The Year Before the Flood (or How I Got Lucky Before the World Shut Down)

Riding a camel for a short time somewhere in Mongolia.

In Margaret Atwood’s sci-fi novel Oryx and Crake, “the year of the flood” is an apocalyptic moment when human civilization is destroyed by a pandemic caused by the massive distribution of a commercial drug. In our parallel universe, the flood was also caused by a pandemic, albeit one much less calculated than what some conspiracists might argue. Since early 2020, we’ve been globally paying the price for incessant human intrusion and exploitation of animal life and biodiversity. A year prior to this crisis, the imminent consequences of such behaviors were much less obvious, and anything seemed possible. As far as I am concerned, 2019 was the most intense year of my life up to that point, if not necessarily the best. Here’s an overview of the cathartic roller-coaster of events that happened to me before confinement, disillusion and doubt became the new normal.

January begun with an unexpected academic milestone, beginning a master’s program at Université de Montréal in musicology and furthering my undergraduate studies in that field. I had just completed my bachelor’s degree during the fall 2018 semester, over the course of which I was busier learning Japanese than learning about music. I then decided to work on a project investigating the development of Indonesian gamelan music in Canada, an interest I’d been nurturing for a while. The suggestion to enroll for a master’s degree and make this topic my research object came from one of my teacher and would-be research director. As my thesis topic neatly fit his own research project at the time, he was able to guarantee financial support during the larger chunk of my degree, which made studying more financially viable than what I had originally planned for my life at this point. Thus, I started my degree in the winter of 2019. During that semester, I completed two seminars with relative ease, although busy with various music projects, rehearsals, part time jobs and back and forth trips between my apartment and my partner’s.

The approach of summer was ambivalent. In May, my partner, her daughter and I moved in apartment with two roommates, marking the hectic beginning of our family life, one that would be interrupted by frequent absences on my part. By June, I had completed my bachelor’s degree, started graduate studies, had coordinated recording sessions for a gamelan album and had participated in the world’s first death metal growl choir. At the same time, my partner was struggling with the recent loss of both her mother and aunt, which profoundly affected her psychological and emotional health. Despite this, I chose to travel to Japan and Myanmar in June and July 2019, just a couple months after the tragedies. Instead of being there for moral support, I fulfilled my selfish desire to see more of Asia. It was important for me to go to those two countries at that very time because it fit a personal narrative I was trying to live up to. In late 2018, I’d been studying about Southeast Asian history as well as learning the rudiments of the Japanese language. As I did with gamelan music in 2016-2017 when I sojourned in Indonesia, I felt like these learnings should be put in context by travelling to places relevant to the culture studied. I had also set my mind on travelling alone to Asia upon completing my bachelor’s degree as a reward. Additionally, as I anticipated family responsibilities to kick in within the next months and to further cement my role as a parent in the coming years, I did not want to let the opportunity slip. Unexpected hardships in my personal life apparently did not make me budge. I lost myself in the contrasting landscapes of Japan, alternating between cultural tourism, hiking and attending concerts. I also got a glimpse of diverse Myanmar, tasting delicious thut thut luh meals and visiting plenty of historical pagodas. Although rich and exciting, this journey was a very lonely one and I often found myself wishing I'd brought my family along. I do not have regrets per se, but leaving them behind left a constant sour taste in my mouth. My partner might’ve been okay with this relatively short trip had I not also enrolled for an exchange student program in Taiwan for the coming fall semester.

Streets and alleys in Tokyo, Japan.

