Beginning to End

Where is the heart…

…the soul…of this presentation that I steadily provide ink to? It must be more than the telling…it must resonate in the craft of words and images together…a bigger story than the one we obviously tell. How did we come to this session? One soldier in particular, connected to bronze, to the chanter, to history. Yet so many others walked and scrambled across this same ground…not recognized as such – as one young man.

And as I stumble towards finding my reasons for crafting my effort in the fashion I choose, I turn again to the score…the grid of phrase and passion. One simple search, “War and Cello”. It is in the asking I find a link to my over-arching idea…to my words beginning and end…and why I choose to focus this day – you are there with him.

This story is of those others…the stories not so easily found, bleached with time, yet we make them walk here again. This is a new pilgrimage not the one in focus but those to the side. The others on the memorial from the same battles and from across our communities. Digging and asking a little deeper, finding the phrase…the heart…the soul that makes their story (the others) of equal conversation to the well known…they (the others) being the seldom known of the beginning and of the end…evermore.

The Darkest Cello Music – Beginning to End. Aimee Norris.

In memory of one of the others…
Private Harry Ayres…47^th Canadian Infantry Battalion
Killed in Action…Regina Trench
11 November 1916
Commemorated on the Vimy Memorial, France

A few lines from Harry’s letter to his wife Carrie

A blazier fire at twilight,
A thousand stars ashine,
A searchlight sweeping Heaven.
About the firing line.
The rifle bullet whistles,
The message that it brings,
Of death and desolation
To common folks and Kings.
A sentry at his station,
Upon the trenches rim
Has thoughts that draw souls nearer
And you are there with him

(Harry Ayres, Chilliwack Progress, 7 December 1916, page 1)