Musings from Musician in Residence Dave Bidini
If modern ideas about space and community are to be heard, libraries can be anything. They can even be places where we howl behind glass in a pod near the children’s section on afternoons and some evenings from Monday to Friday at the Bloor/Gladstone Branch (and occasionally, Parkdale Branch). Because that’s how I’ve been spending my time lately as the TPL Musician in Residence, the first placement of its kind in North America.
It’s me, one guest, a guitar, two chairs and a desk, and after my first few weeks of the residency, I’ve sat across from beginners, people with a handful of records to their name, frustrated basement singers and poets who want to be lyricists. Because we work during after-school hours, the kids’ section is busy with mewlers and toy chewers and teenagers doing homework at desks, and this enlivens the process. We’re loud and true, off-key and on. We move a verb here, a noun there, and strum down, and sometimes up. There’s guest instructors, too. Last week, before disassembling the blues for a tidy crowd, guitarist Paul Linklater arranged the chairs in a semi-circle in an adjacent and larger room, and people walked in with guitars humped to their back. Clasps were unsnapped and picks drawn, and they all played. In a library, songs are the cousins to books. They feel less alone, and so do we.
Musician and author Dave Bidini is Musician in Residence at Toronto Public Library until December 7, 2019. He's hosting events and offering expert guidance on songwriting, performing and navigating the music industry. Learn more about him and the Musician in Residence program.
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