, as you know he has always been the practical one, the hand on the tiller, the hand that built the tiller no less. Always ushering me toward the future, always smiling and hopeful and free.

Eventually, we all learned the truth about the water.

That it is our friend.

I still feel that soaked in weight, recall the tidal struggles we swam against, the cold fear that pinned us down. It seems that for Ben, and the barrow boys and the rest of the city, those concerns are dissipating like silt on a retreating tide. It sometimes feels as if I am the only one who remembers the old thoroughfares, the castle and the shopping centres – like a tour guide that no one wants anymore. I can picture the cobbled streets celebrating long dead gentry and their dubious legacies. Those old stone monuments now all but forgotten having been scrubbed fresh by the deep clear waters. The cracked tarmac and the concrete, the grimy alleys and the glorious arcades are as much home to shoals of darting fish and strange underwater creatures as they are haunted by the spirits of misremembered ideals.

Were you here for the days without clouds or rain or wind? Or had you passed by that time? Ben doesn’t remember them, or refuses to. We endured weeks of endless sunshine. Wave after wave of blinding heat driven by unforgiving commerce and unrepentant dogma. Followed by rain for months, deluges that would have caused Noah to raise a worried eyebrow. I am the only one who seems to remember them.

Nobody else remembers our struggle against nature.

Nobody else remembers the struggle against our natures.

I’m touching the cool glass of the studio window, a fool caught in memory, caught briefly, in the nets of looking backwards. Am I ensnaring myself within threads of nostalgia?

Look at what we once had, those spirits call out, mourning their faded glories. Look at all we lost!

Sorry I am tired, forgive my ramblings. Memories circle me like gulls hungry for scraps. Do you remember that spring when you visited us? We had just moved into our first home here and you were adamant you wanted to see the sea, despite the wintry weather.  A pack of gulls dive bombed us as we walked out onto Penarth Pier, snatching at our hot salty chips, making us scream and giggle and curse and run for cover. I remember waking in the early hours – the blasted birds would fight, greedy for scraps overflowing from our refuse bags. We thought that they were the invaders! A filthy, flapping, shite splattering hoard, taking away our hard-won peace.

But look at them now, so majestic. Wheeling high above our boats, commanding the space between the water and the clouds. Climbing through the morning sky, eager for the fresh winds that course through this watery metropolis. Hungry for this new world which probably seems old to their eyes. Do you see there, just there, the turtle green shell of our hull reflected in the deep Taff waters? Our reflection stretches out across the gently rippling surface to merge with the reflections of the spires of New Cardiff. Beyond those spires the distant hills are now alive with new forests. Geographies change, our homes have taken new forms yet we still need to live together.

Our lives, our homes, all our infrastructures are integrated with the water now. It’s odd to think that we used to live behind so many walls, barriers to push the water somewhere else. To stop it eroding what we thought were our lives. It took us too long to realise that the water is everywhere. That it is not our enemy. When we let go of our old defences, we saw what the water could give us. That it was a bountiful, shining, natural thing. Water proved to be our lifeline and our new beginning. A rebirth. Now, we live on the water and at night we dream of its depths.

The land changed in so many ways. Westminster was submerged so, naturally, we kicked the old politicians out. We voted in new leaders. We called on the nurses and the philosophers, the mothers and the dreamers. They all stood in the new Parliament on the Hill and discussed and debated. They talked to experts and sought calm advice. Slowly, at first, they divined a new path along the streams and the tributaries, down the waterfalls, across the weirs and passed the defunct flood defences. They showed us that the double edge of every beginning is a choice, a moment to collaborate or to obliterate.

So, we all chose.

You once said to me that nature is a kind of recording system, you were quite drunk at the time as I recall, and that we needed to listen to what is was recording. Not just the death cries but the quieter voices, the whisperers. The artists and the philosophers, the mothers and the dreamers knew that it was all too easy to listen to those nostalgia laden voices pushing their final death rattle into the world.

“What could we have done differently?” they wondered.  

“What could we have done at all?” they pleaded.

 In this changed world we needed to find new voices that showed us different possibilities. Voices that could, if we just stopped and listened, sail us off the edges of our worn-out maps and into the places beyond There Be Dragons…

The nurses and the philosophers told us, “From this day we will welcome the water.”

The mothers and the dreamers declared, “We will welcome the clouds and the rain and the winds and the new.”

They charted a different course, navigating both old and new tides, pushing us to see with clarity, to look inward and then beyond. Showing us a place where we might live in and on and with the water, not just beside it or in opposition to it.

The gulls are calling out again, strange how I used to think they mocked me. Now they echo out across the ruined barrage as they fly further out to sea. The clouds are threaded with a delicate silver lace, the sky beyond them is pale blue. Primrose sunlight breaks through and dances on the water at our prow. I feel old, still troubled with the whispering doubts that, it seems, I alone will wrestle with. You know I am still learning to love this new world and, with Ben’s help, I hope to accommodate all these new dreams.

I took a stroll yesterday, I needed to post that letter to Sam, and I saw some new graffiti, the first I’ve seen in years, on a wall opposite the sail maker’s – If Water is become life, how do we live in good faith…? It sounds like scripture, don’t you think? Like the start of a hymn that Grandma might sing. The beginning of a new faith in water. Some of us need faith, I recognise that pull myself now I’m older but, I am afraid of it too. There is a weight behind those words. We placed our faith in the wrong places before. We have used it unthinkingly. Given it to institutions and individuals who were unable or unwilling to wield that power responsibly. We were taught to be blinkered; we were raised to defend old men’s dreams.

Nostalgic twaddle be damned.
            We know that old guides can be updated and old maps redrawn.

The canvas stares at me, whispering these fears back at me, asking me to see something that I am not quite sure I’m ready to see. I close my eyes and feel the morning air on my skin. Then I am watching myself, as if I am a gull sat on a nearby barge. My body is taking measured steps, away from your ghostly form, across the worn deck. It is coming to the edge. In my gull form I want to call out, tell myself to stop. You just watch, impassive. My body steps off the deck and for a moment it tumbles through the air.

Splash!

Then I switch from the gull’s perspective. I am me again. Falling through the darkening waters. I feel the fresh tides as they slowly revolve my bone cold body. Then I switch again and see myself from the viewpoint of a passing trout. My body is held by the water. Far below is the old city with its abandoned streets, and above is the turtle green hull of our home and the cloud dotted sky. Sunlight reaches down, searching with its long silvery fingers, the light folding through the water and guiding me back home.

I open my eyes, reality rushes back to greet me. My hand still rests on the studio window, I hear the distant clink of the old teapot: Ben is singing tunelessly to himself as he makes breakfast.

“I see the future,” I laugh, nodding to the gull on the neighbouring boat.  

“I fear the nets too,” I whisper to the trout as it glides beneath our home.

I can smell eggs frying, what anniversary treats!

You once warned me about the danger of repeating ourselves. Of dredging up old ideas and thinking them new and apt for this version of now. Are we looking back at our old selves or embracing all the possibility that this new world has to offer? I am in the future! I had not thought that possible till this very moment. You also said, “History is a lesson, Jason, it’s a reminder, not a blueprint.” I see that the future is change; a delicate wish we must use carefully. I hope that – no – I know that the future is our waiting friend. The one we were always meant to meet, who stands ready with open arms.

As the fisher men haul in their catch, I reach for my brushes and the canvas begins to speak.