A bumpy, hour-long float plane ride separates Ipsoot village
from the nearest pavement. Over a splattenng of small green islands,
through the V-notch passes that separate lofty peaks, under dark clouds,
spiraling down, down, down to the narrow blue-gray inlet below. It is
not a place you visit by accident. This must be distinctly understood.
Rock cliffs echo angry-insect engine noise as the plane sets
down in the churning glacial gray river, down a path passing between
snags stacked up by last week's flood. A floating dock is tied to the
bank there, leaning at a clumsy low-tide diagonal. This is where you
wait The plane lifts off the river and disappears over the mountains
and you wait.
In time, if the radio call got through, a man from the village
arrives in a flat-bottomed boat, picking up the guests who wait there
With expert skill he revs the outboard engine, turning the boat this way
to skirt the gravel bar, that way to miss tlie submerged stump. He
knows these waters intimately. For millennia, their cedar canoes plied
these waters. Outboard motors arrived late. Strapped to wooden stems,
outboards sent the old canoes flying, skipping across the water at
breakneck speed. Older people tell stories of motoring their canoes far
upstream, seeing places in a day that had once been days away by pole
and by paddle. They know every twist and turn in this river. They
have names for them.
Dropping passengers and gear on the sandy riverfront beach,
the boatman points to a trail, one of several trails passing over the bear
tracks, between cedar plank smoke houses, upslope through dense
thimbleberry brush That is the trail to your host's house. Canine
pets, more wolf than dog, greet strangers with a yellow-eyed wolfish
stare that slowly gives way to an accelerating wag of the tail. Houses
line both sides of the meandering potholcd lane, where children nin and
playfully shriek and stop in their tracks at the sight of a stranger
Strangers are a novelty here, not to be feared. Children — young
children — ask for your name, make introductions, ask where you will
be staying. Their parents wave from second-story doorways, curious,
polite. (Lower stories are abandoned, doors left open, given over to the
floods that roar through town as upstream glaciers melt. The space is
used for storage, durable goods placed atop a sand-strewn floor. I am
told about a family that eats well during the floods, fishing coho
salmon from their downstairs living room.) The oldest people make
their greetings in the street, in soft and dignified voices, repeat their
internal conversations in English for my sake, each word carefully
chosen.
Over here, a missionary church stands beside a totem pole
representing the village's four clans; the whole scene is dwarfed by
looming mountains behind, sometimes cast white with tiny mountain
goat dots. Over there, rotting totems tilt sideways and ancient burial
trees stand straight — spruce groves where lateral limbs cradled the dead.
In the middle of town sits an old longhouse, its exterior clad in
weathered-gray cedar planks. The outward face of tliis aged building is
dull by design, made to mimic the look of a storage shed. Earlier this
century, it was one of the last holdouts, one of the few places where
traditional ceremonies continued clandestinely, while scouts kept watch
for patrol boats and white police with orders to arrest anyone caught
feasting, dancing, or singing the old songs. Stepping inside, the
building transforms. Carved totemic posts support long cylindrical roof
beams, arching over dirt floor and crackling mid-floor fire. Ancestors
perch atop the heads of serpents. Faces look down from smoke hole's
edge, with protruding tongues. Abstract geometric frogs and wolves
cling to the walls, while the long drum, sitting front in center, is
secretly a seal.
People gather there in the evening, talking, while wolf-dogs
pass silently through the crowd. Young people tune hide drums over
the fire, its warmth loosening the hide, changing the pitch. Bears, both
black and grizzly, meander through town at night — people arrive in fits
and starts when the dogs stop barking, signaling to everyone that the
coast is clear. Some older men, former loggers, former fishermen, men
who have spent long hours off-reserve tell me that the young people
gather here still to sing the old songs — "You know. .. like Hank
Williams " And then they laugh.
The hereditary chief sits at the front of the room, tired, a little,
from a day spent showing us, his guests, the old root grounds, the
fishing and hunting places, the sacred peaks This old chief, whose
ancestor emerged from a wolf, whose name proclaims that the smoke
from his great feasts passes around the Earth, begins to sing. Old
songs. No Hank Williams here. Songs written by his grandfather.
Songs from before the Great Flood, in a form of their language so
ancient that no-one knows its exact meaning. Songs that he, himself,
has written. Songs of mourning, of celebration, of returning home.
