Head brought back to a time of Burberry coats and bus trips to Montreal with mum. Travel bends its way closer. Days and days of planning ahead. Bring on the rolled t-shirts and packing tape.

The red flower district

The glow orgasm of red crustacean light. Dial the number: 514 525 9111. Cop flash blue parked cars, and hookers. It says SEX in faux diamonds, dripped across her neck. A dangling dash
of fake Chanel, and tits for sale. One man, one woman. That's the way God said it would be. On Ontario St., Montreal. June 4, 2010.

On art and escaping

Art is around us all the time. On postal boxes and parked cars, in back alleys and bathroom stalls. The pictures, paintings, sketches, tags, and stickers are good and bad, brilliant and uninspired. Art is all colours, in all places, in and out of galleries, at all times.

All last week in Montreal I kept nose to the pavement and eyes to alleys, snapped every stencil, mural, and painted portrait I saw. I wandered on to streets I had not heard of, peered in between fence posts to see backyard BBQers putting ketchup on their art.

On the bus back I flipped through people, places, and things. Say to self: Art is between each step, but is only visible when prints lead away.

Mutek day III: Females and foreigners

The adults who used to go to raves leave feces in co-ed bathroom stalls. They have Ph.Ds, take ecstasy, listen to noise in theatres; have cruised village sex after. The adults who used to go to raves go to Mutek now.

It’s day three of Mutek and we’re drinking in a hostel. A foreigner at the kitchen table tells me he’s just spent six months on exchange in Toronto, is now traveling around. He’s planning to head down to New York and Boston, would like to go as far south as New Orleans. I advise him to go to Miami over Angeles, tell him its less trashy, but not that I’ve never been.

The Australians come in and pound on the bathroom door though the shower is audibly running. I shake my head and stare into my beer. I watch the girls get ready, wish I’d saved a clean outfit in my suitcase for a second Friday night.

When we realize we’ve missed Brixton-based dub act Actress’ set we scramble for the exit. By the time we make it to Club Soda, where the third installment of Nocturne, titled ‘Shedding the Past, Dubbing the Future,’ is, the sound system lingers with pre-recorded interludes.

We walk next door to the Society for Arts and Technology, a new cultural venue built to look like an old warehouse space. It’s down into a dingy basement for a stamp on the hand and back up a staircase towards the open space. We gather along the long pane of glass separating the south wall from the street and wait for Ikonika, one of the only prominent females currently spinning dub step.

The beats are good and we dance up near the front. Sarah Abdel-Hamid, a.k.a. Ikonika, makes her North American debut affront beating red pixels and blasts of silver flashing lights. We bob our heads and watch the DJ work.

Spin and spin round the record, so many songs to share the beat with. We lean our heads back into Club Soda, but see the night is finished. The sidewalks of Saint Laurent are filled as we make our way back to the hostel for a night-cap.

On the walk home the cops bust a pregnant prostitute, smoking in heels and a thronged onesie. I push my hands into pockets, whisper to myself: Only in Montreal. Only in Montreal.

Mutek day I: gravy

A gray haired man in an LCD Soundsystem tour t-shirt cut into a crop top takes out the trash, jangles his keys, unleashes his bike, and walks it away. A cat and I share a yawn. The phone does not ring.

There is a bus parked outside Monument-National: Mutek has arrived. It’s Wednesday June 2 and we’re spending our first night of the digital creativity and electronic music fest at A/Visions, where art collides with music.

Tonight’s event is called Pandora’s Music Box, a nod to the Nicolas Bernier and Martin Messier performance piece that kicks off the show. The offering is inspired by the intonarumori, an analogue music box invented back in 1913 by a futurist named Luigi Russolo who I’m told was the world’s first “noise composer.”

They twist and bang and pull the levers on the almost-ancient electronic instruments, set clocks on top and let them tick. On screen behind them footage of the intonarumori’s interior spins into swirls of shadows. The lights go dark and the audience erupts.

New tables are rolled on stage and filled with techy gear. The stage is set for Matmos, the Baltimore-based boyfriends known outside the electronic community as “those guys who re-mixed Bjork.”

They begin the build up with sounds from an endless string of instruments: keyboards, laptops, turntables, triangles, and green dolphin squeeze-toys. The dots floating on-screen above them vibrate with the beat.

Schmidt leans in, mike in-line with skinny tie. He lets out a breathy groan and pulls out a blue string of silver bells, gives them a whirl. Then he shakes a shiny piece of metal, bouncing the spotlight onto audience faces and giving his boy a beat to back.

They tell us album collaborators So Percussion stayed in New York, all fancy and snobby, and launch into more lyric less beats Schmidt swears are about Montana. But after another track Schmidt concedes with a grin, “That one wasn’t about anything, really.”

We duck out before the last duo, Montreal’s The User, take the stage. It’s a long walk through the Plateau before we arrive at a backyard full of friendly faces. We spill our days, drink our beers; head out to dance.

The first club is empty so we migrate to another spot. We shake our hips till the early morning and cap the night with a cliché, the Montreal poutine post-party spot Banquise.

Upon waking an accomplice asks me how the night was. I tell him it was gravy.

Mini museums everywhere

My friends tell me the graf is better in Mount Royal.
(and I think that I believe them.)

Beach blues

After days and days of sunshine we wake to sky grey sky. The first fall of overcast comes on the day we set aside for the beach. We shake our heads, slip sweaters inside our bags; refuse to change our plans.

Point the car away from the city and drive until we hit the fields. A tunnel of trees leads to a parking lot, all resilient and full. The locals are out in full force: bad tattoos and bud light lime.

It’s warm enough to read in bathing suits, still too cold to swim. James Joyce and Coco Puffs, we turn pages and explore the shore. Snap pictures of rows of kayaks, airborne kites, and other people’s kids.

After watching a ketchup and mustard fight we decide we feel like fries. It’s off to the pier to a patio biker joint. Follow with a full supper in the suburbs and metro back downtown.