seven days to takeoff

Australian music is taking over New York. Every bar I go to (and I go to a fair number of bars, needless to say), I hear Australian music. Kylie, Cut Copy and INXS. The gays here have always loved Kylie, apparently, and with her new album only recently released in the US and with Cut Copy also touring their new album over here, they're very much of the moment. And INXS were always huge in the US, so I guess a lot of DJs are factoring them into the current yen for the 80s. I find myself having to announce that they're playing "my people", when nobody else could really care less what country they're from. I think I must feel the need to distinguish myself from Americans (even though some of my best friends are American, as the saying goes); I don't want to stand out as a tourist, but I don't want to assimilate entirely. I was thinking about some of these issues after a fantastic weekend in Montreal. Something about spending time with Canadians felt very different from spending time with Americans, but mostly in terms of what felt like an affiliation with Canadians. Partly it was about small examples of language that are closer to Australian and British English than to American, but mostly I think it was about the relationship of both Canada and Australia to the US empire - the little siblings very much under its influence but maintaining differences and suspicions and critical distance.

I'm going to have to go back to Montreal. I had a lot of fun but didn't feel satisfied that I'd really seen enough of the city to gauge what it's like. Staying out till the early hours of the morning and sleeping in half the day makes it hard to see very much. But Elaine, who Elisa and I stayed with, was a fabulous host and showed us some of the funkier aspects of the city, in addition to proving a sneaky partner-in-crime. It was also very cool to speak lots of French, getting into practice for Paris, even though it was very strange to hear pretty much everyone speaking French in a place outside of Europe that otherwise resembled America. I'm going to start looking into work in Montreal too, as there are four universities there. It does seem like a very livable city (real estate is very cheap, for one thing) and being so close to the US border would make regular trips to New York easy if not compulsory.

Meanwhile, my final week in New York for this trip has just begun. I'll be on the plane to Paris this time next week. After an anxious week where it looked like I may not find a place to sublet for the month or so that I'll be there, something came through at the last minute. I'll be staying in the Belleville neighbourhood which I'm imagining is similar to Williamsburg where I am in New York. It seems to have a lot of cool artsy stuff going on as well as an interesting mix of immigrant populations. And I'm looking forward to the change of Paris - as well as the challenge. I feel like my obsessive infatuation with New York has lost some of its charge. I'm still utterly in love with it but it's now more like a longer term romance than the first flush of excitement. Montreal showed me how easily I can enjoy being away from New York, which is important given I still can't stay in the US long term. Hopefully Paris will offer a possible alternative.