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qel'qulhp
Walking here on the dike trail every day, a story landed in my ears. Watching land, water, and birds over the years, the story cycle arrived, about a woman who is also a butterfly, who is also the colour of this place, who is also the landscape itself. She is Silvery Blue—glaucopsyche lygdamus, the Silvery blue butterfly. She is the shimmering colour of this magical place, soft and gray, and sometimes shifting—shining iridescent pink and rainbow colours.
My collaborator, composer and artist Omar Zubair, and I wrote a score for Brunswick Point, based on the Silvery Blue poetry cycle. In this score, anyone can participate—singing, carrying a flag, and walking the dike trail.
On the Autumnal Equilux in 2022, at Hwlhits’um, with our collaborators—dancers Jody Sperling and Rachel Harris and choir director Brigid Coult—we led a site-specific community performance. With a BC Choral Federation choir, we sang “Welcome Song” and various songs on the dyke trail, composed by Zubair. Many of the contributors to this guided walk (and their friends and families) carried flags, sang, and wa
This event was made in consultation with Hwlitsum First Nation and was curated and supported by the Richmond Art Gallery.
High tide looking for the moon I have rainbow visions
And she lies in the blue profile with snow gradient
So beautiful with clouds rising around
That we are all the children of the woman called Rainbow
Who rests here in blue mountain profile
With black spruce eye and black marsh island hair
She surrounds blue green red yellow white again blue
And becomes liquid at sunset
Three spirits puffing spirit haze
The Ancestor, Rainbow, and Marsh
They lie in their spirit clouds making the colours
Making the silvery blueness making the marshland
These colours and clouds
How we all breathe their giant breaths
And walk around in a daze
See their profiles to the north and to the west
They once walked the Earth
Now they sleep here in the mountains
They make the Silvery blueness surrounding