It's Friday, normally my second favorite day of the week in Montreal but this is Ladysmith, May 2011 and for the next month every single day is the weekend.
The grand virtanen and I are at In the Beantime, a local cafe on High Street that reminds me of the ones I discovered at 16 in Oregon when cafes started being cool.
In Eugene, Oregon it was the now defunct Cafe Paradiso, located in the pedestrian mall "downtown" at Olive and Broadway, where I tasted not only my first vanilla latte but also had my first sip of an open mic.
I played guitar throughout University, freshman year spending hours downstairs with my Spiller Hall dorm mate, Brian, who knew how to perfectly play every note to every single song of my absolute favorite band at the time. He played guitar with an elegance and beauty that I'd never seen in a man before. That was a discovery for me. I saw gentleness there. A quality that I've (subconsciously) long sought after. And in that gentleness there was an ease in connecting musically, and emotionally, with someone. (In retrospect, there was something about Brian, though we were never romantic, that painted a picture in my heart of the kind of man I might want in my life. The feelings that the music mutually built up in us, is something I've longed to share over and over with people).
I had that buzzy feeling for music repeatedly (if you could only see how much air guitar was played to Boston's first album) until I graduated with a B.A. in theater arts.
Having zero ambition for anything other than creating and performing, (combined with the harsh realization that i am a terrible, terrible actor), i decided to start writing songs.
At 22, death hit home, and life hit me straight in the gut and I felt anxious and deflated. Carrying a mixture of loss and longing, I went to my first open mic. I was sweating and my heart was pounding and I needed Xanax to curb the panic attacks that had grown quite fond of me that year. I felt more vulnerable in a few months time, than I have in all the others years combined. Something outside was leading me, and music felt like one of the few things I still trusted in. (That and Smartfood popcorn, anyway..). I felt that if anything could pull me out of these messy feelings, it could be music. I got onstage one quiet tuesday night at Cafe Paradiso, my friend Allison by my side, played shyly, self-consciously, but also, I think, honestly.
Since then, songs continue, somehow, to take me where I need to go. To connect musically and spiritually, with wonderful, gentle people.
Maybe I'm becoming a little more gentle too....
No comments:
Post a Comment