Scotty MacDonald

I was particularly nervous as I walked into the doors of the Belkin Satellite’s opening of John Cage's silence show. Nervous, not for the usual social anxiety reasons, which were still present; nervous for two legitimate reasons. The first reason would be that even though art shows are the cours du jour for the hoi polloi of freethinking urban conformists, this wasn’t a regular low-brow art show where people stumble around half drunk pretending that they know something about art. The second reason being that my girlfriends dad was the one who invited us. My girlfriend’s dad, aside from being a Supreme Court judge, also lived at the Western Front during the seventies, which was at the forefront of Canada’s art movement at the time. And me, knowing very little about art felt somewhat unnerved at the prospect.

Fortunately for me, reason number 2 wasn’t so much of a deal it turns out. Right as we arrived the curator was accosting D.J.’s dad for sitting in one of two chairs placed back to back in the middle of the room. In turns out the two chairs were parts of the installation. And I was worried about getting in trouble in front of him. This, with the beer I powered chugged with one of my Clonozolpoft left me with a happy, chemically-induced feeling of calmness. So with that, bring on the art! My favorite part of the show was the hands on aspect. Each piece was a written narrative giving the reader instructions on how to find a bird in a (what I’m assuming) fictitious landscape. Attached to each piece via a handy piece of string was a birdcall. After many sideways glances to see if anyone was watching I mustered all my courage and blew into the bird call. To my surprise, no one reacted, in fact when I looked again there were a few people doing as I was, blowing into these bird calls creating a cacophony (I was going to use the word din here, but since my favorite bird wasn’t represented in the show as far as I heard I chose cacophony because crows go “Caw Caw”) of noise, which was fitting since the show was named partially about "Silence".

So there I was, happier than a pig in shit moving from piece to piece blowing into each one and imagining that I was there in each narrative trying to capture a glance of each elusive bird. Truly an involving art show if ever there was one. I only have one complaint come to think; it might not have been the best idea to have an interactive exhibit this close to cold season because as I write this, four days past I am starting to feel a little bit of a sniffle coming on and I’m sure one of those people must have had a cold. All in all it was one small step for art, and one giant leap for rhinovirus kind.