(Today we are pleased to welcome back Mick Bloor)
In the next seat to Alan on the plane, his fellow-passenger sighed as he replaced his plastic knife and fork in the cardboard food box, he turned to Alan and said, ‘That meal was the worst thing I’ve ever tasted.’ Four hours into the flight, they were the first words he’d spoken.
Alan felt obliged to reply. He thought about it and said, ‘I reckon that meal was only the second-worst thing I’ve ever tasted. The very worst taste was when I accidentally brushed my teeth with a tube of my wife’s hair removal cream.’
His fellow-passenger stared at Alan for a moment and let out a great belly laugh. He turned out to be a guy called Niels, a Dane who worked for Maersk, the shipping company. In turn, Alan explained that he was retired and on the Vancouver flight to visit his sister there, who hadn’t been well. Niels, like a lot of big guys, was tactful in his enquiries: he didn’t ask about the sister’s diagnosis or prognosis, merely observing that it would be a treat for her to spend some time with her brother again. Instead, Niels mentioned that he himself was planning to retire soon: how was Alan enjoying his retirement?
Alan talked about his allotment and also about some family genealogical research he’d been doing. He mentioned that he’d been fascinated by one of his mother’s ancestors, Thomas Bridges, a nineteenth-century missionary to one of the native tribes in the island of Tierra del Fuego, at the southernmost tip of South America. Rev. Bridges had laboured long and hard there to produce a dictionary* of the Yamana language, containing more than 30,000 Yamana words…
Niels was shocked: ‘Wow, that’s a big achievement.’ He smiled: ‘That’s some relative you’ve turned up.’
Alan was playing, distractedly, with the airline plastic fork. ‘Well, the thing is: I’m not so sure about the achievement. You see, over the years Thomas Bridges was there, the native population was decimated, almost entirely wiped out – a smallpox epidemic, a land war with incoming settlers, the local seals that the tribe depended on for food were almost all slaughtered by visiting whaler crews. The last native Yamana speaker died in 2022. The site of his old mission station is now the main departure port for Antarctic cruise ships.’
Niels nodded his understanding. But Alan wasn’t finished: ‘Did you know that in a single day, January 15th, 1965, Bob Dylan recorded the final versions of Maggie’s Farm, On the Road Again, It’s Alright Ma, Gates of Eden, Mr Tambourine Man, and It’s All Over Now Baby Blue? In a single day.’
It was a telling comparison. Niels intuited that his fellow passenger was distressed that his ancestor’s huge labours over the decades may have been utterly futile. Niels was a compassionate guy, and they still had a long way to travel together before they reached Vancouver. He spoke hesitantly:
‘Dylan’s music, like all art, is a form of play – yeah? It involves so many aspects of living – novelty, risk-taking, beauty. But your ancestor’s dictionary wasn’t art, it was a scientific endeavour. It involved concentration, judgement, rigour. Maybe it’s a mistake to compare Mr Tambourine Man and the dictionary? They were both very worthy achievements, very different aspects of living. We should celebrate them both.’
He caught the stewardess’s eye and ordered a couple of whiskies. They toasted each other and looked out the window. The plane was flying up the west coast of Greenland, and something out there was attracting other passengers – something utterly divorced from human endeavour. A Greenland glacier was calving as it edged into the ocean. Several new-launched icebergs were lying offshore. Things of strange beauty, tinged with pink from the low sun as they started their journeys of flotation and slow dissolution.
*Yahgan Dictionary Language of the Yawane people of Tierra del Fuego ms. of Rev. Thomas Bridges (later annotations by Rev. John Williams) dated 1865, text published on line by Patagonia Bookshelf 2004-2013.
Hi Mick,
What an interesting little fiction. A couple or regular guys on a flight, exchanging small talk that suddenly gets very personal for one of them. And the other man making an effort to make him feel better. A couple of Menschen. Add to that the spectacle of a glacier calving and you have a memorable story. Thanks, Mick. And it’s a bonus to know that many of my favorite Dylan tunes were birthed on the same day!
