without you here, there is less to say

(The title of this post is from some Colin Hay lyrics).

I love the occasional metro performer.  The wise ones station themselves at busy stops, at crucial hours.  They often reserve their energies for when the most potential spectators are present, playing only pieces of works and stopping abruptly. Passengers, when stepping off one train to switch lines, are serenaded with amazing guitar work, latin-american pipe flutes or even singers in harmony.  But once the majority of spectators are gone, the musicians take a break.

Not so with the De L’Eglise violinist.  He plays persistently.  I noticed this yesterday as I walked a long way toward the exit and concurrently, the melody.  I was the last passenger to take the escalator up to the platform where he was, and was shocked as he played on and on even with such a trickle of spectators.  He was engrossed in his performance—he donned fuchsia earplugs to drown out the hum, swish and squeaky slowing of the trains, and had his eyes closed, moving in harmony with the violin concerto he played.  Just as he was traversing the most exciting portion of the piece, tones in crescendo and reaching toward the highest note, out of the corner of my right eye, I noticed the blue flash of the next metro train arriving at the platform below.  I felt the warm wind of the train and faintly heard the screech of its brakes, and pondered the coincidence of the highest note and the train’s arrival.  Then I stepped on the next escalator, and left, thankful for the bit of Mozart I’d heard and the passion of the persistent, unchecked performance.

a different approach to the same sacred union

Saturday I was truly honored to attend the wedding of my dearest Department of Italian-grad-student-friend’s sister.  It was held at the Madonna della Difesa church in Little Italy, a church founded-and-attended by immigrants from Molise, a southern province of Italy.  I arrived early, just as the florists were finishing up placing the white star lilies and white bows on the pews.  The church was stunning (as are most Catholic churches), with white marble everywhere, and vivid frescoes on the ceiling.  The Stations of the Cross were covered in gold, and the darkly-hued crucifix was a focal point, towering above everything.  The prayers were led in Italian, and the homily said in English, though with a heavily-Italian-tinged accent.  I was thankful for the priest’s words—encouraging the couple to find their source of love in the only One whose love is eternal, Jesus Christ.  His words were hard, not a typical, polished and lovey-dovey sermon, but they were solid.  He broke up the severity of the message with anecdotes and funny comments.  I found a bit more common ground with that particular Catholic church, with that particular priest, and was thankful to have attended my first Italian Catholic wedding.  The Ave Maria (complete with a stunning soprano performance) and other traditional wedding songs were gorgeous and elaborate.  I was struck by the formality of the event and enjoyed watching the guests arrive and seat themselves, dressed in beautiful attire. 

 

After the mass and greeting my friend, the maid of honor, I walked to the Jean Talon Market, which is the largest farmer’s market in town and was dazzled by the beautiful fresh fruits and vegetables and flowers.  I love the fact that Little Italy and the Market are only a half-hour Metro ride away.  Though I miss the mountains and sunsets of Colorado, I really do love urban life and all the wonderful experiences, sights and sounds of this colorful city.

a delicious night

A delicious night ensued on Canada Day a few weeks ago.  My friends Hilary and Julie (H., not my Colorado Julie) and I feasted on some brown-sugar-soy-sauce-fresh-pineapple-glazed salmon and walked downtown to the Jazz Fest.  The Montreal International Jazz Festival is a twelve-day festival every July with hundreds of performances, dozens of stages, and every possible take on jazz you could imagine.  With my over-polite but also over-impatient lead, we ended up listening to a band made of one percussionist and six or seven horns.  They played some crowd-rousing songs and were highly entertaining to watch as they swayed and danced as they performed.  Then we saw the real crowd gathering at the main stage for Bran Van 3000’s nine-o-clock performance, and I grew crowd-shy.  So Hilary and Julie led.  We were corralled around scaffoldings and through buildings in order to get to a side stage, where the eight-o-clock show was a bluesy-folk artist.  He was hilarious and bilingual and we had a good view.  After his last song, we felt the crowd becoming more and more dense, and knew we needed to get out before we were stuck.  Julie, a brave soul, led us à la opening of Star Wars, upstream through the crowd which was going toward the stage, as we rushed away from it.  We dodged, we turned, and we walked and squeezed around and ducked and took every dang opportunity we could to move.  We must have passed about 600 people.  At one point I though we had gotten through, but we were only about halfway.  We FINALLY surfaced on a side-street and took a minute to recoup and recover normal breathing patterns.  I’m an extrovert, but that kind of crowd could make anyone introverted and claustrophobic.

 

With all that hard work, we got hungry.  So we sought out ice cream and found it at La Cremière, which is a chain ice cream establishment here in Quebec, but it’s soooo good.  I had their swirl soft-serve (which was rich and creamy), with a chocolate enrobage (I love that, instead of ‘dipped’ it was ‘enrobed’ in chocolate).  The enrobage never got super-crispy like Dairy Queen’s.  It also wasn’t waxy.  It dried in a delicately thin shell that was wonderful dark chocolate.  I’m spoiled for anything less now.

 

We took our cones to an instructional tent set up and connected with the Jazz Fest.  It was a “Learn Harmonica in an hour” tutorial led en français by some hilarious guys.  They handed out harmonicas to the participants who were there early enough and went through the steps of how to hold and play the harmonica, and even taught them bluesy rifts.  We unfortunately did not get harmonicas, but we would have promptly ruined their reeds with our sticky and chocolatey mouths. 

 

The instructors finished with a sound I can’t quite put words to—they brought out different keys of harmonicas (including a bass harmonica, which was a foot long and three inches thick), and played them for us.  A particularly creative guy had taken what looked like a drum the size of a folger’s can, and created an electric harmonica with reeds and wires within the structure of the drum.  He could tap on it and play into it with what seemed like endless notes.  These four unassuming music geeks ended up playing the most beautiful, intricately-layered songs with alternating melodies.  They played blues, they played a Celtic song, they played Persian-sounding songs, they played an Electronica-style song, and ended with more Persian music.  It was incredible.  We sat down in the tent with our ice cream and had no expectations for the tutorial.  I just thought “oh, that’s cute, they’re teaching people harmonica (insert judgement about it being a quaint, simple instrument here).” We were all blown away by the complexity of the sound and the innovative universal approach the performers had.  It was truly the best ‘show’ I’ve seen yet at the Jazz Fest, and it wasn’t even publicized as such.  Even the sounds were thick and delicious that night.