In Praise of WaterCarvers

An odd word that—WaterCarver. What is one anyway, you might ask? The answer to this question is twofold. In the first place the WaterCarvers Guild is a band from Montana with which I became familiar when I worked as an arts administrator. As for the second meaning, I see a watercarver as one who produces works of seeming ephemerality whose effect and uptake have little relation to the producer. What I will do in the rest of this post is to explain what both parts one and two of the WaterCarvers band/concept have brought me.

Let us take a moment to consider Montana. Not only did my mother attend college there until her father passed away but this state has given us Norman Maclean, Yellowstone, and herds of bison. Given that I love all three—great American prose, a spectacular national park, and our country’s largest ungulate—how could I not enjoy this state? When I try to explain to people what is special about Montana I often default to the cliché of the sky. The expanse of blue found there gives one a sense of place, or really one’s relative insignificance in a landscape so awe inspiring and vast. Understanding one’s relative unimportance in the order of things is essential, so I praise the skies of Montana for that alone. Next, I have had some memorable experiences while traveling in Montana. There was the twelve-dollar lunch I purchased at a Lewistown diner for myself and two other people that was classic Americana: tasty, fattening, comforting, and cheap. Then there are the images that have stayed with me long after I left the state: the brutal beauty of the Hi-Line landscape, the rolling dark hills between Great Falls and Benton, and the mesas of Billings. Lastly there is the WaterCarvers Guild itself. This folk band consists of a father and two of his sons, and the mother of the family is their manager. There is something so honest and unforced about their songs and playing that I cannot help associate them with the splendor of this state. Listening to their music helps me to appreciate Montana even when I am miles from it.

A watercarver is also a great metaphor for a poet or artist of any sort. Somewhat like John Durham Peter’s idea that rhetoric is essentially an act of dispersal and throwing multiple seeds to the wind in hope that some will find fertile soil, a watercarver uses an instrument to shape a small section of flowing river, never knowing what these movements will ultimately produce or where the effects might be realized. The hope in both cases is that our artistic and rhetorical endeavors will eventually find their audiences, though we as the creators of such work need not be attached to their immediate success. The point is to continue shaping the water, putting forth a sound in breath, or filling the screen with text. How and when these articulations are taken up is not the point. Instead we must continue our efforts, carried along by the stream of our passion and maintaining a faith in the shape tumbling below the surface of ever-roiling waters.