Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.03.2019, Page 15

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Lögberg-Heimskringla • 15. mars 2019 • 15
and sugar slathered thick on top; an
amma whose yard was ringed with fruit
trees you could climb and a great wide
sloping ditch that you could run towards
and, screaming, leap across like some
overlarge and ill-formed frog; and an
amma who, no matter who came by, rose
up smiling from her chair to say, “Isn’t
this a nice surprise! You’re just in time.
I was just about to have a little treat. Are
you hungry?”
“Old House” was written after
our amma, Victoria Johanna May
Sigurgeirson, passed away and her old
house in Steveston was bulldozed down
to make way for a “bigger, better” house
– bigger maybe, but no house (if Amma
was your amma) could ever be a better
house than hers. The song captures, by
her absence and by contrast, the woman’s
huge maternal warmth, a warmth like
light that overflowed not just the house
but the yard outside as well, indeed the
entire town. It recalls the many, splendid
hours and days and nights we spent as
children growing there in the sunshine
of her care. It is a beautiful and a tender
song full of the wonder and loss that are
the dark side and the light of love.
“Terra Nova” is a lament – a
powerful lament – for the degradation
and the disappearance of the wild realms
here on earth, those ragged ungroomed
places and the living creatures they
sustain. The words of the song are
Lisa’s dear old dad’s and the story goes
like this: Uncle Bill, along with several
other concerned and caring folk, fought
to prevent the lands of Terra Nova
(a then-wild, treed, and meadowed
part of Richmond’s northwest shores)
from being rezoned and razed into a
subdivision. In the end, despite their
hard and all their heart-felt work, the
land was allowed to be “developed” and
all its creature-dwelling fields and trees
were levelled flat and landfilled and
then paved so a great new shiny suburb
could be built. The loss was a hard and
disappointing one, yet one more sign
that those who care are rare here in this
world and their voices scarcely heard.
Some time later, though – some months
or maybe even years – Bill slipped a
word-filled envelope into his daughter’s
hand and said, “Maybe you can make
a song of this.” And by grace or by
God, she did! And what a song it is: as
beautiful, in its own lone way, as the
now-lost world it mourns.
“Joshua” is a sad, strong song about
heartbreak and hope, written for a baby
boy (a 4th-generation Western Icelander)
and his mother, Lisa’s older sister, who
had no choice but to give him up at birth.
The song was written many years after
the fact (and some few years before its
dreamlike ending had occurred), the
seed of the song having been planted
when someone from the government
called Lisa to say that the boy’s birth and
adoption documents were to be released
and they could have them, if they wished.
Later on, those papers in her hand, the
song began to grow, a song (I think)
written not just for the boy and for his
mother, but for Lisa, too – and also, of
course, for us.
“And do you know somewhere out
here
She’s been missing you, Joshua?
And do you know somewhere out
here
We’ve been missing you, Joshua?
Woah, Joshua,
When are you coming home, Joshua?
She held you in her arms if only for
a moment.”
I quote the lyrics because there is a
coda to this song – an unscripted ending
that makes it seem so magical it should
only rightly come from the saga tales
themselves. Because, you see, some
years after the song was long composed
and done, the young boy Joshua did
exactly that: he came home. But his
name now was Ben and (long story short)
he is indeed back “home” and living near
his blood, not so very far from the place
where he was born. So listen to this song
and weep. And laugh. And wonder, too,
at the wiles and elfin ways of this old
sacred world.
Several of the album’s songs
(some already mentioned) – “Terra
Nova,” “Shadow Dance,” “Listen With
Your Heart,” “Old House,” “Raven-
Haired Boy,” “Ode to Ogis Rose,”
“Joshua,” “Still Hold True,” “Farðu
Draumaveginn” – deserve to be singled
out for what they truly are: transcendent
songs of insight and of beauty, each
one informed by a sense of wonder and
of joy, that pure and radiant joy of an
artist immersed and finally living fully
in her work. And though many of these
songs sing of family and of friends now
gone, lovers too, there is strung like light
through every one a celebration of what
it means not just to have loved and lost,
but to have come through it into the
deeper meaning these things bring, for as
she sings in “Shadow Dance,”
“We are one
Said the shadow to the light;
Embrace the shadow
And the darkness becomes bright.”
To read Lisa Sigurgeirson Maxx like
this, bare naked on the page without her
music or her voice, is to do her wrong.
Hear her sing the words and you’ll hear
how words can transcend themselves in
song. Buy this album. You’ll be thankful
that you did.
To order Still Hold True or to find
out more about Lisa Sigurgeirson
Maxx, check out her website – www.
lisamaxx.com – or contact her via email
at lisasigurgeirsonmaxx@gmail.com.
You can follow Lisa at on Facebook at:
facebook.com/lisamaxxmusic/ or on
Instagram at lisamaxxmusic.
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PHOTO: STEFAN JONASSON
Lisa Sigurgeirsson Maxx performing at the 2016 INLNA convention
in Richmond, BC
The Gimli Film Festival and Winnipeg
Cinematheque will present encore
screenings of two of the best films from
last summer’s Gimli Film Festival during the
third week of March.
Under the Tree is a pristine example of the
wry sense of dark Icelandic humour that GFF
so often features in their Northern Lights Film
Series. It follows a man who is accused of
adultery and forced to move in with his parents.
While he fights for custody of his four-year-old
daughter, he is gradually sucked into a dispute
between his parents and their neighbours over an
old and beautiful tree. What starts as a typical
spat between suburban neighbours unexpectedly
and violently reaches a boiling point, spiralling
out of control.
Directed by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson,
Under the Tree runs 89 minutes in Icelandic with
English subtitles.
The film will be screened at Cinematheque, 100
Arthur Street at Bannatyne Avenue in Winnipeg’s
historic Exchange District, on Wednesday, March
20, at 7:00 p.m., and Saturday, March 23, at 5:00
p.m. and again at 9:00 p.m. General admission is
$10, students and seniors, $8.
The second film, Minding the Gap, won the
festival’s coveted Best of Fest Award in 2018 for
its emotionally bare and bluntly honest portrayal
of domestic abuse in middle America. Screen
times are available at winnipegfilmgroup.com.
Winnipeg Cinematheque
screening Under the Tree