Writer and committed citizen, the author has taught literature at college, is president of the governing board of an elementary school and member of the editorial board of Quebec letters. She co-directed and co-wrote the collective Shock treatments and tarts. Critical assessment of the management of COVID-19 in Quebec (All in all).
The gaze is frank, like the guy. “I found this fun that you want to talk to me about these little texts, ”says Vincent Vallières, whose Facebook page has been overflowing with textual jewels for a year and a half; as many odes to the territory as to the humans who inhabit it.
Appetizer. “The wind has momentum. He pushes the sky to make a carousel with the clouds. Immense shapes come together there and then disperse one after the other just above the horizon line. I saw a heart, a tree, a house, three cars go by. In a few seconds, the blue of hope gives way to the gray of doubt that smears everything. Skyscrapers do not live here, prefer the south and large centers. Grande Prairie, Alberta, Impressionist Polaroid version at La Vallières.
It was on a solo tour, in the summer of 2021, that he began to write more diligently about the cities where he stopped. “There was me and my sound engineer… who was traveling on a motorbike! That makes it, miles of asphalt to devour alone, letting our heads go in all directions; that in fact, landscapes in front of which to stop just because. “It’s the type of tour that leads to a kind of interiority. I let the film playing in my head scroll without resisting. Then, he crystallizes it in the form of text once at the hotel and offers it to us. Present.
Between everywhere and nowhere
“I got caught up in the game. Now that my children have grown up, I arrive in a city a few hours earlier and leave a little later. » Without the bubble band, which protects as much as it keeps people at a distance, the encounter with the city and its world is more complete. You have to give yourself space so that the moment to capture arises.
This is what the singer-songwriter hunts, very peacefully, at a run: moments – beyond and below landscapes and humans. The workers leaving the factory under a hazy sky, in a disorganized ballet, the eyes of a rebellious young man shining, determined, the couple who come to present their grown-up child to him, and whose first date took place at one of his shows, still ti-ass.
We talk about putting ourselves at the height of the people we meet, never above; humble encounters, with the territory and the humans, on whom he never tries to impose his views. A healthy and reciprocal alterity. Rare. Even when anger growls. “I’ve always assumed that the tune of Desjardins spoke of life before, that the safety of the citizens of Rouyn had been acquired for a long time. I have a sudden thought for my grandparents who went on strike in Asbestos in 1949. [Plus de] 70 years later, it’s crazy that Quebec workers are still being faced with impossible choices. »
We get along. He understands that some residents of the place do not want to see him; he respects their wish not to change their vision, because it is what holds their world in place. Humble, they said. In the case of the Horne Foundry, he directs his “hard-line” attitude towards our PM, “a good father. Surreal to hear him sweep the problem into the citizens’ court”.
All beauty is not lost
We talk about baroque city centers, without an urban plan, then about those who, concerned about heritage, have done things better. ” Perhaps this is too much or tacky, sometimes, but there’s a vision, a concern to preserve something” — which doesn’t mean that we freeze time. He salutes entrepreneurs who do not make a clean sweep of the past, such as Moulin 7, a microbrewery in Val-des-Sources which exhibits artifacts from the old Jeffrey mine and which has highlighted the old site by creating the Slackfest, where a two kilometer cable stretched above the pit. On August 12, the native of Sherbrooke also purchased The habit of ruinsby Marie-Hélène Voyer (Lux), a favorite essay that I encourage her to read soon.
From the North Shore to the Yukon, Vincent Vallières is blown away by vastness. “What’s striking about Grande Prairie is the space. The width of the streets. Serge Bouchard said that in Témiscamingue, certain rivers were not yet named. Too many. We do not always know the reality of the other. Some of these towns, where space is not a constraint, were built so that mining trucks could pass through them. They were built to be demolished one day. Like Gagnon, where my parents once lived, razed then buried. Like Fermont, who is still standing.
“The communities that have formed keep cities alive. Rouyn has become an incredible cultural hub. I point out to him that, if certain communities honor him too little, his texts do a damn fine duty of memory.
This is characteristic of artists, who often act as conduits, and not only of their own creations, also of those of others, heritage, elements of nature, flashes that they collect and bring together, with sensitivity, in boxes of all kinds. During Myriam Gendron’s show at La Tulipe on December 8, Glenn Jones said that guitarist John Jackson exhibited under glass everything he found on the floor: pre-war five cents like broken bottles , chicken bone like shell.
I thought of autobiography of the mind, by Élise Turcotte (La Mèche), then, again, to texts by Vallières. And Myriam Gendron summed it all up, with humor and heart, saying that she was now doing everything she did “to contribute to the beautification of the world”.
To all these pickers and pickers of fulgurances, thank you.
Eventually, we’ll get there. Happy Holidays.