This weekend I experienced the almost holy experience of what it is to have a perfect Saturday in Toronto.
The Sun came out of hiding and blazed high in the sky without cloudy interruption for an entire day!
I met friends for brunch in the morning and we spent the afternoon meandering along a bustling Queen West; Picking up a few prints from a local artist, browsing the racks of quaint boutiques filled with Toronto designed dresses.
As magic hour fell over Toronto and downtown's stainless steel buildings reflected the sun's golden glow, I split off from my friends and made my way to the Lightbox to watch Beats, Rhymes & Life. (A Tribe Called Quest documentary, premiering at the Hot Docs Festival.)
This was the highest of highlights, the apex, of my Holy Saturday.
Not because I got to spend 98 minutes watching one of my favourite groups on the big silver screen at a state of the art theater.
Not because I swiped an extra VIP pass from work and got to treat my little (but whole foot taller) brother to an experience that I knew he would be just as geeked about as I was.
The doc became Saturday's highlight because it is at this event, where my true love intersected perfectly with my job, that I had an awakening.
Unfortunately, the actual message within the documentary was by no means the source of my inspiration.
The bulk of the film focused on issues like front men Q-Tip and Phife Dawg quarrelling over who would be be the Michael and who would be the Tito of A Tribe Called Quest. Displays like a trivial argument that gets these life-long friends so agitated that family members need to intervene and restrain them, seconds before climbing on stage to a worshipping crowd, left me sad and bewildered.
Watching the drama within A Tribe Called Quest nfold felt nothing like I had felt as I got as I neared the corner of King & Peter and the Lightbox came into view. As I got closer to the venue and realized people were lined up around the block- not even for a Tribe concert but for a documentary film about their favourite group... Now that was inspiring!
So even though filmmaker Michael Rapaport (yes, Phoebe's cop boyfriend on Friends) chose to focus on the more negative story lines, I still came away from this experience invigorated by the support of this city's hip hop community.
Between the "yeah, I've been there" laughter that crept through the crowd as Busta Rhymes recounted the teary phone call placed to his friend Tip after giving Midnight Marauders a recent spin: "We was crying up in the car 'cause the shit was that crazy!!"
And the communal goosebumps caused by film's superbly mixed soundtrack blaring from a sophisticated sound system.
I had a moment.
I was grinning from ear to ear in the very back row as I experienced the bliss-inducing view of a sold out theater, lit up just enough by the images on the screen, to reveal the synchronized head bobbing when the bass line on Check the Rhyme dropped in.
For a little more than an hour and a half I was completely in my element surrounded by other enthusiasts and loving every second.
I get straight up giddy in the presence of people who love hip hop enough that they'll line up for hours to be temporarily closer to it. My pulse quickens in the presence of like minded people, as I am a bit of a lone wolf within my pack when it comes to obsessing over the music closest to my heart.
Just last week my BFF stared quizzically at me as I offered her a completely unprovoked explanation as to why, in my opinion, Frank Ocean is covering uncharted territory on his Nostalgia, Ultra LP. To my spontaneous rant, she responded: "You've got problems dude..."
I get teased at a parties when the token backpack rapper shows up because before the night is through, I will have manoeuvred my way into a conversation with him. They jest that it's my pick-up line, which is made into an even bigger joke by the fact that these conversations seldom lead to anything but arguing about whether or not Kanye peaked on College Dropout.
I will admit that I am shameless in my pursuit. If I detect someone on my radar who wants to actually sit down and talk about rap music with me, I will go after them without abandon.
Walking home after the film with my big-little brother, I spontaneously declared that I might be in the wrong industry. "Nothing jacks me up like music does!!!"
My bro then made the interesting point that we had just experienced the perfect harmony between what I know and what I love.
It was his point of view that got my wheels turning and led me to boldly tack an addendum onto my blog of months past, in which I itemized 3 resolutions for 2011.
*Addendum:
4) Erasing the barrier which currently exists between doing what I know and doing what I love.
I am unsure as to what exactly this means, but I do vow to blaze forward on a path with the purpose of shifting away from thinking of my work as being as being a means to justify an ends, and toward being an end justified by my genuine drive to get there.
My brother and I eventually went our separate ways into our Saturday nights.
As I got back to my apartment, I slid open my patio door so that warm summer breeze could flow in. I cracked a beer, and logged onto Twitter.
As I mulled over my new ideas, I simultaneously tweeted my thoughts on the film as well as the total and undeniable basic truth that this film proves: "@QtipTheAbstract is ageing like a fine ass wine!"
I sank back into my couch and let the wheels in my mind spin off some more.
But just as my thoughts started to form into ideas of how I might marry what I know to what I love, my blackberry notified me that I had a received a tweet:
I don't know what will happen, or how this "move" will play out. But I am suddenly totally devoted to the idea of "staying true to my heart, and following through" and seeing where that might take me.
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