Lost and Found
Friday, August 19th, 2022Hi Alexander
I came across your film as accidentally as you came across my Shakespeare at Swanton website.
As part of general downsizing efforts, a couple of weeks ago my wife, Jan, sent a beautiful Afghan dress she acquired in 1972, when we homesteaded in the woods of British Columbia, to a friend born and still living there, who took a photo of it, worn by her daughter riding a ropeswing on the property their family leases from us.
Seeing it reminded me of another woodland use of the dress in 1999 at Swanton Ranch. So I googled the old website to download a picture of it worn by a student playing Hermia in scenes from A Midsummernight’s Dream that the class filmed there.
I was amazed to find the link to your “Shakespeare at Swanton” video and astounded to watch it.
I’m still pulsing with the world wide web of connections it activated. Parallel surprises of happening upon a relic in the course of searching for lost treasure—lost through fire and aging and through the digital loss of “bitrot” and software updates.
And parallel grief for the losses of Time: 1960’s back-to-the-land hippies turning 80, ’90’s English majors now in their ’40’s, a 2021 forestry student graduated and out in the world.
And the transformation of it all, through memory and art, via the alchemy of Shakespeare.
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March 2024 Postscript: A further variation on the theme of Alex’ video and this post. Shortly after this entry was written, Cal Poly University erased the whole website which included “Shakespeare at Swanton” from its server. Almost two years later, the site was resurrected from its 404 grave on a different server with a new URL–smarxpoly.net–which allowed for the link here to be reactivated. Thank you, Ty Griffin, for all the work you did to make this happen.
