Scuffy the Tugboat
the myth and magic of curiosity and discovery
The Merrimack River runs through our town on its final lap out to the Atlantic.
The sea is glorious, all-powerful in its vast majesty and wonder, but there is something about a river. The romance of it moving through, heading to somewhere, risen from distant tendrils of brooks and streams, building, building into something larger than it knew how.
The magic of my iPhone allows me to flow upstream, to follow, follow the path, to find the origin, the omphalos where it all begins. I scroll past Haverhill, Lawrence, Lowell, then turn north through Tyngsboro, into New Hampshire, past Nashua, Manchester, Hookset, Concord. On and on it snakes, where eventually, in Franklin, the Pemigewasset and the Winnipesaukee take over, headed north. I scroll, scroll, following the Pemigewasset as it changes from a wide blue flow into a very thin blue line, eventually finding its mysterious origin just south of Echo Lake and Cannon Mountain in Franconia, NH.
The magic of water flowing, flowing, past fields and forests, through villages, under highways, past city factories, on and on towards a goal, somewhere, anywhere, compelled by gravity’s unseen life force.
‘Scuffy the Tugboat’ tells of the long voyage of a little toy boat which the man in the polkadot tie (the owner of the toy store where Scuffy sat, trapped), drops him into a tiny stream, sending Scuffy, who always knew he was meant for bigger things, off on his life adventure.
Scuffy captured my imagination as a child and never let go.
The Man in the Polkadot Tie showed up at the Eugene O’Neil puppetry conference one year, where I wrote a chorale for said man. Note the polkadot tie puppets. :)
Mr Allen was the white-haired, bent old man who offered to pay me $1 for every dandelion I dug out of his perfect, green lawn and on a different day, drove his Buick through the back of his garage. The garage was quickly repaired, the dandelions were harder work than I imagined and besides, I preferred spending time in the little brook, hidden behind his garage, in the woods in his back yard. A secret place, a solo place, of rocks and eddies, the smell of water, bare-footed, sure-footed, watching leaves or little boats made of aluminum foil gurgle through the watery obstacle course.
That backyard brook and the myth of Scuffy’s humble beginnings and huge aspirations, keep burbling up in my work, flowing towards bigger and better or perhaps more accurately, new and different curiosities.
A few years ago, inspired by the transcendent work of Ekua Holmes at the MFA, I created the story of The Blue Bottle, one of my variations on the ‘Scuffy’ myth. My unfinished symphony tells of Geraldine, who finds a beautiful blue bottle with a note in it, in a stream by her house. She sends it along to a cast of characters spanning time and space (including the wild Irish warrior Grania O’Malley, to Sappho, Frida Kahlo, Margaret Mead, Aretha Franklin, Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart etc. etc.) until it eventually finds its way back to her. We never find out what the message is.
In my latest adventure, Smoke and Mirrors, I reverse the Scuffy journey and tell of a woman with dementia, who walks out her door, retracing the steps of her life.
We are all sailors, floating along on our particular rivulets and torrents of curiosity, loss, discovery, sorrow, exhilaration. Pack a lunch and go!