Category: Uncategorized

Way back in February I was sitting in an East Village bar with a fiction writer and an ex-Marine. Now he’s a history major. What did you do for New Year’s Eve, they asked. Went to a party some cabaret friends, I said. You have cabaret friends? Yeah. They perform at our friendly neighbourhood cabaret. We have cabaret friends too, don’t we honey? The ex-Marine is a regular comedian. Yes, that’s right, of course we do, the fiction writer picked up the thread. You know, those cabaret friends we hired to be our cabaret friends so we could say we have cabaret friends. Sure, we hang out at the cabaret all the time.

Our friendly neighbourhood cabaret is, of course, Kiss My Cabaret, hosted by Danette MacKay. And it’s on tonight!

On the bill, the crème de la crème of Montréal performers: Alexis O’Hara, Skidmore, Désirée D’Amour, Madame et Matante, Church of Harvey Christ – and very special SURPRISE out-of-town guests! By request, Gigi et Pipi will close the show with their stirring Battle Hymn – lollipops all around!

Speaking of Gigi et Pipi, the other night we dined with half the afore mentioned cabaret crème de la crème and then swooped downtown descending en masse upon the École Bourget for the opening of La Biennale de Montréal. We went to see Gigi and Pipi, and wound up running into everyone else we’d ever known in our lives along the way. We wove through the crowd on the lawn, squeezed up the front steps, and were pleased for once to have to pass the absurd bullet-proof security cubicle. Inside, Carol Pope slouched – all skinny, shiny-baddged and sinister in navy. Performing the squinty eyes of suspicious security guard boredom, she stared all the art hounds down.

Working our way through a social obstacle course of countless quick waves, big hugs, awkward exits, emotional reunions, forgotten names and about-time introductions we found and lost each other repeatedly in the hot and sweaty hallways, eventually all making our way to the hidden wonders of the easy-to-miss but not-to-be-missed tiny closed-door closet space allotted to, taken over and utterly transformed by our 2byoys, Stephen Lawson and Aaron Pollard, Gigi L’Amour and Pipi Douleur. We waited – the most fun I’ve ever had on a line up – with old and new and long-lost out-of-town friends, co-workers, colleagues and random art-world hangers-on and heavy-hitters. Of the later, I’d be hard pressed to say which was which. We passed the time drinking beer, taking photos of our selves and text messaging each other like a bunch of twelve year olds. And just when we were on the verge of becoming unruly, Pipi Douleur ushered into Phobophilia.

It’s a closet, a cloakroom. It’s a theatre, it’s a play, a spectacle, and a stage; it’s a dressing room, a powder room, a vanity, a secret. It’s a cramped space behind-the-scenes to be alone in when you’ve got your guard-down after-the-show. Gigi et Pipi invite us into the part of the performance we’re not supposed to see. We enter, all drab in our sweat and street clothes, and Gigi L’Amour starts in on us. With chatter and wink, flatter and suggestion, Gigi starts convincing us that we’re somewhere else, a place where disbelief is suspended, where the mundane is upended, where her eyelashes are real. Only then are we invited to climb up into the theatre in the rear. We perch on steep step seats – a jumbled audience of heads, legs and breath. We are a miniature audience; we are gigantic. And in an instant we are lost. Wandered off from the cramped attic theatre crawl space, into the fantasies of film-noir. We are specks on snowy landscapes; we chase our own ghosts, we leap and plié into the spotlight – alone at last – on our very own silver-screen-in-a-suitcase stage.

La Biennale de Montréal: http://www.ciac.ca/

Kiss My Cabaret: http://kissmycabaret.com
La Sala Rossa, 4848 boul. St. Laurent, tonight at 8PM
. . . . .

The Greyhound from Montreal to Boston passes through Montpellier. On the way down to MiT5 I was tempted to get off the bus there. I’d ditch the conference; hitch an after-work ride with a friend up to the plains. And just hide out. That’s how tired I was.

Who needs conferences? Well, I do. I work at home. And online. A virtual vacuum. Have to check in once and a while, meet actual people. I’m still in touch with at least four people met at MiT4. Conferences remind me of why I’m not an academic. And that it’s okay that I’m not. Because I know where they hang out.

And besides, I’d worked so hard on my paper. Oh pride. I quite liked Entre Ville: this city between us, and was looking forward to presenting it.

