Ben Hur meets Harriet the Spy

When Senora Monte went looking for her black shawl, she didn’t like what she found. It took her some time to find the shawl, which was not where she left it. And when she did find it, there was a hole in it where no hole had been before, a hole that no moth had made, unless that moth had the dexterity to use a pair of scissors. A little bigger than a playing card, and about the same shape, the hole in the black shawl was a portal to the magical world of film-making for Senora Monte’s son, Fernando, a frequent flier at coffeEco, a hip and happenin’ java joint in downtown Kingston, Ont. Four or five of us (the numbers were fluid) gathered around a table as the enthused (from en Theos, filled with god) Fernando told us of his Cinema Paradiso childhood. He borrowed his mother’s shawl to make a movie for his neighbourhood pals. Not just any movie, but the famous movie of the day, Ben Hur. He had no camera, no film, no projector – all that would come later. But he had his mother’s shawl, a pair of scissors, and a series of Ben Hur trading cards, which he flashed by the hole in the shawl to the derision of the children who had paid admission for this.

An indie film maker, Fernando Monte is currently completing a trilogy on the Bible’s wisdom literature – Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs are done, and now he faces Job, a subject he frankly admits is terrifying. “This age in my life is frightening, it’s the Job age. You feel so small, but you try to make the best with what you’re given. In my case, it’s a camera.”

Fernando saw his first film at the age of 3, and grew up inside his family’s cinema, experiences that set him on his creative path. For me, it was encountering Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy, the story of a loner-child, an observer who records her snap moral judgements about her friends, family and the unsuspecting souls on her after-school spy route in her spy journal. i was in grade 6 when i met Harriet, and knew i wanted to be a writer. My mother, by the way, did not find my witty observations nearly as clever as i did. i exercised my moral outrage that she had read my PRIVATE journal (which i had left on the dining room table, hoping it would be read and my family would at last understand what a genius i was). My indignation relieved me of dealing with the content of my mother’s comments. Dodging critics is a good skill for artists. But so is taking them seriously, and engaging in conversation.
One of those gathered around Fernando’s table (a classics prof, if i remember rightly) said, “If you find a job you like, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Which is true and not true. Oscar Wilde said he spent the morning taking out a comma, and the afternoon putting it back in. Making art is work, sometimes inspired, sometimes tedious, sometimes physical. It is also joy, the place where your deep joy and the world’s deep hunger meet. Claire Marchand grew up in Brandon, Manitoba and became, of all things, one of Canada’s most astonishing flamenco dancers, unexpected in the land of farmers and ranchers. How did that happen? Is it divine mystery, divine calling?

How did it happen for you, whatever your art form? What was the spark that set you on fire for painting, gardening, gourmet cooking, wood carving, photography, quilting, theatre, liturgy, tap dance, blues harmonica?

Is there a sense of call for you in your art?

Is this the place where your deep joy and the world’s deep hunger meet? How does your art celebrate the world, and/or speak to the deep wounds of the world?

If you were to bust out of your comfort zone and try a different art form, what might that be? What might you discover by trying your hand at writing hip-hop or taking a modern dance class?

Do you see the divine spark in arts not your own, in arts outside your own zone?