Rain in Northland: Colin McCahon, Ralph Hotere and the painted word

How best to think of the words that dominate Colin McCahon’s 'A Letter to Hebrews (Rain in Northland)?' A voice over. The end credits of a movie the length of an artist’s life. A data-feed from a soul in a state of terminal unrest. Or, if we further adjust the angle: an airy forest of sound, the kind of ‘lyrical foliage’ Bill Manhire wrote of. A concrete poem. Ghost writing. Winged words. Bird song. Air mail. Sky writing. Given the second part of the work’s title, maybe the words are also drops of rain fallen on parched Northland soil - a benison or anointing - or the aural environment of Hone Tuwhare’s poetry, with its ‘incantatory chant of surf breaking, and the Mass and the mountain talking’.