Today I went to a book launch party with my friend, Christophe. This was our second time going to a lancement together and it’s becoming a fun ritual. I was just getting home from work when I received a text from Christophe. “Hey buddy, there’s another book launch tonight. Wanna go?” He asks. “Yup! Just got home, I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.” By the time we arrived, the author had already started his reading so we stepped through the entrance as quietly as possible and stayed in the back. The room was so packed that the only thing I could find to sit on was a foot stool while poor Christophe had to stay standing. The author was reading in french and my french comprehension, like many things in my life, is still a work in progress so it took a fair bit active concentration to follow along. And while I tried my best to focus on understanding what was being said, I was also fighting for my life on a stool that was slowly killing me. I could have very easily stood up and ended my suffering but the thought giving up something in such high demand hurt me more than the chair did. I was trying my best to listen to the author and while I couldn’t understand everything he was saying, I could tell he was speaking with the voice of a poet. The work he was launching wasn’t poetry but his poetry background could be heard in the vividness of each scene he was describing and even though the images he formed in my mind had some gaps, the feelings he sought to transmit were certainly being felt. After the reading, the audience went back to mingling with one another and Christophe and I started to chat. We talked about the book briefly but I didn’t have much to say about it as I didn’t exactly understand what was being read. I was also struggling to think about anything other than my two ass cheeks that had gone completely numb so I was pleased when he changed the topic. “Do you think I look like Bon Iver?” Christophe asked. “I really don’t think I do but someone told me I did and I wasn’t sure if I should take it as a compliment or an insult.” This seemed to really bother him but I didn’t understand why. I couldn’t remember what Bon Iver looked like so we searched for a picture of him online. “I don’t see it at all.” I told him as I held a photo of the Indie-Folk singer up next to his face. Other than the fact that they’re both white and have beards, I couldn’t see the resemblance. Now I better understood the frustration and my response seemed to give Christophe some relief. Someone that did resemble a celebrity to me was one of the employees facilitating the event. She looked a bit like a young Nicole Kidman, her narrow pointed features and the way she put up her hair were reminiscent of the academy award winning actress early in her career. Christophe was already familiar with Ms. Kidman so we chose her to be our social grounding point for this event, someone to fall back on should we embarrass ourselves in front of someone new. Christophe started speaking to Ms. Kidman in french so I tried to follow suit but since my french is still a work in progress nothing about this woman stuck in my mind beyond the fact that she looked like Nicole Kidman. Eventually I was able to fall back onto the conversation when she asked me what I do for work. “Ingénieur logiciel.” I said, which is the truth in some regard, but I always try to follow up the question of “What do you do?” with how I’d like to be a writer. I would have shown her my essays, something I’m always keen to do, but completely forgot to do so as I was too focused on trying to conjugate the verb ecrire. After this embarrassing moment in front of our social grounding point she revealed that she’s also been writing, poetry in fact. I asked her if we could read some of them and she pointed me to her Substack. The poems were lovely but it was also nice to be able to understand Ms. Kidman a little better. It’s much easier for me to understand written as opposed to spoken french so it was great to feel like I was connecting to this person a bit better, even if it wasn’t in person. But I think that’s what still bothers me about living in Montreal. There’s a lot this city tries to tell me but so much of it falls silent because my ears aren’t ready to hear what she has to say. The reverse is true as well. There’s so little she knows about me because my voice doesn’t have the strength to carry it all, at least not yet. I’m sure Ms. Kidman would have seen someone very different has I had the capacity to be myself en francais but all I could offer was a silent smile. Maybe that’s really how Christophe felt about being compared to Bon Iver, the frustration of feeling like you have no control over how people perceive you. Of course I can’t see into his mind but it’s certainly how I’m feeling now. Before we left the bookstore, Christophe asked me if I’ve written any poetry and I told him I hadn’t. Poetry has always felt a bit out of reach to me like I needed a mastery my own feelings before I could begin to understand someone else’s but reading Ms. Kidman’s work made poetry feel a bit more approachable. Maybe that was because I was able to put a face to the words or maybe it’s because I’m at a point in my life where how I feel has finally started to make a modicum of sense, largely thanks to all the time I’ve spent writing about it. It was exactly a year ago that I met someone who gave me so much to feel that I had no choice but to put it into writing, between the pages of several notebooks and hidden away in the microscopic bits of my aging laptop. It’s the reason for this essay and every other one before it for the last year. So now after tens of thousands of words on how I feel, I think I have a strong enough command over my words in English to house those feelings in something a little less literal.
There’s a darkness in the wind,
rushing to meet the silence.
Like blood in a river, it finds clarity
and consumes it.
And as the days meet the year
so does the breeze catch his tail.
Now there’s a howl to flee
‘till I find the one
who’s been waiting for me.