Caught in the Grip of the City
“You’re all alone when you’re a writer. Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath. Even a ride on the subway will do that.”
– Saul Bellow
I moved to Toronto 10 years ago next month. When I first arrived I enjoyed a few weeks of not working, not studying, settling in. One night S and I slept in her tent on the back deck of my second-floor apartment, much to the goodnatured scorn of Rocker Dude, the guy who lived upstairs. I hung out with S and my new roommate, E, borrowed many books from the library branch around the corner (I especially dug André Alexis’s Despair, I remember), walked a lot. Sometimes I walked for hours. The Fugees’ cover of “Killing Me Softly” was everywhere – coming out of cars, out of storefronts, out of the windows of houses – and that was cool with me because I loved it. That spring I had bought the Fugees record or maybe gotten it to review, lost it, and bought it again because I liked it so much.
I find something reassuring about being around so many strangers, people who expect so little from you and know so little about you even as all of us strive & scrabble along. What that says about me I don’t know, and I suppose some people find the little disconnections of city life creepy or depressing.
These days I don’t walk much at all, for a few reasons, and Lord knows the urban drudgery of Toronto gets to me sometimes. But I still get some kind of – charge? nourishment? – from being out in the city, one of countless swimming organisms. Staring at people & wondering what their story is, looking away before they notice. Overhearing their lives in shards.
Today at College & Yonge I was waiting for the streetcar, the music in my earphones (Culture Club, “The Church of the Poison Mind,” which I can’t get enough of lately even though you could call it a straight Smokey Robinson rip & I couldn’t disagree) blending with the warm, calm, patient, insistent voice of the guy behind me on the sidewalk who was engrossed in some quietly urgent conversation, when the song ended and as the streetcar pulled up I caught a bit of what the guy was saying and glanced back and realized he was speaking warmly & patiently to nobody and to everybody: “...as a warrior. They actually did believe in cannibalism. In fact, the first McDonalds....”
Like me, Republic of Safety live in and love Toronto. Unlike me, they appear to be energetic & activist by temperament rather than reserved & watchful. I’ve somehow never managed to catch one of their shows, but that must change, I feel, since I dig what I’ve heard of them. (I say somehow like I’m out in the clubs every night, but fact is my bandseeing days have been on the wane for a while.)
Thanks to Sandy for hipping me to the Deltron 3030 record a few years back. This track is a mad stew & that chorus line stabs at me. It screams sample, but if it is, I’ve never been able to place it.
– Saul Bellow
I moved to Toronto 10 years ago next month. When I first arrived I enjoyed a few weeks of not working, not studying, settling in. One night S and I slept in her tent on the back deck of my second-floor apartment, much to the goodnatured scorn of Rocker Dude, the guy who lived upstairs. I hung out with S and my new roommate, E, borrowed many books from the library branch around the corner (I especially dug André Alexis’s Despair, I remember), walked a lot. Sometimes I walked for hours. The Fugees’ cover of “Killing Me Softly” was everywhere – coming out of cars, out of storefronts, out of the windows of houses – and that was cool with me because I loved it. That spring I had bought the Fugees record or maybe gotten it to review, lost it, and bought it again because I liked it so much.
I find something reassuring about being around so many strangers, people who expect so little from you and know so little about you even as all of us strive & scrabble along. What that says about me I don’t know, and I suppose some people find the little disconnections of city life creepy or depressing.
These days I don’t walk much at all, for a few reasons, and Lord knows the urban drudgery of Toronto gets to me sometimes. But I still get some kind of – charge? nourishment? – from being out in the city, one of countless swimming organisms. Staring at people & wondering what their story is, looking away before they notice. Overhearing their lives in shards.
Today at College & Yonge I was waiting for the streetcar, the music in my earphones (Culture Club, “The Church of the Poison Mind,” which I can’t get enough of lately even though you could call it a straight Smokey Robinson rip & I couldn’t disagree) blending with the warm, calm, patient, insistent voice of the guy behind me on the sidewalk who was engrossed in some quietly urgent conversation, when the song ended and as the streetcar pulled up I caught a bit of what the guy was saying and glanced back and realized he was speaking warmly & patiently to nobody and to everybody: “...as a warrior. They actually did believe in cannibalism. In fact, the first McDonalds....”
Like me, Republic of Safety live in and love Toronto. Unlike me, they appear to be energetic & activist by temperament rather than reserved & watchful. I’ve somehow never managed to catch one of their shows, but that must change, I feel, since I dig what I’ve heard of them. (I say somehow like I’m out in the clubs every night, but fact is my bandseeing days have been on the wane for a while.)
Thanks to Sandy for hipping me to the Deltron 3030 record a few years back. This track is a mad stew & that chorus line stabs at me. It screams sample, but if it is, I’ve never been able to place it.
posted by DW | 20.6.06
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