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Thanks, Bill. That’s quite a synopsis! I did actually see the icebergs birthing one time, along with all the other passengers and air-crew: awesome.
bw
mick
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Hi Mick
Truly an interesting event and conversation between the passengers–and seeing nature unfold like that must be stunning. Nature is tremendous but so slow moving in relation to our hectic lives that when things are seen we should be overwhelmed–or at least greatly impressed!
Leila
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Thanks Leila! I think it’s maybe witnessing the birth of a natural phenomenon that so arresting. Whether it’s bits of a glacier toppling into the sea or a mountain spring silently welling out of the ground, they’re both utterly hypnotic. (though witnessing the birth of a volcanic eruption might be a bit too much).
mick
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Hi Mick
On Sunday morning 18 May 1980, I heard a voice of nature when Mt. St. Helens blew apart. But I live well over a hundred miles from it–so it was like a prolonged rumble of thunder, and I didn’t realize that was what I had heard til later.
Thanks again! Another great work by you, that is neither an essay nor a tale–just is your own thing–a good thing.
Leila
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Wow. A sobering thought that the noise of an eruption could be heard a 100 miles away. Thanks for that!
mick
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Hi Mick
I had to look it up St Helens is 97 miles! It was a low sound but BIG. I was walking to work on Sunday morning. Nature does not fool around!
Leila
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‘A low sound but BIG’. Whoa, not what you expect on your walk to work! No wonder the Ancients thought volcanic eruptions were the voice of an angry god.
mick
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Mick
This tale really sticks with the alert reader. It has an engaging everydayness about it.
Then, after a while, a thoughtful reader realizes that the two main characters are like two sides of the human subject, almost as if they were a representative human being having a conversation with himself.
Science and art often are the two sides of human accomplishment. And often, they blend and meld in ways we don’t even realize. Einstein was as much artist as scientist, and Van Gogh was like a scientist (very-very much so) in the way he studied and captured (to hold it in a frame without damaging it) nature.
Also, great Bob D material in this!
And, a beautiful, Chekhovian open ending!
The ending becomes symbolic after a while.
Dale
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Dead right, Dale. There’s a strange beauty to some scientific discoveries, like the double helix. And I remember having a few drinks fifty odd years ago with some old friends of my dad’s. During WWII, they’d worked in the pattern shop at Rolls Royce which produce the engine for the Spitfire fighter plane. The way they talked about the extraordinary precision that their work required struck me as elevating their craft to art. Thanks for your kind and supportive comments.
mick
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Hi Mick
Regarding your response to The Drifter’s opinionated speculations from yesterday, I have a feeling that in 50 or 100 years (maybe sooner) people will remember, or start to remember, how much they NEED poetry. I think we are in a very bad time right now in many ways (in other ways, a very good time).
And in the meantime, we’ve got Bob Dylan!
How strange it is to realize that, on the list of the best-selling musical artists of all time, Dylan sits at around number sixty-five or sixty-six (65 or 66). Over sixty singers or bands have sold more than he has. The band Foreigner is just ahead of him on the list and has sold more records.
And yet, there are few who will argue that Foreigner or Britney Spears (who’s also sold more records) have had the same lasting, global, cultural impact that Dylan has.
It goes to show that sales is, truly, not always the measure of artistic success.
James Joyce and Marcel Proust have never been best-sellers.
Thanks again, great story today, it really sticks in the mind and leaves an impression.
Dale
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PS
Mick
I read your story again last night and this morning when I woke up it was the first thing I thought of (in a good way).
That’s how one knows a story is really good!
D
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Dale,
Thanks very much for your last comment & the ps. I’m sure you’re right that, for many people, popular music has replaced poetry (and particularly narrative poetry). But poetry will live on as a cottage industry, like folk music did til the 1960s. Only this afternoon, the wife of a recently deceased friend handed me a sheaf of poems he’d written over the years and which she’s planning to publish privately.
As for Dylan ranking 65/66th in the sales charts, I’m gobsmacked. I can well remember (must stop that ‘I can well remember[‘ stuff) the awful hiatus after ‘Blonde on Blonde’ and the news of of his bike accident, and the universal relief when John Wesley Hardin came out. And everywhere you went someone was playing it.
It’s a funny old world.
mick
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