October 03, 2006

As expected, Toronto media outlets went gaga over Nuit Blanche, which took place from dusk to dawn on Saturday. But for me, the experience was an uneasy mixture of pleasure and pain. For one thing, I got lost in Toronto. For another, I only managed to find myself in a foggy, muddy field in the middle of U of T’s campus.

There, humanoid shapes faded in and out of a thick, milky brightness. Everyone seemed at once familiar and utterly strange. My feet were heavy with mud, and I felt slightly overwhelmed by the constant stream of humanity that flickered in and out of consciousness.

The fog installation was supposed to be about weather patterns. But it ended up being about all of us: friends, loves, strangers. The fog was about the way we enter each other’s lives so passionately and overwhelmingly on warm, wet nights, and then fade again into mist and later nothingness. The fog was filled with pain, joy, and a million sighs. And it was good.

(Side note: Flickr has a million more Nuit Blanche photos (everybody there had a camera). Some of them are pretty good.)