An Dà Shealladh/Second Sight
In the second of our occasional series of fund raising events for Bella at the Glad Café in Glasgow, we invite you to join us for a celebration of the onset of winter and the imminence of Oidhche Shamhna/ Hallowe’en.
We’ll be showing the acclaimed short film An Dà Shealladh/Second Sight, and there will be songs from Kathleen MacInnes and poetry from Em Strang. We’ll also host a traditional ceilidh of stories, songs and music to help mark the thinning of the boundary between worlds.
An Dà Shealladh/Second Sight is a 15 minute poetic documentary, collecting together the stories from a group of community elders from across the country – including Sheila Stewart, Norman MacLean and Margaret Bennett – and placing their testament in counterpoint to a richly evocative Scottish Landscape.
Kathleen MacInnes is one of our finest Gaelic singers. Her most recent album, Cille Bhrìde, won Album of the Year at the Scots Trad Music Awards. She has developed a singing style that suggests ‘an old soul in a young singer’s body’, and her voice has been described as “like peat smoke and good whisky, as robust, sassy and soulful as it is supple and expressive.” The Guardian
“Em Strang’s poems are shamanic, in that they restore to us abandoned mythologies. Nothing is stable in this very real world […] where the animal lies shallowly below the surface of the human, where poems are haunted with what is unsaid. An ‘old throat from the other side’, full of bewilderment, concern, passion and beauty.” Jen Hadfield
This is a fund-raising event for Bella Caledonia. All welcome. Tickets cost £5 and are available here.
[Previous events have sold out. To guarantee entry book now.]
The uncanny may not be judged ideologically sound by orthodox historical materialists (aka dialectical idealists) but it is deeply rooted in both peasant and proletarian experience. Scots writers vary in the degree to which they reference this disturbing sensibility. In the Bruno Benedetti mysteries, set in Glasgow, I include phenomena that we normally see only out of the corner of the eye – and either ignore or speak little of. But on Oidhche Shamhna the topic of An Dà Shealladh deserves more attention. This sounds like a great night!
Well said. In close-knit traditional communities, such as found in the Hebrides, second sight remains a fairly commonplace experience. It has (some would say, “arguably”) important implications for the psychology and philosophy of perception, time, and the further reaches of human relationship. Inspirational of you to have organised this, Dougie. We’re coming.
Great. Look forward to seeing you there. All welcome!