The knowledge that the Greyhound from Boston to Montreal also passes through Montpellier is what got me through hectic April. A carrot / stick type situation. What a cruel month. Early on I caught the worst-head-cold-ever and never quite shook it. And then there was all that snow. I know snow is to be expected in Montreal in mid-April, but this storm was demoralizing all the same.

There were endless other April deadlines to meet even before Entre Ville: this city between us, took over all waking sleeping and dog walking hours. Somewhere in there, there was also a roadtrip, someone’s birthday, an OBORO vernnisage and two days of Concordia MFA reviews. Not necessarily in that order. Through all of that April, though MiT5’s jam packed schedule, through an aggressive mist, and the siren-nights of Roxbury, through yet another interminable stopover in White River Junction, not to mention the generalized aggravation of coach travel itself, the bus-stops-in-Montpellier carrot dangled before me.

Montpellier’s dilapidated bus depot was a sight for sore eyes. As was my friend, waiting there in the drizzle to whisk me out of town along route 2 up into the Vermont Piedmont, up into the mud. Still in the throes of spring frost heaves, the deeply rutted and brown-puddled dirt roads slowed us to a crawl. Sap lines ran along side, pacing us.

The first time I came up here was around this time of year, I said. Maybe a little earlier. It was raining, the sap lines were running and the road looked like this. This is staying inside weather, I said as we walked from the car to the house. Wet, wind, cold and mud. I went to bed early, slept like a whole pile of logs, woke up bright and late with sun streaming in my window, no sign of the head cold I’d been fighting all through MiT5, all through April. Not a cloud in the sky and clear skies ever since.

I’m an easily preoccupied person. I forget names, faces and dates, and generally fail to know what’s going on around town. I work on disparate projects concurrently and generally have lots on my mind. Sometimes I have empty on my mind. The high plain, the close sky, days on end to listen to the wind, to watch the grass green, to squint into distance, a pale view of the hills. The opposite of Entre Ville.

. . . . .

It took all day to leave Boston. And that was with help. That was with Lana driving me around and around. I had to buy shoes, see. Couldn’t leave town with out them. Same shoes as she had. Had to have them the minute I saw them. They were the first things I noticed the minute I walked in the door. Clogs. Never thought I’d wind up wanting a pair of clogs bad enough to spend two days shopping for them, two days not including the advanced research we did online.

Pretty much the minute MiT5 was over, Lana picked me up in her gold pick up truck and we set out in search of clogs. The first store had lots of selection. I fell in love with a fuchsia pair, but didn’t try them because Lana insisted we had to go to this other store first, to be fitted: They’re the clog experts over there. Back to the gold pick up. Selection in the second store was limited. No fuchsia, for example. But now we knew what size I was. 39 narrow. All they had in that was Cordoba, which is clog lingo for dark brown. I couldn’t commit. That’s fine, Lana said. Let’s go back to the first place.

Along the way back it started to rain and I started rethinking the Cordoba. By the time we got there, and discovered there was no fuchsia in 39 narrow, plain old black seemed abhorrent to me. Cordoba or bust. But it was too late. Parking is easier on Sunday. But stores close early.

We’ll go tomorrow, on the way to the bus, Lana said. Sorry about all this, I said. You buy shoes exactly the way I buy shoes, Lana said. So I can’t be mad. If you had fallen in love with the first pair you tried on I probably would have talked you out of them.

We set out again the next day. Back to the clog experts, back to the Cordoba. A different person was working. We said: We’d like to see the Cordoba in 39 narrow. He said: You’re in luck, we have a pair. We didn’t say: We know. I tried them on again, just for kicks, and right away I said: I’ll take them! He said: Wow! You’re quick! We laughed. He had no idea.

On the way to South Station Lana put in a call to First Place: Do you have the Marguerite in a 39 in red? You do? Oh great! Can you put them on hold for me?
. . . . .

March came in lamb-coloured at least, on curly white snow feet.

And went out like a liar, savannah bright sun looking lion roaring heat.

Tripping cold feet, tricking me into scarf and sweater instead of jacket leather.

April’s first folly finds me in bed with a hot head cold.

Mais, en français, avril premiers with a fish not a fool.

I guess the poisson’s on me.
. . . . .