Drums beating in ancient rhythms, in complex syncopation. Thump-
thump. [pause] Thump. Thump-thump [pause) Thump. Young
people sing along with powerful voices, drumming on that patient seal
Then, late in the evening, a pause "What should we sing now?" The
old chief grins at me through the crowd and then puts on a serious face.
Looking at the youngsters, he drums again. Rising up, rumbling, in a
low and melodic voice. I hear the first and only English lyrics of the
night, [thump-thump, thump thump-thump. . . ] Your cheat in'
heart. . . [thump-thump, thump, thump-thump. . . ] will make you
weep . . [thump-thump, thump ] Lyrics sung monotone. Another one
of the old songs. The young people laugh and drum along with this
song, though its lyrics are unfamiliar, from before their time.
As the evening passes, people gathering closer, standing by
tlie fire, the songs grow more melancholy - the chief leaves tomorrow
on a float plane, to a place less remote, a place closer to doctors and
stores and white people. Tearful youthful singing is leavened with
more chiefly humor. Then out into tlie night, people leaving the
longhouse empty, smoke drifting up skyward, where the big dipper sits
atop a mountain outlined with moonlit snow drifts. All quiet, except
the howl of faraway wolves arriving on intermittent winds. The first
fall salmon venture upriver, sneaking past the village in the silent
darkness, going home to meet, to mate, and to die. The bears are out
rustling in some distant thicket, and dogs sleep soundly. Walking
home, elders ask that we return soon, to accompany their chief when he
returns on that bumpy float plane ride under tlie clouds, between tlie
peaks, and back to the village. We agree. The chief may leave
tomorrow, but there'll be no teardrops tonight. We will be better than
our word. We will return, we will meet here and sing again when the
old chief conies home.
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- TORTURE MUSIC RECORDS PRESENTS -
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3rd Annual
Art & Noise Symposium
Experimental Music & Art Extravaganza
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October 30, 1999
Callery of contemporary regional and national artists opens at
noon. Music from the Northwest’s most original bands at 7 p.m.
Buy. sell and trade your art and recorded music.
C A N N O N B E A C H C H A M B E R OF C O M M E R C E • 2 0 7 N. SPR U C E
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4
The 3rd Annual Art & Noise Symposium, with its as-
always appropriate blend of the weird and beautiful, is a perfect
specimen of entertainment to lead into the Halloween weekend.
It’s time well spent, checking out and showing support for
innovative Music and Art; encouragement for people doing
stuff you’re not accustomed to being exposed to can be a
fruitful thing. There is stuff going on in a wide-spreading
underground mycelium network that has value and substance
on a whole new level of consciousness, and supporting local,
rarely exposed artists helps grow a stronger community as
well. Many of the featured artists will have names that seem
familiar, though not necessarily in the context of visual and
aural art.
Some examples: Ramey Holsman, layout and graphics
editor of our local arts & culture monthly Hipfish, will get
some rare public exposure of her multi-media paintings;
Andrea Kosharek and Sid Cooper, black and white
photography, have probably waited on you in the Blue Sky
Cafe or poured you a beer at Bill’s Tavern; Roger Hayes
(paintings and experimental Cyanosis sound) and Jessica
Schlief (paintings) spend a lot of time working at the Cannery
Cafe as chef and waitress; Mariah Manners has re-shelved the
book you checked out of the Clatsop Community College
Library and creates beautifully vibrant art; Sally LackalT has
glued tliis block of words to this layout sheet and hopes to
show up with a few bone mobiles. Others will be here from
farther away — Ben Soeby brings his amazing fascinating
porcelain creatures up from Lincoln City; Robert Salter sends
bizarre ink drawings from Wisconsin.
The music pouring from the doors of the Cannon Beach
Community Hall will probably be like nothing you’ve ever
heard before. There are new sounds being created by people
starting their own traditions, spectrums of aural structures
previously untapped. Again, many of the artists may have
faces you recognize; they may mow your lawn (event producer
and atrophy, frontman Jim Kosharek) or hand you your plate.
Many are from elsewhere - Portland, Corvallis, Seattle; and
have traveled for the opportunity to mix minds with similar
creators.
Some of those listed may not be able to appear and others
may replace them - no matter what turnout materializes, it will
be unique, fresh, and new. New art is necessary and important,
and should never be ignored; and it is imperative to build on
new ideas. Many of the artists showcased on this night are
celebrities in their circles — wc believe those circles should be
widened, tlie ripples ringing further and further out to catch the
eyes and cars of a broader audience. You may not know it, but
there is something here for you. Come and find it.