I'm not sorry I met you

Last weekend, CBC Music hosted its annual music festival at Echo Beach, Toronto - a place that will have echoes for anyone remembering Martha and the Muffins in 1980.

This year, one of the attractions was Stars, who would be performing their 2004 album Set Yourself on Fire live, from beginning to finish.

I got social media notifications throughout the day, hearing that the weather had turned rather nasty, and rained out a couple of the acts.

However, I got back from whatever I was doing, and tuned into the livestream, because Stars was (were?) on stage.  I'm not that familiar with the order of Set Yourself on Fire, so it took me a few minutes to realize that I'd missed the first song, which was, of course, the very song I wanted to hear.

I enjoyed the set, though.  The musicians moved through a haze that was, I think, a residue of the sudden storm.  Atmospheric, to say the least.

It was clear that there was also a haze of nostalgia.  The audience appeared to be in the 30's to 40s' age range, some hoisting small children onto their shoulders.  The expressions were of joy, and intense longing, these fans hearing songs that had meant so very much to them as teenagers and twenty-somethings.



When this single was released in early December 2005, I wasn't particularly aware of it, although I'm sure I must have heard it, on the periphery of my misery.  It was the end of a stressful and heartbreaking year,  when I had young children of my own, so this song doesn't have the stamp of a particular time and place for me, as it so clearly has for those young-ish adults in the audience at Echo Beach.

I do love the official video for the song.  It is so quintessentially central Canadian, appropriate for a band that has roots in Montreal, though its band members grew up in Toronto.  At the time, I was living five hours from Toronto and two hours from Montreal, so trust me: if you're going to lie down on the ice on a winter's night in central Canada, you'd better be more warmly dressed than Stars are.

Incidentally, the actor who points at us and declares, "When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire" (which, of course, is the title of the album), is the late Douglas Campbell, a venerated stage actor in Canada, who is also the father of lead singer Torquil Campbell (an actor himself).

God, that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend
Smiled and said, "Yes I think we've met before."
In that instant, it started to pour.
Captured a taxi despite all the rain.
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain,
And all of that time you thought I was sad,
I was trying to remember your name.

 

This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin.
Tried to reach deep, but you couldn't get in.
Now you're outside me,
You see all the beauty,
Repent all your sin.

It's nothing but time and a face that you lose.
I chose to feel it, and you couldn't choose.
I'll write you a postcard;
I'll send you the news
From a house down the road from real love.

 

Live through this, and you won't look back.

 

There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave.
You were what I wanted,
I gave what I gave.
I'm not sorry I met you;
I'm not sorry it's over;
I'm not sorry there's nothing to save