Krysta Belcourt
Shawn Hitchins, The Light Streamed Beneath It.
Toronto: ECW Press, 2021. $23.95.
With a writing style that is both unabashedly honest and lyrically beautiful, Shawn Hitchins lays bare what it means to love, grieve, and rediscover life in his memoir The Light Streamed Beneath It.
Hitchins has a way of making even the most ordinary, mundane things sound magical. From online dating to lap dances, Hitchins’ words transform these experiences into something other-worldly, finding spirituality in the relationships formed with others:
Then Heart’s “Alone” began to play on the speaker system — the cosmos had offered my all-time favorite band. With Francois’s body moving in the dim light and Ann Wilson’s fierce siren’s call in the ether, a Montreal lap dance was elevated to religious experience. My breath dropped, my blood pumped through my body, I looked up at Francois backlit with a crown of light.
This way of seeing the beauty of the world weaves itself through every sentence that Hitchins constructs, underscoring the admiration for life and all things beautiful present throughout. As the first portion of the memoir leads us through love and joy, the latter portion leads us through heartbreak, death, and grief. Yet it is not just the phrases of lyrically beautiful and moving language that moves the reader to tears—it can often come from the most casual statements, laced so elegantly with realism that anyone who has been through such an experience (as most of us have) is instantly transported to their past. One such moment comes from a phone call:
It was a rainy Monday just before five o’clock. The nightmare began for me early Sunday morning when I woke up to a phone screen littered with missed calls and unread messages. I drew my worst forgone conclusion, and a return call prompted in me only short shock statements.
Hitchins is aware of the human tendency to try and skip over the pain of death, to bypass it in an attempt to save ourselves from the hurt it causes. Yet he does not allow us this comfort—instead he holds our hand as he walks through his stages of grief, guiding us through it all and sharing those moments of vulnerability. We sit alongside him as he witnesses his departing ex-husband being bathed in light; we watch as he sorts through Matt’s possessions, the airplane ticket to France and the economy-sized bag of Unico pastina; we dance along as he heals in the wake of death.
Just as in life, readers must face the moments of darkness in order to emerge into the light further on. Hitchins ends his recollections on a positive note, embracing the magic of life as he once did before the heartbreak, comforting his readers at the same time with a promise of purity, hope, and life:
Creativity as a pathway to healing means recognizing the unity of life and death. When more room is opened for grief and remembrance, we invite play between natural and supernatural, fact and fiction, myth and science, and intuition and rationality. Through the mysticism of the erotic we invite magic back into our lives and we experience moments of aliveness, an enduring force so true and pure it cuts through the deepest of sorrows.
These moments of aliveness are what drive this memoir forward, propelling readers to continue on, even through the painful moments.
The Light Streamed Beneath It is a fervent and unrestrained memoir that dives deeply into what it means to be alive and the messiness of it all.
KRYSTA BELCOURT
is the Editorial Intern for The Ampersand Review of Writing & Publishing. She currently resides in Muskoka, living the small-town, cottage country life and using all of her free time to read as many books as she can. She is currently working towards her degree in the Honours Bachelor of Creative Writing & Publishing program at Sheridan College in Mississauga.