Keeping the Feast:

The Unity of Faith & Life

by R. J. Snell

My friend Jeremiah sent me a link to the music video for the song “Dégénération,” by the French-Canadian band Mes Aïeux. In the video, an elderly Québécois farmer shovels dirt from a pile into a wheelbarrow before trudging deliberately down the furrows of a field to meet a slightly younger woman who scoops some into a bucket, spilling most. Hurrying down the row, she is met by a frantic young woman scrambling to fill her tiny rucksack before bolting onward, sometimes falling or dropping the bag, dumping the entire contents into the hands of a waiting, kneeling boy. While he receives only a tiny fraction of the soil from the barrow, and that only a pittance from the surplus from which the farmer draws, he discovers in the soil a picture of that same farmer, his ancestor. The boy then plants the picture back into the soil from which a small plant sprouts as the camera pulls back.

The sense of decline or degeneration down the generations is palpable, and the lyrics batter the claim repeatedly, with each stanza articulating a move from the great-great-great grandfather or mother down to the current generation. The first, maintaining the theme of soil, explains how the land was first cleared, then plowed, then turned a profit, then sold by “your father” who became an employee of the state (fonctionnaire), but you, “my boy,” have no idea what to do, although some strange desire for land is present from time to time.

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