Manifestation of pots and pans, volume xvi. Were there feet on the
pavement tonight? I, down in the old port to play my sitar, saw
nothing. Coming home, I heard the distant whistling and shouting of a
crowd echoing back from someplace. I heard car horns floating down onto
the pavement from a far off street.
The alleyways and side streets where the marches are not to be found are eerily quiet. The noise of protest has inscribed itself on the city--or at least perhaps on my perception of the city--and when I look at the vacant, dark streets, it is as though I have rolled over to look at the empty impression in the bed where a now departed lover once lay.
Maybe you could call this a sonic patina; a sense that there was once a great deal of noise in a now quiet place. The ground still shakes a little under the feet of people who are sensitive enough to detect it. I wonder if this state of jubilant discontent will last long enough to rattle out some of the graft and avarice that has calcified on our province? I'm generally a pessimist and I'm not hopeful.
*
pots and pans 15. As usual there is a police car with its lights blaring, speeding down my street to keep pace with a march. It's amazing to me that this has been going on for more than two weeks now. Because I'm always up here in the Petite Patrie, I never get a sense of how much of this is going on in the city. Our marches usually lose steam once they get to St. Joseph street and all the pot bonkers slip away into the side streets and vanish.
Apparently, though, according to some video footage I saw last night, the downtown core is a mess. They have cancelled the first day of the Grand Prix; the open house, whatever it was. I can't say my cheeks are stained with tears.
*
Pots and pans 14: Hello. We gathered, as usual, at Beaubien and St. Denis. The crowds have been a bit smaller of late, but just as boisterous as ever. We went around Villeray for a while, joining with other groups and inventing different beats. It's always exciting when we decide to pass under the railway bridge and into the Plateau. The echo effect under the bridge is nearly deafening...one marcher compared us to the town of Asterix; coming out as a hoard to meet the Romans, every night, without fail.
What the hell was the name of Asterix's town? I'm trying to remember without looking it up, because the internet is actually a memory killer. It makes our brains lazy.
Not only this, but I don't know anyone's phone number anymore. I just speed dial them on my cell. I still remember the numbers of the friends who lived on my street as a child, but as for my contemporary friends...no idea.
*
Pots and pans XIII: Clanging in the Rain.
*
Pots and pans day 11: When Odysseus was trapped on the island of Kalypso, he used to stand on the beach every day and look out longingly at the wine blue waters of the sea--wishing again to be on the deck of a ship. In the same way, I, trapped here by my thursday promises of music lessons, listen with longing to the endless barrage of clanking pots that is passing my window, and the wailing of sirens, and all of that merriment and I feel like I'm missing out. It sounds like a giant march.
*
The alleyways and side streets where the marches are not to be found are eerily quiet. The noise of protest has inscribed itself on the city--or at least perhaps on my perception of the city--and when I look at the vacant, dark streets, it is as though I have rolled over to look at the empty impression in the bed where a now departed lover once lay.
Maybe you could call this a sonic patina; a sense that there was once a great deal of noise in a now quiet place. The ground still shakes a little under the feet of people who are sensitive enough to detect it. I wonder if this state of jubilant discontent will last long enough to rattle out some of the graft and avarice that has calcified on our province? I'm generally a pessimist and I'm not hopeful.
*
pots and pans 15. As usual there is a police car with its lights blaring, speeding down my street to keep pace with a march. It's amazing to me that this has been going on for more than two weeks now. Because I'm always up here in the Petite Patrie, I never get a sense of how much of this is going on in the city. Our marches usually lose steam once they get to St. Joseph street and all the pot bonkers slip away into the side streets and vanish.
Apparently, though, according to some video footage I saw last night, the downtown core is a mess. They have cancelled the first day of the Grand Prix; the open house, whatever it was. I can't say my cheeks are stained with tears.
*
Pots and pans 14: Hello. We gathered, as usual, at Beaubien and St. Denis. The crowds have been a bit smaller of late, but just as boisterous as ever. We went around Villeray for a while, joining with other groups and inventing different beats. It's always exciting when we decide to pass under the railway bridge and into the Plateau. The echo effect under the bridge is nearly deafening...one marcher compared us to the town of Asterix; coming out as a hoard to meet the Romans, every night, without fail.
What the hell was the name of Asterix's town? I'm trying to remember without looking it up, because the internet is actually a memory killer. It makes our brains lazy.
Not only this, but I don't know anyone's phone number anymore. I just speed dial them on my cell. I still remember the numbers of the friends who lived on my street as a child, but as for my contemporary friends...no idea.
*
Pots and pans XIII: Clanging in the Rain.
*
Pots and pans day 11: When Odysseus was trapped on the island of Kalypso, he used to stand on the beach every day and look out longingly at the wine blue waters of the sea--wishing again to be on the deck of a ship. In the same way, I, trapped here by my thursday promises of music lessons, listen with longing to the endless barrage of clanking pots that is passing my window, and the wailing of sirens, and all of that merriment and I feel like I'm missing out. It sounds like a giant march.
*
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