Henry Rollins appeared on stage Monday night at Montreal’s Le National with his big smiling mouth. As the crowd applauded the speaker into a comforting welcome, he slowly wrapped the wire of his microphone around his left hand, firmly planted his right foot in front of him and began to recount his day spent in the village. As the globetrotting messenger spoke of his day off he slowly pulled the audience into his potential driven brain.

When such an experienced traveller, writer, musician, observer comes to your town, you sit and listen to what he has to say. His stories, ranging from the mundane trip to the gym to the invisible car race in Riyadh, are all threaded with what every human being with world wide milage has gathered as basic social skills and the golden rules of empowerment. He lives to squeeze every possibility out of every passing minute. Henry Rollins manifests his moral strength by visiting the obscure corners of the world map and psyche, by shaking hands with gods and insects, by eating another man’s home cooked meal and feeding a child with a hard drive’s worth of music. He revisits these stories in his books and on stages across continents to encourage other great minds to broaden their world perspective, encouraging us to “own this century” and to give the finger to the man that dares starve any part of the global community.

At the end of the show, you understand that mileage and knowledge work best together than apart. The audience was obviously more than satisfied with the spoken word evening but unfortunately wasn’t given the chance to interact with him for a short Q+A session at the end of his fascinating discourse. It’s a shame.

Labels: alarming truthness, book, montreal, social