No unnatural museum revival here: Bog-Core insists on real human hands dirtied by the actual industrial rot of human suffering and moral corruption by “unseen forces”, forging second life from failed promises and cedar-root silence.
Brainardville’s New Bog-Core Creed—A Curious Musical Paper from the Lake
LAKE HOUSE, CHATEAUGAY LAKE, N.Y., MONDAY MARCH 1894.
Every thing wears a look of quiet industry about the Lake, save that the thaw comes and goes like a visitor that cannot make up his mind whether to stay.—The roads are soft at noon and iron-hard again by morning, and the ice, though still bearing in most places, has a hollow sound under the runner that sets a cautious man to thinking of home and dry ground.—Let no one venture far without good judgment, for we have already had one team shy at a dark seam where the snow lay too smooth, as if some hand had been at work beneath it.
Of late, our dear neighbor and friend, Johqu Bogart, has been somewhat overcome by an unknown affliction touching his mental faculties, though he carries himself peaceably and speaks with the same civil kindness as ever.—It is a strange thing to behold how a man may be cheerful in the countenance, yet have the mind go ranging like a lantern in fog.—He has now put forth another paper, which he calls a Manifesto, setting down what he esteems the proper criteria for what some of the old-timers about Chateaugay Lake have taken to calling “Bog Core” improvisation, performed upon odd instruments cobbled together, as is reported, from parts carried off in those unsettled days after the Popeville bloomery was abandoned and left to cinders and moss.—We have obtained a copy for the perusal of our readers, and though it is soberly written, there is in it a queer power, as if the words had been warmed over coals that are not quite out.
It is headed “The Bog-Core Creed,” and begins with what he names Rotwake, declaring that they do not begin in glory, but in what was left—cold kiln-brick, drowned timbers, bent iron, empty house-lots, and the long sore silence after Popeville was stripped and let go.—Then comes Towline, which insists every work must drag some honest weight, however strange the racket, with a line stout enough to haul ore, memory, grief, or laughter from one shore to the next.—There is also Crooked Truth, saying a thing need not be polished to be true; Weather Pulse, forbidding any time that ticks like a factory clock, but comes by thaw, gust, oar-dip, panic, waiting, and the queer pause before the loon cries again; and Under-Ice Distance, which speaks of soft sounds traveling under ice and through cedar roots to reach a man before he knows he has heard it.—In Stolen Return he writes that nothing comes back untouched; and lastly Bog Reforging, where he proposes to take abandonment and make it answer, out of industrial rot and failed promise fashioning a second life—music, image, tale, and style—so the bog itself becomes the foundry.—It ends with a sentence that has been much repeated at the Lake House table, “not revival as museum-piece, but rebirth with muck on its hands,” and there are those who laugh, and those who look toward the window as if expecting to see something move where there is only spruce-shadow.
We do not wish to encourage any needless alarm, and yet it is proper to note the singular effects of this new enthusiasm upon the evenings.—Last night, when the wind went down all at once, leaving the water black and still, there came from across the Narrows a thin, wavering strain, not like fiddle nor fife, but like a kettle singing to itself, and it rose and fell as if keeping time with no clock at all.—Presently it was answered by a second sound, softer, as though it traveled under ice, and there was between them a pause so exact that more than one man stopped speaking mid-sentence, waiting, without knowing why.—Then the loon cried, sharp as a nail driven into pine, and every dog in hearing set up, though no person had spoken its name.
Still, with all these oddities, the spirit of thrift and progress holds.—The men are busy where the ground permits, mending fences and drawing what wood can be got while the going is good, and there is talk of putting a fresher face upon certain lake buildings for the coming season.—Our friends from Popeville report their people in fair heart, and the music there continues to improve, which we are glad to hear, for good music is a temperance in itself when rightly used.—We are also happy to learn that the sick are, on the whole, doing as well as can be expected, and we trust that Mr. Bogart’s present cloud will pass, for he is a worthy neighbor, and no man should have to navigate such weather alone.—In the mean while, let every one keep a steady head on the ice, a kind word for the afflicted, and a firm hold on the towline that keeps us from drifting into foolishness.
BELZORAM.
#RotwakeOrigins #TowlineHaul #CrookedTruthAesthetic #WeatherPulseRhythm #UnderIceDistance #StolenReturnEcho #BogReforging #AbandonedFoundrySound #MuckHandedRebirth #PostIndustrialImprovisation
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?