Okay, well...
On Friday evening, I stopped by a Dollar store on avenue du Parc - one of those places with a heavy fluorescent buzz and off-brand toys that seem funny until you realize that some poor kid with a single mother is wondering how he'll be able to pass off his underwater warriors from the Operation: Calypso line* ($1.25, includes action figurine and three bendable attack fish companions) as part of the GI: Joe universe. My mission was to find a mask, or some items with which to construct a mask for a party happening later.
And...
After poking around, I realized that masquerade parties only appeal to two constituencies: girls and drag queens (good thing for masquerades that the first constituency makes up 50% of the population). A guy would only actively participate in one to placate/impress a girl he's got his eye on. Maybe it's a whiff of Robespierrean French Revolutionary abhorrence at the mores and modes of the Ancien Regime that turns us off. Do you know any men who liked Sofia Coppola's Mario Antoinette, for example? Panned by critics, but adored by more than a number of women I can think of.
But...
Given that my current ladyfriend and Valentine wasn't even going to be at the party, it seemed all sorts of stupid to strap a piece of cardboard with cat whiskers around my face; to wear while making chit-chat with a production assistant wearing a beaked mask like the Knife, circa Silent Shout.
I haven't learned much in my six years as an Anglophone in Montreal (certainly not French!), but I have learned to mostly make nice. I think it was this spirit of going along with a culture not my own that made it seem plausible to me that I'd be peacock-strutting around a bar with a bunch of other fellow revelers in a goofy mask. Francophones recognize that Anglophones have some tired and embarrassing idee fixes, hang-ups and sacred cows that it's best not to harp on (middle names, getting married before procreating, monogamy, selling home-made jewelry on Etsy), just as Anglophones realize that, for the sake of cultural peace, it's best not to make fun of gymnasts in leotards and face-paint dancing around a giant egg to New Age music**. They're reasonably accommodating, and we're assimilating. Or at least keeping our mouth shut. But sometimes, before you're even aware, the spirit of assimilation has come over you, and you're engaged in some pseudo-minstrel show. Speaking of which, I think the Olympics have to be the longest running and most expensive minstrel show in history.***
So...
I ended up at Sparrow, talking about adult things like having children and watching a girl named after a Verdi opera carve a dancefloor of her own out of the middle of the room, soundtrack provided by former campus radio aficionado and current nice-guy Mitz Takahashi.
* I don't think that these toys had anything to do with the 1969 British invasion of the Anguillans in the Caribbean, but the thought that they could is amusing...
** To say little of the fact that most of our linguistic continental brethren will happily shell out hundreds of dollars to watch that spectacle when it shows up in Las Vegas.
*** I've had a real Saul to Paul on the road to Damascus moment after watching this video. The Separatists were right. Get me out of this stupid country.
I started writing this lengthy piece in mid-December about melancholy and dance music and the minor 7th, starting with Arthur Russell and working my way up to the Russell-esque stylings of Kelley Polar... I've tried to return to it a couple of times in the past couple of months, but I've always been defeated by it. Maybe if I'd spent more of my weekend mornings in the mid-90s coming down from designer chemicals, listening to The Orb's Pink Fluffy Clouds I'd be able to power through. All this to say that I've posted about it now, so I'll feel obligated to finish it in the next couple of days and post it.
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