"Well, this has been a spectacularly unsuccessful writer's residency. I came to Silver City to isolate myself and write about some of the more exciting moments of my past, but I ended up just creating yet more exciting moments in the present.
Instead of being able to hole up in McCormick House and ignore a bleak, wintery locale populated by aloof eccentrics, I found myself in the middle of an emerging springtime, drawn into lively interactions with fascinating, generous residents who were eager to talk with me, show me around, and help me accomplish what became my overriding obsession: to build as many found-object sailing ship sculptures/models as I could in the six weeks I was here.
Together with about a dozen local full-time, part-time and occasional collaborators, I built the USS Silver Clipper, a three-masted schooner that is a gift from its makers to the City of Silver. I hope that it brings pleasure when you view it here and pride when it's exhibited in other locations next year.
Alone, I built another three-masted schooner that I eventually decided to name the USS Bob McKinney, because that's what these kinds of namings are supposed to do: help us remember people and events that, for one reason or another, should not be forgotten. One week before I left, with the generous help of a neighbor, I "sailed" that ship up into the hills and set it free to wander (metaphorically) the landscape that sheltered Bob McKinney for years. That neighbor shall remain nameless, to protect against curious inquiries about that ship's location.
I also half-built a third ship, the USS Peter W. Blethen, named after my good friend from college days in Colorado. Pete made a good life for himself in Minnesota, with lots of kids and grandkids, but died too young, ie. 60, ie. my age, of brain cancer. Again, the making and naming are essentially acts of loving and remembering. I will bring this ship back home to Oakland CA and finish it there this summer.
I'd built a couple of these sailing ship things before but hadn't realized how apt and adaptable this type of project would be in this type of situation. I'm now looking forward to trying to build ships together with other people in other places. Though it will be hard to find other places with as much readily-available crap - I mean: raw materials - as Silver City, and probably harder to find other places with people as interesting and generous as those who worked with me here these past six weeks.
PHOTO OF FRED SWANSON
I also got inspired to start a new but related project: I started making ghost towns and putting them up in the hills. The shacks and cabins and forts that make up these ghost towns are land-locked cousins of the sailing ships; they are not accurate or exactly to scale, but are somewhat abstract, ramshackle sculptures that hopefully evoke the forlorn mystique of a bygone world of people not entirely unlike us: eccentric, generous, tragic, joyful, alive and, eventually, dead and forgotten.
Our own pasts and presents overlap and intertwine with those of everyone we meet, sometimes creating confusion as contradictory desires and fears and points of view clash. The current state of live, streaming technology is allowing all of us, world-wide, to clash and fear and be confused all day long over the internet, without giving us many resources for resolving those anxieties and antagonisms. I treasure my time spent in Silver City partly because it will always remind me how valuable and satisfying it is to work together with others, strangers in the morning and comrades by evening, face to face and shoulder to shoulder in common cause. Just for the sheer pleasure of it really. I thank all of you, even those of you I didn't meet, for making Silver City a special place and I wish you all the best in the future and in the everlasting present.
Scott MacLeod
Thank you:
Quest Lakes, Fred Swanson, Theo McCormick, Molly Allander, Las Swanson, Susie Crowley, Cyndy Etchegoin, Sheree Rose, Theo McCormick, Johne Behner, Mylo McCormick, Renate Victor, Karen Kreyeski, Bob Elston, Henry Park, Matt Elms, Greg Melton, Will Rose, Cashion Callaway, Lila Lindsay, Brittanie Mullings, Sharon Rosse, Glenn Clemmer, Chad Sorg, Bill Burnaugh/Capitol City Loans, Tony/Nifty Thrifty, Healthy Communities Coalition & the Resident Artist Program in Silver City, St. Mary's Art Center, and Marielle Toll.
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