The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.
I was reminded of those words — words taken from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, words said, in the book, by Judge Holden — nearly immediately upon listening to Doug McLean’s A Mass Vacancy, which starts with the following: The sun is not a ball of fire. The moon is not a light. The sky won’t produce patterns as your private guide.
Given hope or clarity, Judge Holden would certainly choose clarity. And, on this issue at least, I side with the Judge. And so, too, it sounds like, would Doug McLean.
A Mass Vacancy — where each song is a short scene of doubt as they hop from one to the other: Cassandra at the observatory, Erin in bed, Carmen in an old film, the memory of Melissa, Louise and Nina at a high school reunion, Angelica’s torn and buttonless dress; curiously, all women — addresses an ancient query: Why is there something rather than nothing? And in each song, the returning theme is that there seems to be a whole damn lot of nothing. Look up at the night’s sky, with a telescope, with the naked eye, and what does one see? You don’t see life. You see an endless sea of nothing. Conditions that prohibit or inhibit or prevent something from existing. Nothing is the normal order of things. Nothing exists more than anything else. We are surrounded, on all sides, flanked and fenced in, by nothing. This is the vacancy of which Doug speaks.
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
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Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