Saturday night we set out. Even though we were tired and some of us were cranky and we didn’t really know what to expect. Up a down-way street. Heads lowered, we leaned into the nickel and dime sized March wet snow. Down under the CN overpass, a right onto Bellechasse, and then east, east, east.

The best place for a Nova Scotia kitchen party in Montreal is the Petit Patrie. A dog, a trumpet and a piano. Two fiddles, a mandolin and a drum. Three accordions. Four small children. As far as I could tell… they were all moving so quickly.

I’m a big fan of dogs, fiddles and accordions. Less so of small children. But these were free-range kids, with little or no interest in adults and their goings on. They had their own party plans. They climbed the couch mountain. Waved their painted paper batons. Spun like tops, crouched like dogs, played dead on the floor. For twenty seconds or more. Then sprang up quite alive again to hunt down two-part piano harmonies and/or wheat-free cookies.

We random grown-ups were left to our own devices. We sat on the floor. Drank French wine from Beartrix Potter mugs. Read a How To Train Your Dog book. It’s too late, S. said. Our dog’s nine. Tunes unfolded. Keys were negotiated. Fifths were found.

Two smallish girls, aged five or six or so, discovered the hostess’s necklace collection hanging from a pegboard. I was enlisted. Because I was sitting right there. But soon turned double agent. For the hostess, supervising. For the girls, reaching, untangling and admiring. It’s hard to say what language we were speaking. French, English, Polish, Hand Gestures. A translator was brought in to invite me run up and down the hall with them. Someone, somebody’s mother perhaps, explained: She’s a big person, she might not want too. So they brought me the last wheat-free cookie instead. And later one of them hid behind me in a game of hide-and-seek. Surely, in little girl land, this is a huge complement. A great honour.

. . . . .

Spring is in the air:
A dubious proclamation to make mid-March in Montreal.
One must interpret the signs creatively.

I lost my winter gloves.
That may mean another cold snap’s on the way.
And I lost my travel umbrella
So maybe there’s a voyage in my near future.
The jury’s still out on that one…
Fall grant results are in and spring deadlines loom.
Daylight savings time came into effect early this year.
But I keep sleeping though that extra hour.
Tax time is also in effect; my office floor is a sea of receipts.
The federal budget came down stinking of electioneering.
The provincial election campaign stinks of provincialism.
Is this a three-way race or a three-legged race?
Canvassers ring our door-to-door bell in record numbers.
Mild weather helping to get the vote out.

The annual Saint Patrick’s Day snow has all but melted.
There’s not much green, no buds, no leaves, no sun, no flowers.
But at long last an English bookstore has sprouted up in Mile End.
Perhaps that’s not a sign of spring, but surely it’s a sign of something.
Welcome S. W. Welch. By the time the fresh paint smell fades
the neighbourhood will be in full bloom.
. . . . .

I wrote in a short story once about a character who: The more he travels the more home makes no sense to him. That was fiction. I’ve been away a lot lately. I’m back now. And home is making good sense to me. Here, I can cook whatever I want for dinner. And I have so many more clothes and coats and shoes to choose from than I do on the road. This makes the weather so much easier to deal with. In my hometown, I run into people I know and we chat right there on the street – what a good system. Yesterday I ran into an old friend in the dépanneur. Home is where other people know what a dépanneur is. It was mild out, for Montréal in March, so I walked down to The Word. Home is The Word. In Montréal I walk everywhere, because I can. Makes sense. Walking the dog, I ran into another old friend on Fairmount Street. Home is walking the dog. I’m so happy to be back in town I don’t even mind that spring is taking so long. No buds on the trees yet. But the traffic lights are almost ripe. Excessive nonsensical signage always reminds me of Montréal, so somehow even this sight made sense to me yesterday:

Perhaps because, as Montreal poet Anne Carson writes in The Life of Towns: “Towns are the illusion that things hang together somehow…”

She goes on to say: “There are regular towns and irregular towns, there are wounded towns and sober towns and fiercely remembered towns, there are useless but passionate towns that battle on, there are towns where the snow slides from the roofs of the houses with such force that victims are killed, but there are no empty towns (just empty scholars) and there is no regret. Now move along.”

Montreal may be all or none of these towns, I don’t know. I’m just happy to be here.
. . . . .