Sometimes my world continues to grow smaller, even though I’m removed from my home town in Canada, even though I’ve no immediate social realm to speak of, I can feel the planet shrinking — it’s a strange sensation; I liken it to when you lay down to sleep in a hotel bed and the sheets are tucked so tight that you have to sleep pigeon toed at the foot of the bed…except this can be uncomfortable and a shrunken world is actually a bit of a delight.
A year ago, perhaps more, a fellow I used to be acquainted with contacted me to let me know he’d been reading my blog and remembered me from my Saskatoon life. He used to climb at the climbing gym I used to manage. As time passes I vaguely remember him in snippets, though I’m not sure if I’m simply recreating him in my mind or if these memories are actually of him. I think he maybe used to wear army pants.
I love them because the sound of them carries the intangible portions of me home.
I can put on their album and feel a segment of my self drift North to the plains, to the tall grasses, the poplar bluffs, hip deep snow drifts, the eternal sunsets and sunrises on smooth horizons, the Northern lights wending around constellations and the romancing night whisper of the Saskatchewan River as it races North around gentle bends.
There’s even an edge of eternal night to their music. That feeling of the winter dark in constant surround. Eyes squinting as they gaze at a small ocean of ice from the West shore of Lac LaRonge; bad medicine; bitter wind pushing through the chinks in the cabin wall.
It’s all there in the blend of voices. I hear it. I hear it.
But most importantly, to me, they sound like the wind in the wheat or like standing in a forgotten grain silo and feeling the bounce of an echo as you sing a sad lullaby. I enjoy them for all the emotions their slow notes render in my heart and soul; for the casual harmonies sung here by the great (great) granddaughters and grandsons of the first pioneers.
This is my favorite Pearson song. It’s sad and beautiful.
Enjoy (if you can, this video is the most dreadfully sad story of two robots…and a filthy moonshiner…).
Hey Pearson, next time I’m in town, can I sing with you?
I can match your fair harmonies, note for note, I promise.
Leave a space on the stage for me and a light in the window.
From this prairie child,
Jillian