#303 Shamengwa- Louise Erdrich
Shamengwa is an old man living among the Ojibwa community.
His arm was broken when he was young and healed in a mangled way, like a broken
wing, and was given his named after the Monarch butterfly. His father played
the fiddle but traded it for religion when his brother dies young. The fiddle
was put away, and the parents turned despondent and had, in many ways, lost
their music. Shamengwa needing life, found it:
“It was a question of survival, after all. If I had not
found the music, I would have dies of the silence. There are ways of being
abandoned even when your parents are right there.”
Despite his mangled arm, or perhaps because of it, the music
he created became the soul of his community:
“The sound connected instantly with something deep and
joyous. Those powerful moments of true knowledge which we paper over with daily
life. The music tapped our terrors, too. Things we’d lived through and wanted
never to repeat. Shredding imaginings, unadmitted longings, fear, and also
surprising pleasures. We can’t live at that
pitch. But every so often, something shatters like ice, and we fall into
the river of our own existence. We are aware.”
When the violin was stolen, we learn of its incredible
history, and when we find out who stole the violin, we learn of his incredible
history as well. Instruments, like music often find people most in need of
spiritual healing.
This is just great story telling.
Notable Passage: “I do my work. I do my best to make the
small decisions well, and I try not to hunger for the greater things, for the
deeper explanations. For I am sentenced to keep watch over this little patch of
earth, to judge its miseries and tell its stories.”
