The historic center of Montreal offers a focal point for culture, which is centered around Place des Festivals and Place des Arts: there is the Philharmonic Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, the University of Quebec, many theaters, and of course, a multitude of all kinds of commerce establishments for tourists. To sum up, it is a bright area. But many cities have something like this.
The next day my friends and I found something really unexpected there: swings. A long row of swing sets stands along the President Kennedy Avenue. The first time I saw them at night, when they were lit – I made a mental note for myself, and went on with my business. When, almost by chance, I returned to that place the next day, I found out that these swings also sing. That is, when you sit down and start swaying back and forth, the swing gives off not the creaking noise, but a melodic, musical sound. If someone sits nearby on their own swing, a different tone adds up. And soon the sound becomes that of a musical piece, and there are as much as 21 special instruments performing, suspended by three on special frames. And all the swings are almost always occupied – and almost exclusively by fully adult citizens, who enjoy the swinging with happy childlike faces. They are swinging and playing music. When I myself sat down, in no more than half a minute I was wearing the same grimace.
On the other side of the Place des Arts, among boutiques, expensive restaurants, hotels, and crowds on St. Catherine Street, there is another good source of fun. Spread out on the street there are a few grand chessboards, printed on plastic sheets – and people are playing chess with half-meter-high pieces, willingly dropping out of the ever festive stream of onlookers and flaneurs. It is worth seeing how serious are the expressions of concentration of the players (like a gray-haired gentleman against a lady in a wide hat and leopard suit) and the audience, who freeze in their combinational thinking with absolutely identical gestures of hands crossed on their chests.
And yet another peculiarity: a few steps away from there, on Place des Arts, kids are conducting the orchestra of the fountains that shoot out water from the roadway in a complex algorithm.
Yes, one can find such entertainment elsewhere, but somehow in Montreal this is particularly touching.
Of course, there are many additional things that are important: the architecture, good roads, the convenient locations of shops and parks, the landscaping, and lots of other details. But the genius loci, the spirit of the place, is embodied in such trifles. The genius of Montreal lifts his feet upwards, flying up into the sky in the A key, dances with the stream of water and moves a pawn from E2 to E4. The genius preserves within himself a child and an adult harmoniously.
And he does not need to fight for freedom. He is already free.
