S2E4 Stan Dragland: Mr In-Between
In this episode we explore Stan’s complex relationship to the island he calls home.
I’d never seen anything like this before
In The Bricoleur & His Sentences Stan makes these comments on receptivity and insight:
Understanding something, finding something out, is not always to cry “I have found it”, as Archimedes is said to have done (killing what he conveys). Not necessarily aperçu, or epiphany, not necessarily a conscious shift of ground, it it may be rather an inner rearrangement that unfurls the antennae, opens the pores of receptivity. And the ground for it can sometimes be cultivated by concentrating on something — sentences, say, or birds, or mandalas, or arrowhead fields — that helps to spring you into an elsewhere that resist naming. That imponderable will be too delicate and elusive to be caught in the beam of the eye, it will be music too deep for ears. But it will sometimes be inkling, all but palpable. For the most part we make do with appearances, and fascinating they are, but that vertiginous moment of shift or skid or plunge into insight is worth everything.
Stan’s essays on Newfoundland writing, culture and the condition of ‘in-between’.
Stan’s last book: A self-described ‘meanderthal’s’ warm appreciation of Jame Reaney, a powerful systematic poet and playwright. Stan and Jamie were colleagues at Western University in London, Ontario for many years.
A ‘handelier’: hand carved pickle stabbers by Stan hanging from a carved hand by Jack.
If you would like to listen to the full audio recordings of out conversation with Beth Follett in The Shed they are posted below.
Listen to the songs from Mister In-Between
Extras
The Thin Kings: Stan Dragland, Rachel Dragland, Holly Hogan, Michael Crummey and Degan Davis.
Stan’s Kinetic Bricolage: A video in which Jack explains the kinetics of a favorite piece of Stan’s and Don demonstrates why he should not be trusted with technology.