The Scream wasn’t quite the event I’d remembered. I walked down to the subway and the bank in the 100 degree heat, and I made the mistake of getting on the transit lines right at the beginning of rush hour. By the time I’d reached the air conditioned sanctum of the mall, my comfortable walking shoes had already begun to nibble away at the tender folds above my heels. I ducked into the first pharmacy I could find, right around the corner from the subway exit on Quebec street to find nice fabric bandages which fit perfectly over the threatened spots. I felt much better equipped for the park after that.
I love High Park. I was actually born just across the street from the park, in what was then the St. Joseph’s hospital, just next to the park’s bottomless Grenadier pond. It’s full of ravines and deep forests, oak trees that flame in the fall and paths that snake through the grounds to house bagpipers, the occasional actor working on a soliloquy, and treasures like rare wildflowers in the early spring. I loved the spooky legend of the Grenadiers when I was a child, I loved the shivers the story of those lost battalions, men whose bodies were never found in the glacial pond, would send up and down my spine. Especially when I found myself in the park in the middle of the night, surrounded by the still darkness and the dark whistling breezes as they sailed through the oaks around me.
On this trip, though, walking through the park at that sun baked time felt like walking through an overlit furnace room while being encased in plastic. I just kept feeling warmer and warmer, and the saturated air intensified the effect for me. I arrived a bit too early for the festival, and the stage area was closed off–but it was only when I got there that I remembered attendance always requires a chair or blanket and some form of pillow, plus some icy drinks and an umbrella. I wished I’d remembered! I would have been overjoyed if it started to rain (and there was a bit of a threat of this happening, and I remember it always seems to, each year) but it just never did.
The last time I went was actually 10 years ago, when I had just returned home from living on the East Coast for a while. That show felt comforting in a way nothing else could–it felt reassuring to attend something that would never take place where I’d been living, involving something that would never be valued much there. It was part of “coming home”, or at least I gathered some hope for that possibility just by attending. I even caught a glimpse of a writing instructor I knew there, perched against her bicycle in the darkening ampitheatre. A few years after seeing her there, I heard she died of something she’d been terribly afraid of: cancer.
The show was only half-filled with audience on this night, and most of the people who were there were somehow involved in publishing the readers being featured. That’s not necessarily a criticism, because there is an industry set up around literary talent (and I’m reassured, believe me, that evidence of its existence can still be found). But there were so many publishers and authors and editors present and giggling about poking each other on Facebook that I felt like a tidy minority of one. I hate “social network” sites. A lot. All they seem to accomplish is to limit conversation in social groups to Facebook alone. “Poke, poke, poke…!” they continued. I kicked myself again for not having remembered to bring wine, and some glasses. Surely that would have put a stop to all the social network blather, and just get people to talk to each other. Talk to me, more importantly.
I was alone, and, in their midst, a little bit “in the way”. I moved around to find a seat because the space was completely open to me, but the outdoorsy set up of the ampitheatre was a real physical test. I was trying my best to perch on about 3 inches of concrete terracing, and failing miserably. Finally I moved to a spot under a tree branch, which wasn’t so much curb as stone. Slightly more comfy. It was right in the middle of the social hubbub around the publishers. Oh well. “Facebook facebook facebook”, they blathered; and then, “Ouzunian interviewed me and it was humiliating” plus other gossipy conclusions only the literate (or, rather, “the Toronto Literati”) would give a damn about. I just wanted the readings to start–I was looking forward to the writers just reading their work in their summer clothes, surrounded by people who just want to sit in the heat and be stirred.
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