Kitchener artist takes a grizzly stance on urban space
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W
e’re literally rolling through the heritage of Waterloo Region,”says Sean Geobey, a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo, looking through the vintage, wooden window frame and across the fields of Waterloo Region. The sun is setting, pushing streams of orange and red light through makeshift, stained-glass windows. The nostalgia of every passenger who once rode the ancient locomotive is alive in this train car. Of course, all of this is broken by a man dawning a horse head, running down the junk-mail filled aisle, followed by a
rockabilly, trumpet-toting band of merriment and 250 of Waterloo Region’s best friends – singing, laughing, swaying, and imbibing. This is Steel Rails Sessions 2014. I’m acting as a roving reporter, trying to document the duality of this locomotive and I’m flushing with a little panic about how I’ll record the thoughts of 250 passengers when the entire train boasts the blurts of a tuba, and every patron is crowding the aisle that is no wider than a newspaper. The train has been rolling – St. Jacobs bound – for about fifteen minutes, Geobey and I are still sitting in a quadrant of seats with two other passengers who have managed to navigate the billowing cars well enough to return with a few cans of beer. “The line was getting crazy, so we grabbed a few,” one of them says, explaining the tall cans cradled in her arms.
I worry about the sound quality of my tape, whether or not the laughing of our temporary neighbors or the fizz spurting from the shaken beverages will interrupt my interview with Geobey. Pushing the shotgun microphone closer to his face, I ask him about his past experiences on the train.
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