swear I way more than half-believe it
when I say
somewhere love and justice shine
cynicism falls asleep
tyranny talks to itself
sappy slogans all come true
we forget to feed our fear

The Weakerthans, Confessions of a Futon Revolutionist

Last night we went to Nathan Phillips Square to attend the Winter City festival. I love Toronto's sneaky paganism. It was wonderful to go to city hall and celebrate Imbolc in a manner which far outstrips my own little candles at home. I am having some technical issues with uploading my crappy pictures from my phone (oh, if only I'd known I would have brought a camera...) but when I can, I'll add them and you too can see. It was beautiful. There were giant sculptural spheres set up bestudded with pots of open flame. There were flame pots set at regular intervals all along the balustrade. There was even one sculpture which moved, giant flame-laden spokes which raised and lowered, surrounded by a circle of little fires in, you guessed it, more pots. At the apex of this movement the sculpture would spew some misty liquid--water? fuel?--and all the fires would ripple, causing mingled delight and alarm in the onlookers. There were skaters in the rink, and musicians, and tents set up as warming stations.

We went and ate dinner and came back to watch the Weakerthans play an hour-long set.

I've pretty much given up live music, because a thing I do not love about Toronto is that so many of our venues suck. Too big, floors too hard, bad sound. The nail in the coffin was going to see Le Tigre, nearly passing out, and getting variously ignored and/or stepped on by the other members of the audience, an experience which left me thinking "I love the band, but this scene is so dead." And those are the feminists. Yeah, count me out.

In all my cranking, though, I'd forgotten how much I love watching a band. Part way into their first song, I started to cry, big stupid grin on my face, tears streaming. This often happens with musicians I really love. The couple standing in front of us knew all the lyrics, danced the whole time. They helped to restore my faith in the music-loving public. They were also ferociously cute (spook pronounced them "adorable").

I had very odd dreams--I blame the fuel for that and for the fact that all of last night's clothes smell like lighter fluid. In one of them, I was one of the Spice Girls, and we were playing a benefit show. Everyone else was onstage already, and I realized I didn't know the words to the song we were performing. There was a computer by the stage door, and when I frantically googled the lyrics, the verse I came up with had distressing colonial overtones*.

"I have to sing about Indians?" I squeaked. Meredith, who was suddenly there, looked at me in disdain.
"No. Nobody sings that verse."



*For this bit, I blame Cassie Edwards.