Geoff Stahl
Weary I am of the goodbyes and the dull pangs of melancholy I’ve been dealing with for the past few days. Fifteen years, off an on, since 1987, finally (?) coming to a close (??). I’ll be finding my nook in the experiences afforded by this place for years and years to come, so Montreal will never really disappear for me. It’s like a second skin now, not so easy to slough off. Montreal remains the place I found out what it means to be a city-dweller. Here I learned about things a navel-gazing, suburban adolescence never promised. I opened up and out here, taking in the anonymity, community, loneliness and intimacy. Montreal really served as the city I came into being, yes, in that existential sense. So for that I’m grateful.
Twenty years has seen many people come and go, and I’m sorry I couldn’t see more of those still here before I leave. But I’m happy to let that very social fact, its very matter-of-fact transience, retain its romantic appeal for me, in part because it formed the governing rhetoric of the city, the instability which people both loved and loathed and which motivated me and my research. It was the social logic that got me to where I am today. For that too I’m grateful.
In the past, I was the type of person who always loves to leave a place. I could never pack soon enough. That’s been tempered here, of course. I’ve really been savouring Montreal’s simpler pleasures, like doing nothing on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon but strolling up and down side streets. As I partially left two years ago, my separation anxiety this time around has been moderate. Now, with the big move really over, the records, posters, the knick knacks packed and tucked away in another city, the exhaustion has perhaps trumped any sense of sadness. This, like so much of the past couple of months, will no doubt hit me sometime in future. Or maybe not. Perhaps all this displacement has mobilized various defense mechanisms which have left me rootless and affective-less. I’m just gliding along, and things feel abstract, inaccessible, impenetrable, and most of all, somewhat distant. (And as a corollary, I’ve been rendering everything rather two-dimensional with my constant photographing, endlessly documenting and cataloguing Montreal landmarks and icons.)
But maybe I’m just trying to write my way past the lump in my throat.
At this point in the Great Ratio of Life, so far the endings have outnumbered the beginnings. Not for long I hope.
When I first left Montreal more than ten years ago, I was on my way to Australia and New Zealand. While there, I discovered much music and culture, so little of which had come this way (with some exceptions, the case seemed different in Europe from what I can tell). One of the greatest pleasures I had was hearing Peter Milton Walsh, of The Apartments, live in a small little in-store on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, Melbourne. He’s retired from music now, but he’s left us with at least one classic (later covered admirably by This Mortal Coil). Mr. Somewhere pretty much sums up my emotional and physical state right now:
Day comes up sicker than a cat
Something’s wrong that is that
Mr. Somewhere missing somewhere never did figure just how much
A boat from the river takes you out
‘cross the other side of town, to get out, to get out
You take the tide, any tide, any tide
Like there isn’t gonna be any tide
Mr. Somewhere missing somewhere never did figure just how much
Missing somewhere never did figure just how much
A word like tomorrow wears things out
It’s hard enough to get what’s yours for now
And the hardest words are spoken softly
Softly look, no hands upon no no heart
Mr. Somewhere missing somewhere never did figure just how much
Missing somewhere never did figure just how much
Now the milkman beats you to the door
That was once a home, home no more
And Mr. Somewhere, missing somewhere couldn’t get the calendar to stop
Missing somewhere, never did figure just how much
Missing somewhere, never will admit just how much
Make of that what you will.
Iso G.