I had one of those performance experiences in late August that leaves me repeatedly saying the word, “Blessing,” to the audience.  “A blessing to be here,” “This place is a blessing,” “What a blessing.”  And so on and so forth.  There was no blood, but there was plenty of blackberry stains – I was on Salt Spring Island, in Fulford Harbor, at the Morningside Organic Bakery Cafe & Bookstore.

I had been to the Morningside once before at the end of my first real bike trip, a fact I recalled when I arrived there on a beautiful, hot Saturday afternoon.  The cafe’s hard to forget.  It looks like it has been carved out of a mountain and a giant tree.  If hobbits or dryads melted out of the woodwork, I wouldn’t be surprised.  Alan and Manon, the owners, are omnipresent, and along with a rotating staff of earthy, calming folks, they are doing something amazing.  Mind-blowing, even.  They make a selection of amazing sandwiches, on their own bread, heavily infused with amazing Salt Spring goat cheese.  I had the fortune of trying most of them, served up on sweet wicker platters along with long stalks of green onion, as well as the raw, sprouted granola, coconut milk ice cream (amazing! and I’m not an ice cream fan usually), muffins, a chai latte, and a london fog.  As I said to Alan, “If London Fogs were always this good, I would drink them all the time.”  Same goes for everything I tried there.  Raw food became suddenly appealing to me; sandwiches never tasted so decadent yet felt so healthy; nothing disappointed, even as one item after the other raised the bar higher.  And then there’s the books…

I’m no food reviewer, as should be evident, just a food enthusiast.  But books, I know.  And if I wasn’t such a broke-ass poet, I could blow a small fortune at the Morningside on books alone.  As far as poetry goes, they covered the gamut from Hafiz to Gil Scott-Heron, along with some amazing literature from the likes of Kerouac and Vonnegut.  Along with that, I found myself ogling books on healthy eating, critiques of big business, environmental issues, yoga… which isn’t to say one should go thinking the revolution alone is represented on their shelves.  I found myself simply overwhelmed with the number of amazing authors and intriguing titles I saw.  More than I can even safely remember.  I had to shut them out, in fact, because otherwise I was going to blow my fare home and chance of making September rent.  Not a shitty book to be found, a tonne of them there.

BUT EVEN BETTER!? (can it get even better?) The reason I was on Salt Spring was to perform at the Morningside a Saturday and Sunday evening.  My friend Maliha Sanyal had moved to Salt Spring earlier in the summer (or was it late spring?) and found work at the Morningside.  With the support of Alan and Manon she had started hosting weekend evenings (and some weekdays).  Everything I heard, from the likes of Alessandra Naccarato and Moe Clark, was that the evenings were not only fun, but amazing.  And how amazing!  For two nights, I saw a line-up of steady talent.  Not just decent folks making decent art, but a tremendous range of highly skilled artists playing for an enthusiastic and varied crowd of folks, many of whom hitched in across the island to be there (and in true Salt Spring fashion, received rides home from those in attendance at night’s end).  And not everyone was even an islander: it’s not uncommon for artists or audience to arrive from off-Island for the nights at the Morningside.

As far as my experience went?  A blessing, didn’t I say?  Alan and Manon are ridiculously gracious hosts, without losing any of their down-to-earth vibe.  Between the two of them and Maliha, as well as the warmth of the audience, I felt I was in great danger of getting “home” to Vancouver a few years later than expected.  The first night was a personal success, in a way, as I did a nearly hour-long set of entirely poems written between January and July this year; the second night I turned to more stock material, dedicating a performance of “The Revelation Will Not Be Televangelised” to Alan, covering Shayne’s “America Loves Styrofoam,” and then doing many more of my older poems.  During The Revelation I jammed with a drummer with a drum machine who would jump in on any of the artists.  He played thunder and lightning.  Literally.  That night also saw a jam with the sound guy, another new experience for me, on the scream-o poem, “Words Are Beautiful,” wherein, at the right moment, he amped up the reverb so I suddenly was screaming with about three of me echoing everything.  Or at least, that’s how it felt.  Both sets felt quite different, with a more subdued, but highly attentive and supportive audience the first night, and a smaller but very loud audience the second night.

Overall, everyone involved – artists, audience, Morningside staff, Alan, Manon, Maliha – made the experience one I won’t soon forget.  A blessing at every turn.  And whether you’re there for the arts or the food or just because you’re waiting for the ferry, you won’t be disappointed with the Morningside.