Powell River arrived the way certain dreams do. Quietly, then all at once you’re inside something with its own logic. Jason promoting the show. Electrician by trade, mountain climber by temperament. The calm competence that makes you feel the event will happen whether or not you deserve it. Their house like a gallery that learned how to make coffee. Everywhere paintings. You feel the presence of people who spent time looking closely at things. Committed. Each wall makes an argument. I loved listening the next day to his stories about the old climbers. These guys hanging on to ledges and memory at the same time, still mapping vertical space while time quietly erases the trail markers. A lot of my friends hit that strange altitude now. Suddenly the elders aren’t “old people.” They’re advanced models. You notice the details. The hands. The pauses. The way stories repeat, not because they forgot, but because those are the last coordinates still glowing on the map. And you realize something mildly terrifying and completely obvious. You are in a position to give something back. Attention. Logistics. A ride. A chair. Five minutes of actual listening without checking a device. Basic human upkeep. If you don’t, entropy, like a low budget landlord, takes hold. The old house will creak. Hinges loosen. Doors sag off frames. The wiring hums mistrustfully. The opportunists arrive. Not always villains. Sometimes just looking for an unlocked door. Objects disappear. Whole lives get quietly dismantled. Just small neglect, repeated. Old climbers. Like they’re still up on some ledge, waiting for someone to notice they haven’t come down yet. At a certain point, you stop asking who’s going to help. It’s you. Congratulations. You’ve been promoted.
When Nola saw me she started jumping up and down the way dogs do when they’re overwhelmed with recognition. A kind of human version of Olive, the actual dog in the house, who also greeted us with enthusiasm. It’s disarming when a person meets you with that level of unfiltered joy. You don’t know how to receive it. Just stand there and hope you don’t disappoint them. Mike, was having a slow allergic reaction. I forgot he once told me about his allergies. Something in the air, the dog, the paintings, the molecules of Powell River itself. He handled it.
The performance at the music school space felt improbably perfect. The acoustics were kind. The piano behaved. The room listened. There are nights where you spend half your energy negotiating with the environment. This was not one of those nights. Everything wanted the music to happen. An older woman approached me with a kind of practical enthusiasm. She wants to bring the show to Kamloops. In a logistical, actionable way. The kind of offer you take seriously because she clearly already had. Later, she referred to the people there as “loopers.” Casually, like a term everyone should know.
Beautiful moments in Powell River. A mountain climber electrician making things happen. A house full of paintings that can’t be ignored. A woman who greets you like a dog discovering a favorite human. A perfect room. An allergic reaction that doesn’t stop the night. And somewhere a future audience of loopers waiting to decide what they think of it all.