People come in and out of the scene like seasons. When we haven’t seen someone in a while, we know that we’ve probably lost them to an overdose… or a relationship. When these new relationships start, it’s always with the best intentions that nothing will change. But slowly and gradually it happens. The new couple starts to leave the parties earlier and earlier, until eventually, they start hosting dinners at home instead. People bring wine and they talk about their little projects. Like the one’s they’re developing together: a catering business or a clothing store or a fashion line - and they talk about how they’ve started going to the gym and they’re doing cardio and that they have an awesome personal trainer with a Russian name. They’re being more “productive”. They’re “growing up”. Eventually, there are less dinners, or rather, the kids “not-in-relationships” get invited less and less and the lovely couple suddenly disappears. Off the radar, just like that, and the party people stop trying to call, and everybody’s life just goes on.
And it’s always when we least expect it, you know, when we’ve finally found peace with our new dancing partners for “Lust For Life” and Arcade Fire and when we have new people to do
Patron Jager shots with, that one of them re-appears again with a brand new haircut and some cute clothes telling us how they really lost themselves in that last relationship. It was good, they don’t regret it, but
New York City Toronto isn’t made for settling down. They can’t wait to re-connect with themselves and their old friends again. But, you know, it’s never as comfortable as the last time around. There are too many new faces. The party names have changed. The DJs are mixing harder, stronger, faster. And after the over-emotional, over-compensating hugs that last as if we were Vietnam war vets reunited, they realize that they have changed too and that they have nothing in common with the new regime.
Excerpt from ‘L.E.S. Artistes (The Cassius Kent Memoirs)’
