Curfew Comforts

Each night here in Montréal, our vibrant and living city turns into a ghost town at the stroke of 8:00 PM, under the restrictions of a province-wide curfew. It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this, but I support the necessity of tighter shutdowns and more attention paid to limiting contacts. But life under curfew is hard, and the sensation of not having the ability to go out for a walk with a friend or pop out to the corner dep after a certain time is surprisingly heavy.

There’s a few things helping me through this week, and in no particular order they are:

  • PEN15

  • The entire discography of the Talking Heads, David Byrne, Tom Tom Club, and Jerry Harrison, which I’m listening to in sequential order with a friend in Glasgow

  • Taking bike rides on my indoor bicycle in front of the television wherever in the world I want to. My last ride was along the coast of Portugal. Tonight I think I’ll take the trail alongside the Danube that I took almost every day while I lived in Vienna

  • Mail order records – today I received ‘Rarities 2007-2010’ by Women and Chad VanGaalen’s Infiniheart from Flemish Eye Records

  • An old book I found in a free library booth called ‘Turkestan Alive’

  • Photographs of muffins from my mother

  • The restarting of my weekly Balkan choir under the guidance of Dina Cindrić

  • My History of Japan class at Concordia University

  • Lego

Granted, none of this adds up to even just one fun road trip with friends, a crowded dinner party, concert or park hang. I feel at times I’m even starting to forget about activities I previously loved to do, like sitting in an actual cinema surrounded by actual people to watch a film. It feels like certain parts of life have been erased from the list of possibilities.

But somehow, at times, that’s also OK. Humanity has gone through pandemics in the past, and we’ll experience them again in the future. Our 2020-2021 experience will doubtlessly leave its scars, but it’s also teaching its lessons. Finding comfort in curfew isn’t always easy, but it’s calming to know that here in Montréal, we’re all in this together.

Mark Hamilton