Ceiling of Stars

Every second Monday night, I often go to an "open mic" called Groovy Mondays . It takes place at a venue called Holy Joe's, on the top floor of a cavernous cube-shaped building at the corner of Queen and Bathurst.

As long as I can remember, the building has been a live performance destination. The exterior is painted bright blue and for many years the whole place was called The Big Bop. In recent years, the building has been segmented into three separate venues: the Kathedral (ground floor), the Reverb (second floor) and Holy Joe's (third floor, up the rickety stairs, past the fire escape).

To get to Holy Joe's, we haul our guitars up the painted-black stairwells and cut through a large nightclub. When we finally open the industrial-style door with the "Holy Joe's" sign, it's as if somebody threw a switch from black-and-white to colour. We pass through a curtain of 60's-style love beads into a pink and golden room, lit by multi-coloured strings of Christmas lights overhead.

Most Mondays, there's nothing happening on the first and second floors. But last night, a crowd of young club-goers lined up outside the building while several security guards stood watch at the door. They gave us one quick look and let us in, waiving the cover charge. They knew where we were going.

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The music from downstairs was so loud last night, it actually did made the walls reverberate. At one point, I imagined that we might suddenly hear some kind of explosion and be forced to use the fire escape for what it was intended for, rather than a place where smokers could still smoke. I wondered whether we would hesitate just long enough to grab our guitars (and be incinerated) or whether we'd be wise enough in that moment of panic to leave the guitars behind.

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But of course, the explosion never came, and all of us simply ignored the noise from downstairs as we played our designated two songs each, for a crowd of fellow songwriters that was, unfailingly, supportive.

No matter how diverse our influences (Dylan, Cohen, Cockburn, McLachlan...) and how personal our goals (major record deal? one great song?) we all had a lot in common. We'd all been drawn here, in the middle of a cold January night, to sing songs we had written. We hoped that people would like them. We all hoped that our songs made sense, that they were meaningful, that we wouldn't look silly when we sang them. We all hoped we'd do just a little better than we had last time.

We shared a belief that despite all outward appearances, the world still needs new songs, and that we are the ones to sing them. Come to think of it, we must have shared that belief with the much louder performer in the nightclub downstairs, whose lyrics we couldn't quite make out through the reverberating walls.

We were all the same, singing our little songs, under the twinkling Christmas lights: the glittering ceiling of stars.