What probably put a bit of balm on this difficult situation was an unexpected job in which I was able to include my partner and daughter. Only a week after my return from Japan, my family and I took an AirCreebec plane to Kuujjuarapik/Whapmagoostui, an Inuit and Cree community in Nunavik on the coast of Hudson Bay. For four weeks, our mandate was to create a music camp for children with special needs. Prior to our arrival, I had been shopping for musical instruments in Montreal which were then shipped to Nunavik. We had very little training or information prior to our arrival, and had to adjust our teaching plans and expectations to the personnality of the children and everchanging schedules. At times, our presence there felt random, as we did not always succeed in getting children interested in music or even just showing up to class. However, a handful of children were definitely changed by the discovery of specific instruments, which gave us a positive feeling about our contribution in the end. Discovering Nunavik was a privilege (and we were definitely privileged as contractual workers) and something I never expected to do. Indeed, the path which led me to be hired for this gig (and eventually get my partner hired as well) is the product of networking and pure chance. My dad has sung in several choirs throughout his life, and a colleague from one such ensemble mentionned that a friend of hers was looking for a musicologist to work up north. This vague prospect sounding appealing to me, I called my dad’s friend, which then referred me to her friend, which interviewed me. I explained that what they were really looking for was a music therapist, but that this field was to my knowledge hardly recognized as scientific. Upon discussing, I expressed my definitive interest and motivation to fulfill this job, but also my concerns about leaving my family behind between two trips to Asia. To my surprise, my condition of bringing my family with me to Kuujjuarapik/Whapmagoostui was accepted, and my partner was hired as my “assistant” (although her presence proved crucial for planning, teaching and for creating bonds with the children). Although it isn’t clear if we’ll ever be called again to further develop the project, I am very grateful that it happened. This will remain one of the best experiences of my life.

A view of Kuujjuarapik/Whapmagoostui from the rocky forest

We went back to Montreal enthralled and enriched by our experience in Northern Quebec, but knowing that only two weeks separated us from another departure. In late august, the band Chthe’ilist, for which I am a session live vocalist, was invited to play in Denmark for the Killtown Deathfest. My first visit to Europe was thus at this 4-day event in Copenhagen, followed by a rest day during which I was free to roam the city. The shows themselves were great, and Chthe’ilist’s performance felt surreal. Heavily sleep-deprived, jet-lagged and stunt by the long and anxious wait for our luggage at the Copenhagen airport, we arrived at the festival site a few minutes before our soundcheck. An hour later, we were live. All in all, it was an excellent performance and were received overwhelmingly positive feedback. The best part of it was playing early on the first day, as some of us could enjoy the rest of the event worry-free, drenched in death metal and vegan feasts. After our 5 days in Denmark, we headed back to the airport. Thanks to an accidental 24-hour layover in volcanic Iceland, we were able to sleep and visit Reykjavik before reaching Montreal. A few days later, we played Quebec Deathfest at Montreal’s Foufounes Électriques.

The day after Quebec Deathfest was my last full day in Montreal with my family before yet another departure. I left for Taiwan, where I studied for four months as an exchange student at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. There, I lived in a dormitory room with two other students, one from the UK and one from Hong Kong. After the initial shock of abruptly landing in a sinophone environment a couple days late past the beginning of the semester, I started becoming seriously invested in learning Mandarin. This process went alongside musicology seminars and a Taiwanese historiography course. The ethnomusicology department where I had my main course had great professors, all of which accommodated my foreign self in different ways. One teacher devoted herself to translate everything bilaterally, one did not translate anything, while another imposed English on all students (to everyone’s letdown, including mine). Mandarin class was optional for foreign students, but it became my focus. Four months was very little time to learn, but I did my best to absorb as much as possible. It’ll take many more years before I can attain fluency in Mandarin, but I am glad to have acquired the rudiments of the spoken and written language. Between classes, I tried to travel across the island, visiting historical sites or discovering the countryside with my tiny foldable bicycle. My presence in East Asia also facilitated travelling in neighboring countries and regions, such as Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. It was special to visit Hong Kong during a crisis halted by local elections, as well as living in Taiwan for a few months prior to the 2020 elections. I also made a point to discover the taiwanese underground metal and punk scene, attending as many shows as possible and making a couple friends in the process. I even unexpectedly found a Mongolian musician willing to teach me throat singing, an interest I pursued in Mongolia in January of 2020, a couple weeks before a rushed return to Montreal due to COVID-19.

My foldable bicycle somewhere in Taitung, Taiwan.

All in all, I was only in Montreal from January to late may in 2019, as well as for a total of three weeks scattered across the summer. The year was full of opportunities which I often took at the expense of my family’s wellbeing. It all happened at a threshold moment when being a parent and life partner was starting to materialize through moving together as a family. In a sense, it was a climactic moment of my life which happened at a bad timing. I took a lot of selfish decisions and went through with my stubborn plans to travel and study abroad. At the same time, these are opportunities I could not postpone, and we now know that they would all have been impossible in 2020. Additionally, travelling alone after several months of cohabitation with my family would not have made a lot of sense compared to doing so in early stages when everything was still shaky. Almost a year after returning from this last trip to Asia, I look back at 2019 with a mixture of pride and remorse.

Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar.