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In Fragments is an exploration of Life Art
Created by Jonathan Jennings Harris
    Ritual 15
    A ritual to banish the spectre of my grandfather’s alcoholism
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    View film (13:42)
    “The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there’s no ground.”
    — Attributed to Chögyam Trungpa

    It is hard to identify where the suffering first enters a family — especially because suffering so easily compounds, finding new expressions in each generation, until somebody finally says: stop.

    My grandfather on a hunting trip in Alaska, with bear and bald eagle — 1940s

    I never met my grandfather, Harry Havemeyer Webb, who died of complications from alcoholism in 1975, a few years before I was born. I know from my mom that he was a sweet and kind-hearted man, but didn’t have the tools to heal himself from his addiction to alcohol, which came into his life in his thirties, many years after his tenure as a service pilot in World War II had concluded.

    My grandfather during World War II

    By the late 1950s, his marriage to my grandmother, Kate de Forest Jennings, was failing — plagued by infidelity, a lack of intimacy, and a worsening disassociation from one another exacerbated by mutual drinking.

    • My grandparents and their kids, late 1950s — with my mother in the middle

    By the time my grandmother decided to leave him for a swordfishing captain (named George Seemann), his daughters were away at school, and he found himself living alone in the house at High Acres Farm, grappling with isolation and loneliness, and turning more and more to booze as a means of escape.

    • My grandfather’s collection of miniature liquors

    According to a letter I received from his nephew, my godfather, Sammy B. Webb, Harry suffered from bad PTSD from his time in the War — and would often wake up screaming at night from vivid nightmares of wounded troops crying out in pain from the back of his airplane.

    • Family letter
    • Painful memories

    According to Sammy’s letter, Harry would put on his old Air Force uniform at three o’clock in the morning, make himself a cocktail, and walk around the house, alone.

    I felt haunted by this image, and by the legacy of his unprocessed trauma, which I knew affected all of us in many untraceable ways. I knew that his suffering was still stalking the house, and that it somehow needed to be cleared.

    In this ritual, I recreate Harry’s experience, serving as his proxy. I borrow his old Air Force uniform from the collection of the Shelburne Museum, which was founded by his mother, Electra Havemeyer Webb.

    • My grandfather’s Air Force uniform from World War II

    I take his place in his bed — the same place where my mother spent her final moments, resting on his monogrammed “HHW” pillow.

    • My grandfather’s pillow case

    I sit up suddenly, screaming, and stumble across the hallway into his dressing room, where I step into his old uniform, which fits me more or less perfectly. I go into his old bathroom, look in his mirror, put on his tie, and clip it into place. I fasten his monogrammed belt buckle to tighten his pants.

    My grandfather’s mirror

    I go downstairs, moving through the empty house, finding my way to the bar closet that continued to display his collection of alcohol, even forty years after his death.

    • War Secret
    • Liquor closet
    • “Old Grand-Dad“

    I take a swig from his bottle of “Old Grand-Dad“ whiskey and step into the room where Process of Elimination was performed — still decorated with the matching heads of bucks he shot and killed while hunting in the Adirondacks.

    • Time traveler

    I sit down between his hunting trophies, and thumb through a stack of his photographic memories — parents, childhood, sports, lovers, wedding, war, children, divorce, solitude — making his memories my own.

    Absorbing the past

    These memories are intercut with flashes of scenes from the house — fox head trophies, owl statues, a wasp walking across his silver monogrammed lighter, my childhood collection of G.I. Joe figures, their plastic weapons.

    Flashbacks

    Then the flashes shift to the outside lawn, where his old red parachute is spread across the dying grass, littered with alcohol bottles and “action figures” tumbling through the ground, as I writhe around in this historical detritus.

    Free fall
    • My grandfather’s parachute

    I gather up the parachute and proceed to the old red “Trophy Room” building at the edge of the woods, which is hung with animal heads killed by Harry and his parents during family hunting trips to Alaska in the 1930s and 40s.

    The “Trophy Room”; Harry’s parents with bear skulls; Brown bear; Moose; Bobcat

    The room is lit by the same twin sets of halogen work lights from Use a Hammer and Hall of Mirrors — illuminating a brown bear, a moose, a caribou, two rams, several deer, a bobcat, a porcupine, and an owl. The animals watch as I arrange the alcohol bottles in orderly lines on the floor.

    • At attention

    I stand one of my childhood G.I. Joe figures at attention in front of each bottle — linking my experience of war with his.

    Action figures
    • My grandfather’s collection of miniature liquors
    • My childhood collection of G.I. Joe figures
    • Eagle spirit

    I make a concoction of all 100 alcohols in an empty whiskey bottle.

    • Making a solution

    I take a swig of this potent elixir.

