Another snippet from our North Mountain Happening, this time a short jingle and some dancing.
Music and lyrics by Allison Cornell, video Adam Zinzan. Filmed in Mount Hanley, Nova Scotia.
Who are these people and what was this Happening, you might ask? Here is the invitation I sent out to a motley assortment of friends and acquaintances, all of whom live on the North Mountain, a long wedge of volcanic rock that separates the Bay of Fundy from the Annapolis Valley here in Nova Scotia.
A North Mountain Happening
August 30th, 2pm on; 31st as rain date.
In and around our garden
What’s the idea?
A cross-pollination between someone saying they might like to perform a dance in the garden here and me wondering how to promote my new novel in Covid times.
The official publication date for Cardinal Divide is September 1st. The novel has lots of queer content including a pre-non-binary non-binary 99 year old main character. Living queer in a rural area is important to the book too. So showcasing the community that is evolving on the North Mountain seems like a fun idea too.
I’d also like to embed an awareness that we are in Mi’kma’ki, on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaw people.
The ‘happening’ part of all this is that it would not be about gathering an audience to watch performers but instead people doing their thing around the garden while Adam Zinzan videos. Some of the happenings might have to do with the book – two friends have offered an advertising jingle, someone might interview me about the book, maybe I’ll read a few pages – but lots of it might not. Dance performances. Possibly Alexa installing a sculpture she’s been working on. Maybe a molten metal and blacksmith muscles moment. Someone declaiming a poem. Other things I can’t even imagine.
The idea is to generate short video clips that can be sent out on social media. For my purposes, links to the book might happen through Eileen sneaking about with the book-as-mask, popping up in the clips. Not all of them, though. Because the idea too would be that people performing would have access to clips of themselves
This is an invitation to friends and friends of friends to dream up something performative you’d like to do here. It’s more about imagination and play than product.
If you want to know more about the book check out this interview: http://open-book.ca/News/Nina-Newington-on-Canada-Uncertainty-and-Her-Newest-Book
If you’d like to be involved, let me know.
Nina
Sketchy but it worked and afterwards we feasted on slow-roasted shoulder of lamb and salad and bread and cheese made from our own sheep’s milk and it was the best book launch I could have imagined even though it didn’t occur to me that it could be that as well as all the other things it was from daft to solemn and back again.
With many thanks to Kate and Allison Cornell, Alexa Jaffurs, Lorne Julien, Eileen Rapsey, R.J. Rose, An Thorne, Angelika Waldow and Adam Zinzan.