Day 4 (or something):
After staying up wayy too late last night in order to update online resources and send a few emails, (with the movie “Wimbledon” on TV for accompaniment; it is a crappy movie but I couldn’t help watching it because I love tennis), I slept for 4 hours and then drove with Dennis to his work. I hung out for a short while and googled the directions to drive into Toronto, then set off after purchasing a ‘Vault’ energy soda and some Doritos (a flavor unknown in my home area, Tandoori—awesome). As I approached the city, I phoned the number for the ‘Marshall McLuhan program’ at the University of Toronto (which I had found online and was interested to check out), to be told that essentially it was useless for me to visit unless I was interested in entering graduate studies for becoming a librarian (umm, nope). This is neither here nor there, but WTF it's called the McLuhan program at the university where McLuhan himself taught--you'd think there'd be some chunky-style communication-intellectual Action for a cat like me...
Thus I found myself entering the lovely city of Toronto with a couple hours to kill before I could meet with my friend. After finding my way to the area I wanted to be in, I drove around in a very frustrating manner for at least 20 minutes, trying to find a parking space, with no luck. Eventually I gave in to paying for parking and pulled into an underground facility which had the cheapest rate of any I had come across (which happened by pure luck, as it was the closest spot at the moment I finally gave up). I wandered around some, changed over all the U.S. bills that I had in my pocket (30 bucks), and went into a nearby bar to have a beer (and eventually lunch). I sat there by myself, a little tired and out of it, and before I knew it 12:45 had become 2:40 and I was off to meet my friend James. We returned to his house where I took a 3 hour nap. Following this we hopped in James’ car for a guided tour of Toronto, which was very awesome and taught me a lot about the city. For example, there are a lot of ‘ethnic neighborhoods’ (in the vein of Little Italy or Chinatown), and they are each really interesting. We passed through Korean, Greek, Portugese, Vietnamese, Indian (as in India), Italian, and Chinese neighborhoods and streets, to name a few. We went through the CBD and James described for me the major attractions including a new 'times squre'-like area with large television screens throughout. The entire city was covered, from the north where James lives down to the shore of Lake Ontario. After that we stopped to pick up James' bandmate (and another friend of mine from when I attended school in Ontario six years ago), Joe. Together the three of us went to check out a bar where some individuals from James' hometown(s) of Kitchener-Waterloo were performing (that is, we were in Toronto but they are from K-W, aka ‘K-Dub’). The bar was a chill place, though the drinks were a bit expensive (6.25 canadian for a beer?!) and we hung out and talked about important stuff like music, Anna-Nicole Smith, hockey, and what the clip was that kept playing on CNN (I still haven’t figured it out, it was someone flipping out on a reporter at their front door or something like that). After a while there, we rolled back to drop off Joe and stopped on the way for pizza slices. Upon returning to James' subsequently, we hung out for a while and played some of our tracks for each other.
Day 5 (i think):
Saturday I had a slow start, then in the afternoon I drove into the downtown area to meet up with a guy named Ryan from an art collective called Methinks. Talking with him was very inspiring, to know that there are artists out there doing awesome things on a community level. After I told him a bit about my work, he suggested that I meet up with the Methinks “NYC Roadtrip project” when they are in the city, as I live only a few hours away anyway and there would be lots of opportunity to talk in more depth and find collaborators at this event. It sounds like a really cool thing, so I’m trying to make sure I can attend. I’m hoping to utilize the opportunity to be introduced to this so-called ‘art scene’, and to discover and decide both the extent and direction of my energies within this scene (in other words, whether and how I fit in to it). Overall, Ryan was a cool cat and talking with him definitely made me feel like my research efforts (and my cold-contacting of his and one other collective) had been fully worthwhile.
Saturday night I rode to Kitchener-Waterloo Ontario with my friends from Canary Mine. The night was awesome, in fact there is so much to describe I’m going to post a separate poetical thingy on my thoughts about it and leave it at that.
Day 6 (final day):
After breakfast and another awesome guided tour of Kitchener-Waterloo, I returned to Toronto with James and his roommate Dinesh. The whole drive we were bumping hip-hop (the new Sean Price and a classic, Biggie’s ‘Ready to Die’), so that was awesome of course. My last night in Toronto was spent hanging out with Joe from Canary Mine, who was showing me some techniques in Ableton Live. He created a really nice instrumental track (playing all the instruments himself except drums, which he’d programmed), supplemented with a few vocal and horn samples that we copied from my laptop and mapped onto his M-Audio Trigger Finger. The track was bangin’ and I came up with an idea for vocals, but of course we didn’t have time to finish anything that evening.
Conclusion
On the whole, my time in Hamilton and Toronto was awesome. As cliché as this sounds, it was awesome to see old friends and make some new ones. It gave me the chance to get some perspective on my situation, and infused me with a new rush of creative energy. I felt the pressure of having very little money, and spent a bit more than I would have liked to, but had a great time and didn’t bankrupt myself, so it all worked out. Toronto is definitely high on my ‘Top (x) Cities to Move To’ list, and I’d really like to visit with some of my friends from home, who I think would really enjoy and benefit from a little Canadian air. Big ups to my musical homies Canary Mine and Crayzdom, and thanks especially to Dennis, James, and Joe for their hospitality and friendship. Ontario, I’ll be seeing you again soon…
No comments:
Post a Comment