Back in the winter of 1999, just a few months before I started working for
Stereophile, I took a month-long train trip. One of my first stops was in Montreal. I could not have spent more than three or four days there, but they were a very fulfilling and memorable three or four days.
I walk to the top of Parc du Mont-Royal. I fall in love one million times. That sort of thing.
I meet kind and beautiful people (Jane, Steven, Leo, Sophie, Masa, Anne, Greg, Maggie). We exchange addresses and phone numbers, and, though I haven't spoken to them in years, I think of them often.
I'm staying at the Auberge Jeunesse on Rue Mackay, just off of the Boulevard Rene-Levesque. (It's coming back to me as I write these words.) My last memory of the time and the place: I'm wandering back to the hostel. It must be three in the morning, and I am practically blinded by drunkenness and other things. I don't know how many hours were spent at the bar (Hell's Kitchen, ironically) with Anne and Greg, drinking and doing other things. Anne, by the way, is beautiful and sweet. She draws a map for me, complete with shortcuts and points of interest ("Here is the Insectarium, and here is the Olympic Stadium…."). And, long after the bar is closed and doors are locked, she continues to serve me beers in frosty, barrel-shaped mugs. I think I love her. I have no idea what Greg looks like or what his relationship is to Anne, but he is kind and generous. I like him. I'm trying to remember their faces as I wander down some dark avenue, streetlights blurring into stars, and I begin to cry. I'm never going to find my way back to the hostel. I'm blind and I'm sick and I'm alone, and I'm too far from home.
I am thanking God, very seriously. It is a miracle: I'm stumbling into the hostel. I might have fallen at the front desk. I remember sliding the key card through the slot, and that's it. I wake up at 4pm the next afternoon, and it's just about time to catch the train out of Montreal.
I haven't been back since, but I love the city.
Montreal is
two spiral staircases
one is red, one is green
going up up up
in different directions.
It'll all come rushing back to me, I'm sure, when John Atkinson and I arrive tomorrow night for
Salon Son & Image. I'm also sure that I won't be getting drunk and doing other things. We'll be blogging our bums off. Please tune in for all the action.