    Ingesting the solution

    I pour the liquor solution into his monogrammed silver bowl set atop a butane camping stove, which I ignite with his monogrammed lighter.

    • Liquor mix
    • Silver bowl

    I use red parachute cord to hang the empty bottle upside down above the boiling solution, to catch the rising vapor.

    • Parachute cord
    • Butane stove

    I wait patiently as the evaporated spirits enter the bottle.

    • Collecting the spirits — with the birch canoe from See Glass hanging from the ceiling

    Once the liquid has been fully evaporated, I take down the bottle with the captured spirits, and I walk outside to meet the dawn.

    • Reveille

    I place the bottle on a wooden altar, set at the edge of the High Acres Farm field. I pick up Harry’s hunting rifle, put a bullet in the chamber, walk back twenty paces, cock the gun, and take aim.

    In sight

    With a single shot, the bullet shatters the bottle — “freeing the spirits” into the landscape, where they can be subsumed and finally healed.

    • Set free

    I return to the High Acres Farm house to find a small plate of Chrysanthemum flowers (also known as “Mums”) waiting for me on the slate patio.

    • “Mums”

    I take them to the edge of the field and toss them to the spirits of the land.

    Free spirit

    The G.I. Joe figures have now exchanged their plastic guns for flowers — passing tiny floral bouquets from soldier to soldier.

    • New gifts

    The morning I completed this ritual, demolition began on the old Main House at High Acres Farm, Harry’s home for many years.

    Images from the 2016–17 renovation

    Over the next eight months, the house was completely transformed through a total “gut renovation” — producing the warm and welcoming space it is today.

    New space
    Performed in 2016
    View film (13:42)
    Download text (PDF)
    • Give Up the Ghost
      On inheritance
      Published May 2, 2022

    Three triangles converge to form the shape of an eagle taking flight.

    • Bear Skull
      In 1 ritual
    • Birch Canoe
      In 2 rituals
    • Brass Bullet
      In 1 ritual
    • Camera Kit 1
      In 21 rituals
    • Ceramic Owl
      In 2 rituals
    • Deer Trophy
      In 1 ritual
    • Family Letter
      In 1 ritual
    • Fire
      In 9 rituals
    • Fox Trophy
      In 2 rituals
    • Glass Bottle
      In 2 rituals
    • Glass Sheets
      In 22 rituals
    • Glass Stand
      In 22 rituals
    • Gold Buckle
      In 1 ritual
    • Gold Clip
      In 1 ritual
    • Halogen Light
      In 3 rituals
    • Hunting Bag
      In 1 ritual
    • Iron Plaque
      In 1 ritual
    • Liquor Bottle
      In 1 ritual
    • Liquor Bottles
      In 1 ritual
    • Liquor Solution
      In 1 ritual
    • Pillow Case
      In 1 ritual
    • Red Parachute
      In 1 ritual
    • Red Rope
      In 1 ritual
    • Red Stove
      In 2 rituals
    • Silver Bowl
      In 1 ritual
    • Silver Cup
      In 1 ritual
    • Silver Lighter
      In 2 rituals
    • Silver Pin
      In 1 ritual
    • Slate
      In 2 rituals
    • Toy Soldier
      In 1 ritual
    • Toy Soldiers
      In 1 ritual
    • War Uniform
      In 1 ritual
    • White Paint Pen
      In 22 rituals
    • Wood Snake
      In 1 ritual
    • Wood Table
      In 3 rituals
    • Wood Totem
      In 1 ritual
    • Electra Havemeyer Webb
      In 3 rituals
    • Harry Havemeyer Webb
      In 2 rituals
    • Jonathan Jennings Harris
      In 23 rituals
    • High Acres Farm
      In 24 rituals
    • The Fields
      In 7 rituals
    • The Main House
      In 6 rituals
    • The Trophy Room
      In 2 rituals
    • Give Up the Ghost
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      Download all stills from “Give Up the Ghost” (35 MB)

    • Created by
      Jonathan Jennings Harris
    • Edited with
      Scott Thrift
    • Original music by
      Julio Monterrey
    • Filmed at
      High Acres Farm
      • Additional photography
        • Ethan Bond Watts
      • Costume
        • Harry Havemeyer Webb
        • World War II Air Force uniform
      • Courtesy of
        • Shelburne Museum
      • Opening letter
        • Samuel B. Webb
    Next
    • Essay 16
      Paper Weight
      A ritual to clear the burden of my mother’s fearful dreams
    In Fragments is an exploration of Life Art.
    • FAQ
    • Genealogy
    • Images
    • Music
    • Credits
    • Contact
    In Fragments is an exploration of Life Art
    Created by Jonathan Jennings Harris