The exercise has been popular in recent years. We take a series of columns or texts, written by the same author, shared on the radio, in a newspaper or on social networks, and we bring them together to make an object, a collection which summarizes an experience, a thought, a career. If the results are sometimes uneven, Vincent Vallières, who is publishing his first book these days, demonstrates the relevance of such work.
Published by Mémoire d’encrier, Bitumen and wind brings together the short stories offered by the singer-songwriter on Facebook, during his last solo tour, All beauty is not not lost. So many snapshots, thoughts and moments stolen from the solitude of the road, as he crosses the country at the wheel of his car, the voices of his idols in his ears. In front of the panoramas that pass before his eyes, the music brings out memories and reflections on the man he was, that he is and that he is becoming, on the friend, the lover, the father, the citizen .
City after city, he stops, puts on his sneakers to let himself be invaded by the landscapes, walks in the footsteps of friends and acquaintances to better understand the places he travels, the mourning, the dreams, the strength of those who breathe new life into the territory, who transform disused factories and abandoned convents into theaters, bringing out music, laughter and the arts of decrepitude and indifference.
“The beauty that sleeps / Do you still see it? / Do you still see her Vallières? » Like the lyrics that open the album All beauty is not lostthe artist searches, in the ambient chaos, for the bits of hope, resilience and creativity that remain despite ecological and economic upheavals, despite a pandemic which persists in ravaging the spirit of community.
Each story, taken individually, has the potential to touch, make smile or cry those for whom the places described represent a home, a memory, a love or a wound; evidenced by the success of original publications on social networks. Vincent Vallières, with his sensitive and accessible pen, has the simple ambition of touching people, of talking about them by talking about himself. It’s okay, sometimes candy pink, but it works.
When combined, the texts have the potential to cement something of the universal. By observing the state of cities and territories, the author evokes the questions, the discouragements and the paradoxes which torment each of us in the face of the multiple crises – economic, environmental, social – that the country is going through, the echoes of which are are heard in Natashquan as well as in Yellowknife, in Rouyn-Noranda and in Vancouver.
He interweaves his memories with those of others, demonstrating the extent of possibilities embodied by the places we live in or that we consciously choose to invest in. It questions the state of cities, the state of souls to better tell the story of a people, its relationship to heritage and culture, its relationship to time, also, engine or brake, vector of promises or of mourning. A true praise of slowness – a posture necessary for the discovery of oneself and others – as well as for the culture of hope, Bitumen and wind reminds us that “the most beautiful gifts are not those that we buy, but those that have to do with time. The time we give, the time we take.”