Fugitive Places

Abstract

In François Girard's latest film, The Red Violin, a violin painted red changes hands over three or four centuries. With each change of hands, with each new violinist (man, woman, child) comes a new era, a new story. The material object seems to carry with it the lives of those who have held and played it through time. As a lifeless yet almost eternal vessel, it has the capability to transport with its every passage the lives of those for whom it played a central role, much like the precious little sweater my grandmother gave to me, which belonged to her mother, whose mother in turn embroidered it for her. With that violin and that sweater and all the trinkets, heirlooms, threads, buttons, and ends of bits we hold dear, we are assured that we have in some unknown way been in contact with lives that are meaningful to our past.