Blog

by Tim Crouch, Soundstreams

But the ultimate gift of gardening is the way it concentrates and consecrates time, grounding the gardener in a present both conscious of and undistracted by the ongoing cycles of seasonality stretching across all past and all future. – Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

Of course, Derek Jarman is more than a gardener. But gardens are on our mind, as we prepare for the world premiere of Garden of Vanished Pleasures this September.

Since learning about this show from our Artistic Director Lawrence Cherney, we as a staff have been on a journey getting to know who Derek Jarman is. I was able to find a copy of Modern Nature from the Toronto Public Library, Jarman’s beautiful record of leaving London to live in a former Victorian fisherman’s hut nestled between an old lighthouse and a nuclear power plant in a newly designated conservation area on the shingled shores of Kent.

We’d love for you to get to know Jarman as well, and hope the following links will be a great start on your journey of discovery:

• Derek Jarman on Gardening as Creative Redemption, Consecration of Time, and Training Ground for Presence – Brain Pickings

• Reading Derek Jarman is strangely consoling – The New Yorker

• How to Feel More Alive Each Day and Night: A Cosmic Nightwalk with Derek Jarman – Brain Pickings

And here are some videos for your watching pleasure. First, a documentary on Jarman, ‘Life As Art’

https://youtu.be/nAvyj-_dZS0

And a trailer for one of his final works, fittingly called ‘The Garden’

Garden of Vanished Pleasures runs September 23-October 10, 2021.