Profane times call for profound measures. When the air around you is apocalyptic, your every breath must be steadfast, every move solid and loyal and true. When all around you is uncertain, unexpected, unexplainable, we take comfort and find courage in the familiar.
Maybe that’s why this week, more than any other in recent memory, art has salved our souls from the maddening fray we find ourselves in. Art, like the plaintive beauty of “Elegy” from Montreal’s Leif Vollebekk, that is most definitely down but defiantly not out. There’s no room for optimism in Vollebekk’s ruminative verses, but he also has no patience for wallowing in pity. He’s determined to find another way to climb out of the basement we’re collectively finding ourselves in.
“Things are only revealed in the light that is given,” he intones, a reminder that hiding or denying truths set down in front of us will not make them any less true. Leif Vollebekk’s “Elegy” may have started life as a lament for lost love, a sober reflection of the soul, but this week, it resonates deeper. This week, it’s profoundly prescient.
