There's a YouTuber I like called Van Neistat. He's one brother of the Neistat Brothers. The other brother is Casey. Casey Neistat.
I like the way they use archive. They've built up an enormous archive over years of filming what seem to be inconsequential moments in their lives. Small moments.
If you were to look at most of these moments in isolation, you might ask the value of them. Filming himself walking along streets in New York. Filming his wee son riding a bicycle. Filming himself being sad.
But time does something to them. Small moments which you document almost without thinking can with time become precious. Sometimes you can catch the small moments which set the course of your life. When you set them against newer images, the passing of time becomes visible. Starkly so.
I've been thinking of the time I met musician, folklorist and photographer Margaret Fay Shaw. She was born in 1903 in Pennsylvania to a family with money. She was orphaned and in the 20s she travelled to attend school in Scotland, in Helensburgh. Then she came across the work of Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, who had collected and arranged Gaelic songs.
Margaret Fay Shaw went to the source. She travelled to South Uist in the 1920s. She lived in Lochboisdale for a while but found
"…there was not the opportunity for a beginner to speak Gaelic and observe crofting life. But not long after my arrival I was invited to dinner where my host... asked two sisters, cousins of his, to sing to his guests. Their voices were clear and true and their songs were golden."
She asked one of the sister to teach her a Gaelic air, and the reply was that she would, if she would come to their house in Glendale.
"On a sharp, cold January morning with the land white with frost, I crossed Loch Boisdale in a sail-boat and walked the path to the cottage of Peigi and Màiri MacRae, where I was soon to make my home for the rest of my years in South Uist."
The book 'Folksongs and Folklore of South Uist" came out out that. It is a jewel. But I can imagine that it wasn't an easy journey. I imagine that plenty of people questioned what she was doing. A young woman from Pennsylvania, from a family with money, living in a blackhouse, using her hard won musical talent to notate Gaelic songs. Luckily for us, she was "made of Pennsylvania steel."
Margaret Fay Shaw knew the true value of it. We are lucky she did, or so much more would have been lost.
It is something I have been thinking of. Documenting and recording people who are here now. I have done enough of it to realise that over time, the voices of these people also become golden.
Here is a post (in English) about meeting Margaret Fay Shaw. And here is a link to the original Gaelic version.
Taing airson leughadh,
Iain F.