On the back of our invitation to Ottilie Douglas-Fodor’s exhibition at La Galerie Espace, located at 4844 boul. St-Laurent in Montreal, Ottitlie had written “Stephen’s ‘coat’ poems were the inspiration for this series of collages!” It was a fairly cold winter afternoon a few weeks later when I visited Ottilie’s exhibition and saw this series of collages for the first time.
It was around November 2007 that I began writing a series of poems about coats. I was on a medical leave from work having broken my leg in an accident the month before. Then, when I had little more to do than sit and stare out the window into the back yard, I began writing poems about coats. The poems are usually well received at readings and I plan to include the series in my next book of poems, A Private Mythology.
Ottilie’s collages, inspired by the coat poems, show a human figure, on all-fours, and glued to the figure are different coloured or patterned, but still transparent, pieces of paper. The coats in the collages bring life to this fairly anonymous character who appears in each collage in the same prone position, bent over on hands and feet. The effect of this series is quite amazing as each collage evokes a different feeling depending on the coloured or patterned paper glued over the figure; some are light and lively, others are ominous and foreboding. There is always the juxtaposition of different coloured paper over an identical figure. These collages are simple but impressive; the figure is like a line drawing, unadorned by facial or other identifying features. One feels sympathetic to the figure wearing these different “coats,” they are like blankets draped over his body, shifting coloured shapes superimposed on his back. The figure reminds me of a James Thurber drawing, but in a much different context than Thurber's work. The image on the poster is entitled “Chrysalis, var. 2,” and there is a feeling of metamorphosis to these collages, for the coat transforms the figure from anonymity to individuality, just as the different coats in the coat poems are the vehicle for expressing something about a specific human condition.
What also interested me when seeing these collages is that Ottilie’s figure is in a similar pose as William Blake’s 1805 print of the biblical character Nebuchadnezzar. Curiously, just days before visiting Ottilie’s exhibition I had read The Book of Daniel in which Nebuchadnezzar appears and I made a note in the margin referring to Blake’s representation of him. I had remembered Blake’s drawing of Nebuchadnezzar (maybe from the William Blake exhibit at the Tate Gallery back in the 1980s) as facing in the opposite direction from the one in Ottilie’s series, but when I returned home and looked up Blake’s image I was surprised to see he was posed in the same direction as Ottilie’s character. Blake’s nude character is disturbing, with his long hair and beard, his muscular body, and the confused expression on his face. To me, there is something both shamanistic and primitive in Ottilie’s collages. They seem to come from the unconscious mind, from the collective unconscious, from a place beyond any single culture or tradition.
In some poetry, and in some visual art, there is an underlying element that is shamanistic. I think of William Blake as a kind of shaman. On one hand, shamanisim is the original expression of mankind’s spirituality, it is both global and "experientially atemporal" (that's an awkward phrase by which I mean that time, whether five years or five thousand years, does not alter what shaman's experience); what the shaman experiences is archetypal. On the other hand, organized religion is an expression of mankind’s spirituality that is culturally based and usually associated with, or identified with, a specific geographical location. This is not to say one is better than the other, it is only to differentiate between the two. I believe the poem that inspired Ottilie Douglas-Fodor's collages in this exhibition was “The Shaman’s Coat”:
The Shaman’s Coat
The pockets of the shaman’s coat,
are like holes in the ground,
worms wrap around my fingers
when I dig my hands into the black earth
of these pockets.
My shaman’s coat
when opened wide reveals a dozen
wrist watches in the coat lining
set to distant time zones.
My shaman’s coat is long and grey
and smells feral, like honey bees
in a hive. Left in a theatre cloak room
the coat is returned smelling of perfume
picked up when pressed against
a woman’s stylish coat.
My shaman’s coat has a life of its own,
sometimes it disappears, visits a stranger’s home
where it is an honoured guest,
fêted, wined, and dined until the coat
emits a protracted burp then sighs
and falls limp and rag-like
asleep on the living room couch.
This coat can walk the streets
on its shamanic journey.
It is not a coat that likes a crowd.
It is an introverted coat—
at parties it finds a secluded coat rack
where it won’t be bothered
by the noise and talk
of normal people.
The shaman’s coat
flies over the city,
enters tunnels, caves,
and office buildings;
stands on a beach,
the sea and sky gunmetal grey,
while the wind blows into a storm.
Wearing my shaman’s coat,
pulled like a blanket over my shoulders,
I am on a journey I began at birth
and will end on the day
of my death.
