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: Nervous Nero Home : Evil Twin Theory Home : contact : other writing archives UK payday loans . усыпление животных |
[5/23/01] I'm thinking maybe it's time I talked about the other great impostor I've met. This is a true story. (You'll just have to trust me.) I used to ('93? '94? Somewhere in there) run an open mike at the Café Verite on Bloor Street in Toronto, in the little Korean neighborhood East of Christie Pits, across from the Metro Theatre ("The Best In Action And Suspense / Seven Days A Week," if I remember), which showed Emmannuelle for I think eleven years straight (so lots of action, not much, y'know, suspense). The Café Verite had no liquor license, probably no operating license at all - it operated more like a squat than a real café. There were a couple of organic chefs who would bring stuff in on consignment, and there was a coffeemaker and a kettle and about 800 different kinds of tea, and that was about it. The place was run by Vipin and Deepti, who were married when they first put the place together, although by opening day they had separated. Deepti was a traditional Indian Kathak dancer, who traveled all over the world doing her thing to great acclaim. She and I became very good friends, and after the Verite closed I lived with her for a time before she moved back to India. Vipin wound up running the place. He'd play his Thomas Mapfumo and Talking Heads tapes on the beat up old boombox on the main floor and smoke pot in the basement (where, incidentally, he lived, and where I sometimes crashed too - it was that kind of time) and play Scrabble on the rickety tables and hit on the women and write poetry. Reams and reams of poetry. So I don't remember how I fell in with these people, but these things just happen, and I was soon running a Monday night open mike there which drew a pretty cool cross scetion of people: I remember Douglas September and Tim Cameron used to play there a lot, and was that how I became friends with Vaughn Passmore? Maybe. Vaughn produced both my CDs, and he was among my closest friends for a real long time. Anyway, I did it for food and occasionally shelter, and it was great. I wrote a lot of songs, I had a constant forum to play them in, the place was a scene unto itself. Okay, sure, it was a scene of losers, outcasts and poverty-stricken misfits, but hey, it was a scene, and I was a misfit too, and being a part of a scene at all was at that point a big deal. So in the late summer, this one woman started coming to the open mike. Not to perform, just to sit in the back and take notes. K. and I started talking, and then one week she asked me out for coffee. |
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