I finally unravelled the story, told to me in mime and dance punctuated by guilty clicks, I learned that all went well until Brian collected the tickets and was on his way home. On Regent Street he was suddenly inspired. He would treat the English to some street entertainment as he had so often treated the Greeks. Only London was not Athens. The English were not only indifferent, but disapproving, even hostile. They hurried past him, their eyes averted, as though by looking at him they would be condoning some obscene activity. No laughter, no cheers, nothing. Brian grew more and more determined to make them respond, to bring them joy. Finally, executing a mad desperate twirl, he went smashing into a lamp post and fell unconscious beneath it. Then the English responded. They were good at tragedy, not so good at comedy. My poor Brian, he was learning the hard way. I put him to bed with kisses.
The Yeats Summer School in Sligo was a very verbal affair with lectures, seminars, discussions, analysis and readings. Brian’s non-verbal stance didn’t go down well. It was a thorn, an irritant to the professors, the literary critics, the Yeats experts. But there were also the poets. Some of Ireland’s finest poets were present. For them Brian was a wonderful enigma. Some, like Seamus Heaney, Brendan Kennelly, and Jimmy Simmons, considered joining him and forming a non-verbal contingent. Two camps developed, a pro-Brian camp and an anti-Brian camp. The professors were impatient, they had no time for him; the poets admired him, wanted to imitate him, invented their own soundless scenarios, discussed the advantages, the possibilities inherent in silence, the space between the words. I watched from a distance, enjoying the fray but unable to be objective, not knowing which side I was on.
The natives of Sligo responded much as the Greeks had, with delight. Once walking down the main street of Sligo I noticed a crowd and approached to investigate. In the middle of the crowd Brian was mine-dancing. I watched him for a while impressed. He was miming the pathos of two lovers separated by some overwhelming force, his own version of Romeo and Juliet. The crowd was enthralled. As he built up to the climax, I wondered how he would end the performance, there were no curtains, no lights and the drama was so intense it required a grand finale. Suddenly there was the shrill scream of a siren. A police van sped up to the crowd and screeched to a halt. Two policemen burst from the van descending on Brian, pulling him into it. Brian was unrattled. The police became part of the performance. With raised arms, like a helpless Christ, he submitted to his executioners. Then from the back of the van he saluted his cheering audience as he was driven off. It was the perfect ending. His offence turned out to be obstructing traffic. He was released with a warning and a smile.
For the entire two weeks of the Summer School Brian remained silent, but his presence was increasingly felt. The police encounter transformed him into a minor folk hero — the Irish being prone to the creation of folk heroes. His salute from the police van became a badge, a password, a salute to him. People saluted him on the streets. In the school he was asked to give illustrations of mime, dance, performances of Yeats.
Seamus Heaney, later to become the dominant poet of our time, a noble laureate, suggested that he present a dance from one of Yeats’ plays — a surprise performance for the closing ceremony of the school. Brian was delighted.
He decided on the climatic dance from At The Hawk’s Well, one of Yeats’ dance plays based on Irish mythology. He would dance the young hero, the warrior Cuchulain, seeking the well of eternal life. “He who drinks, they say, that miraculous water, lives forever.” I would dance The Hawk Woman, the Guardian of the well, who lures Cuchulain from the well just as the mysterious waters bubble up and begin to flow. “She is always flitting upon this mountain side, to allure or to destroy.” Cuchulain resists the Hawk Woman but finally, hypnotised by her dance, follows her, forsaking his chance for immortality. We practised all afternoon, improvising costumes and music, mainly drum beats and strange discordant sounds. The well, true to Yeats’ directions, was represented by a square of blue cloth. We painted our faces white to suggest the masks Yeats wanted for the plays.
That night Brian danced Cuchulain, strong, magnificent, his shins laced with leather thongs, his hand clutching a spear. I danced the Hawk Woman, an embodiment of the bird of prey’s cruelty coupled with a woman’s beauty, dressed in grey/black with a shawl whose dark fringe unfurled to suggest malevolent wings. “It flew as though it would have torn me with its beak, or blinded me, smiting with that great wing.” My cry of “Taka!” intermingled with the drum beats, the wild sounds. A bitter yet heroic duet, making tangible the “imagery of emotion,” ritualising a universal quest with mythological significance “beyond the scope of reason.”
The most powerful moment came when Cuchulain stood, his back to the well, hearing its water bubbling up, but unable to turn from the Hawk Woman, her power compelling him to abandon the well. In a last heroic effort to free himself from her, recollecting his past conquests as a Warrior King, he slowly raised his wrist and warned:
Run where you will,
Grey bird,
You shall be perched upon my wrist.
Some were called queens and yet have been perched there.
Brian’s voice shattered the silence, rich, intense, passionate, defiant, agonised. The audience held its breath. Brian had spoken.
The magical power of the play exploded with the miracle of his voice. The play, the dance, Yeats, the poetry, Brian, me, the poets, the school, we were all miracles together. And Brian’s silence was over.
Six
Victoria
It was at the Yeats Summer School, the first year I attended, the year before the Brian event, that I met Victoria. I had quickly become friendly with some of the Summer School leading lights, mainly the Irish poets and writers like Seamus Heaney, Brendan Kennelly, John Kelly, and especially friendly with the poet, Jimmy Simmons. This was primarily due to the fact that the Summer School literary elite were based at the Imperial Hotel in Sligo, a grand Victorian building by the river, with splashes of faded elegance. I had been corresponding with Brendan Kennelly, who was then director of the school, and he had convinced me that this was the place to stay.
He was right. Staying at the Imperial Hotel afforded me special privileges, like easy access to the Irish poets to whom I was immediately drawn. I adored their fun-loving generous spirit, their informality, their refusal to take anyone, including themselves, seriously (even the great bard, the paymaster, was hardly spared) their inherent modesty, even shyness, and their sense of melancholy laced with humour. They were wonderful. In many ways they were like my musicians. They had that same ability to flood the soul, to excite the senses, to arouse with delicacy, with nuance, with startling images; they exuded that same quality of precarious balance, of living life on the edge, high and wild. They personified a line from a song written by my friend, Jesse Winchester, “if you’re treading on thin ice you might as well dance.”
They were themselves a kind of poetry, as though the poetry of the written word had somehow shaped itself to their own beings. However, the Irish poets were more articulate, taking a wild pleasure in words, their conversations often shot through with poetry — words leaping out of sentences, evocative, musical, delighting my ear accustomed to Canadian flatness — and they were more gregarious, more lusty, relishing the contact of a good scrum.
The hotel had a comfortable lounge, with a fireplace, which was host to nightly adventures of unlimited potential. After the official activities were over, usually close to midnight, the poets, critics, the literary giants of the Yeats universe would gather here to sweep aside the world of letters, of footnotes and references, and indulge in social riot. And I gathered with them. “This room is the only reason I come to the Summer School,” Jimmy once confided. The drinking was phenomenal and inspired a fierce hilarity spiked by monologue, dialogue, anecdote, and raucous choruses, sung and spoken, reeking with nostalgia
