My City of Lights has gone dark

I listen to the Scottish band Runrig a lot lately. Their high energy music (I tend to skip the ballads) is good for morale or redirecting negative energy.  But sometimes their happiest music is also a touch depressing, especially the songs recorded live. They remind me of the concerts and other live events that have been cancelled in the name of slowing the spread of Covid-19.

Regardless, I have some favourite songs that I listen to regularly. One of these is “City of Lights.” 

City of Lights Live

“City of Lights” (to my ear anyway) is a celebration of the connection and creativity of life in a city.  Although I’ve visited rural areas, and wilderness and nature are important to me, I’ve never lived any length of time outside a city nor have I ever considered doing so. 

I arrived in the city of lights
Enchanted ballrooms where I lost my life
I've closed my eyes
On your fairground smile

From the time I was four years old,  I’ve gone to concerts and live events, and taken lessons in anything that struck my fancy. I feel as at home in our major concert venues as I do in my living room: as soon as I walk through the door and hear the buzz of conversation, I have a powerful feeling of peace, anticipation and belonging.  It’s always been part of my expectation of anywhere I live that I can have such experiences. It is especially meaningful to live in the city of my birth where theatres and concert venues are graced with memories of my childhood, youth and early adulthood. Family outings grew into outings with university friends and dates. Later I would give my parents symphony tickets for Christmas and birthdays. My husband and I also usually gave each other concert, theatre and comedy tickets as presents.

Many of my memories are associated with our downtown, which has a hub of theatres and a big concert hall, surrounded by a cluster of pubs and restaurants of course. I have never actually had a job in the downtown, so I almost completely associate it with dressing up and going out.

Old emotions still burn inside
On solid ground, round the mother tongue
A tower of hope, a joyful sound
You take your time
A hand of aces in a pack of lies
I found my song and I started to sing
Took me away on an olden wing
So far from home

So lonely but not alone

The last time we were supposed to go to a concert was March 14 2020: a band from Ireland. The tickets were my 40th birthday present.  It was cancelled the day before as that was the first weekend the city closed down. Those tickets were refunded though I’m still hanging on to a couple of other sets for events that keep getting rescheduled into the future. If we are lucky, the future really does arrive one day. But maybe not quite the one we imagined.

Last week I went downtown to get my Covid-19 vaccination, an experience I was neutral to negative on, but decided to go through with anyway. As the train pulled into the station, I realized I cannot actually remember the last time I was downtown. It might have been fall of 2019. Without any theatre or music to go to, there was simply no reason to go. If downtown showed up in the news, it was because of some demonstration or other (it’s also where City Hall is located.) That made me even less likely to want to go there, but I wouldn’t have in any case.

I got off the train and started walking toward the convention centre, where I have attended teachers’ conventions for years, but not the past two. It has been repurposed as a mass vaccination clinic. Now, while I wear a face mask indoors, I do not wear one outside. Usually the minute I’m out the door it’s off my face into my pocket. For the first time though, I had an urge to keep my mask on as I was walking outside. It wasn’t fear of Covid per se; there were no dense crowds. Rather I had the feeling that I was walking in a foreign territory, and I wanted to hide or protect myself.  If a suit of armour and a sword had been offered, I would have happily accepted those too.

I actually forced myself to take the mask off because I found these feelings inexplicable and disturbing, and I refused to let myself act on them. Nothing about the downtown area looked noticeably different than I remembered. I was not in a foreign or dangerous country. My behaviour should not change! But the mask went on again the minute I was in sight of my destination, and I felt a distinct relief at being concealed and armoured against the unfamiliar and for some reason, vaguely threatening environment of the city I’ve lived in all my life.

All things considered, I’ve had a happy and stable life the past year and a half. I love my neighbourhood; I love the parks and nature areas we can drive to; I have no quarrel with any person I know, though I see friends much less often. Work has taken the place of most of my social life, and luckily I like my work. But the strange feelings I experienced downtown do remind me of a loss. The loss is the communion with other people around an experience of mutual interest and transformation. They might be friends or family; they might be strangers with whom I only share the experience of being an audience. But it is a loss of connection, and it makes me much more likely to see strangers and even once familiar places in a defensive or hostile light.

In this empire of ache and rhyme

Lovers and best friends are running blind

I don’t run blind now, at least not outside my neighbourhood. I’m wary and I want to be gone, as quick as I can.  There is no city of lights for me in our downtown anymore.

But for all that, I am not going to stop listening to “City Of Lights” or other songs that remind me of happier times. When the real thing is not happening, the memory of it is even more important so that we don’t forget such realities are still possible.

I grasp your hand
Is this the only world I understand
There's a sadness
There's a joy
There's a place
There's a song that will never die
Forever