The living is easy

So this weekend, my summer is finally coming to an end. That's right, my classes are finally starting. And upon reflection, I'd have to say that summer 2009 was probably one of the best summers of my life. A month in France, a month in London, chilling with friends in Guelph, a trip to Montreal and James and Elizabeth in Toronto. I filled my days with flowers and vegetables, insects, shrews and other garden friends. It started with the scent of apple blossom and lilies-of-the-valley, continued through chlorine and rosebuds and ended up with aged wine barrels and the stench of the big city. Not to mention that this summer vacation was 5 months long - the longest break I've had since I started day care at like 18 months old.

Now I grew up in a little city in south western Ontario. Guelph is known for three things: the vet school, the hippy culture and the Hillside Festival. For three days every summer, we all don our Birkenstocks and dig out our tents, ready to wander around the island in Guelph Lake and take in one of the best small festivals in the world. It's the social event of the calendar, and you run in to just about everyone you've ever known. There is lots of good music, good food and weird and wonderful workshops (sew your own menstrual pads anyone? traditional native fire building? preserving wild edible plants?) and occasionally you get one of those "Hillside moments", that will really stay with you forever. They're one part social and environmental activism, one part solid community feel, one part sticking it to the man and a good dash of the cloud of marijuana smoke that hovers over the island. Hillside 09 was a rain-stravaganza. By the end of the weekend, it was physically impossible to wear shoes on the island because they would get sucked off in the mud that went half-way up to your knees. It was more Glastonbury than Guelph, but it all contributed to that dirty hippy feel we all love so much.

Anyway, one of the last acts on the last night was Final Fantasy. He went on about 9 o'clock on Sunday night at the main stage in the middle of the huge thunderstorm that had been hovering over us all weekend. Lightning and thunder were seconds apart as he went on and started to play. Most people had gone to covered areas of the island, or had just gone home, leaving maybe a hundred die-hard Hillsiders crowding in front of the stage, cowering under tarps or umbrellas, or trying to squeeze under the (living) roof that covers the main stage.

Then he started to play.



(Click through for a much better quality video)

You can see the stage manager come on a couple of times, demanding that the power be turned off to the stage. You can't, however, hear the constant thunderclaps, prompting random cheers from the audience. Him screaming "One more minute!!" then the lyrics "I'm never gonna give in to you" over and over again could not have made a better ending to Hillside if Owen had asked God himself to do it right. And the moment at the end, when Leah and I were huddled under a tarp some stranger had lent us and praying the island wouldn't get hit by lightning (again) because of all the water everywhere, when the stage lights went off and Owen was still playing, pretty much made my summer. And maybe my life.

A google for the lyrics of "Lewis takes off his shirt" (the song he's playing), brings no answers, but approximately 1 000 000 versions of this performance.

Even Google accepts how perfect it was.