What Started It All…

Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex at the Grenfell community kitchen

The morning after the June, 2017 Grenfell Tower inferno, which left the skies above Chelsea where I visited aglow, The Queen rolled up and paid the site, its devastated and displaced occupants a visit. As ever, she was fragile, gracious and commanded one’s attention and respect. She attended with Prince William as their visit was covered uninterrupted on Live local TV.

HM Queen Elizabeth II & HRH Prince William, The Duke of Cambridge

At the time, I thought it so odd that they came and commiserated, or at least appeared to have, then they were off. It was a, “so sorry for your plight now made worse with this added burden. Oh well, I guess I must be off now, carry on then!” I felt compelled to make a donation, as clearly there was no such largesse coming from the Windsor gang.

Doria and The Duke & Duchess of Sussex

The following year just shy of three months after they glorious Spring wedding, the Duke & Duchess of Sussex, accompanied by Doria arrived for a special gathering. It was such a glowing, heartwarming scene as an obviously proud, Prince Harry, looked on as his wife, Meghan, attended the book launch of Together Our Community Cookbook, for which she had written the foreword.

Together. Our Community Cookbook

Within a year of her engagement and marriage, Meghan, the American with can-do spirit, had produced a gift for the people of the devastated Grenfell Tower community, one that would be all about giving back and making their struggle less arduous. This single act was so revolutionary; Meghan with her cookbook had demonstrated the true meaning of charity. She showed up with what mattered most, something practical and useful that could be of true assistance to the community. It was obvious at the book launch on September 17, 2018 that the newly minted Duchess of Sussex was beloved by the common folk of the Grenfell community.

Royal Tour of The Duke & Duchess of Sussex, 2018

A month later, October 2018, Harry and Meghan were off on their inaugural royal tour in the southern hemisphere. The following month, November the Firm, the institution and the royals who were threatened by Meghan and what she represented, went to work. So along came Camilla Tominey of the Telegraph starting the lynching and character assassination of Meghan with the lie that “Meghan made Catherine cry.”

Marie-Christine racially attacks Meghan using blackamoor brooch, December 2017

Where was Camilla Tominey, in December 2017, the year prior, declaring that Marie-Christine, “Princess Michael of Kent made Meghan cry.” Of course, she hadn’t and did it really matter? Tough, if the Yank couldn’t take a joke, right? They threw much at Meghan behind the scenes and Meghan adapted, proving herself Tungsten and worth it.

The Duke & Duchess of Sussex The Mountbatten Music Festival, March 2020

Meghan has master number 11 and for all of us, we are phoenix-like; 11 is an immensely transformative number and it is also about mastery… self-mastery. We are empowered by the colour of red, we are empowered, focussed, strategic and dominant when thusly enrobed. Here, Meghan is being a phoenix, throwing off the mantle of royal drama, politics – family, jealousy, the Firm, the press intrusion. In the proceeding photograph, Meghan wore that stunning red dress to the Mountbatten Music Festival; it was purely strategic.

Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex on Oprah Interview, March 2021

Here, in interview with the incomparable Oprah Winfrey, Meghan is being most strategic in her choice of clothing. She wears a black Giorgio Armani lotus dress. Ever self-aware, Meghan chose this dress and its colour because she was being deadly focussed and laying down the law in a very intensely vicious fight with the royals beyond her late Majesty, The Queen. She exposed the royals’ racism, vulnerably spoke of her suicidal ideation thanks to the acute racial animus that she experienced within the institution, the family and the media. To make her point, she chose that black Giorgio Armani because the dress bore a lotus flower; the most exquisitely beautiful flower which can only bloom for being mired in a swamp… utter filth – the royals, the institution, the royal rota and British media at large.

Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex in Nigeria, May, 2024

Meghan, summer of 2024, our Queen’s got something going on… stuff is cooking… there is that red again. Two marvellous tours in both Nigeria and Columbia but that red dress was putting us on notice… do standby…

POLO Netflix Docuseries, The Duke & Duchess of Sussex executive producers, December, 2024

Coming on strong, here were Harry & Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, executive producers for the most exciting sporting docuseries on Netflix… on any of the streamers. From Louis Devaleix’s deliciously high octane vituperativeness, tempered by his tender love for his beautiful wife, and his mother-in-law who brings out the much-loved son in him. Poroto Cambiaso and Timmy Dutta brought the youth appeal.

Louis Devaleix, Adolfo & Poroto Cambiaso, Tim Dutta, Harry & Meghan, Nacho, Delfina Figueras H & M

Too, there is the arc of father son bond of Adolfo & Poroto Cambiaso with Poroto displacing his father at the top of Argentine Polo. The beautifully shot and moving docuseries is completed by Harry & Meghan with their trusted companions Nacho & Delfina Figueras pulling it all together in a commanding and winning project for powerhouse streamer, Netflix.

Meghan 2025… Something’s Cooking!

After the seventh wave’s retreat, a horizon beyond hung shrouded in mystery. What is about to come our way, we wondered, as Meghan playfully teased us.

Meghan The Duchess of Sussex on Instagram

Goodness me, not only was Meghan returned to Instagram, but with phoenix-like heroism, she proved that mighty seventh wave that swept us all away, yet again.

Let’s Go! With Love, Meghan Netflix

Tabarnak de frigging Christ, then along comes this most soul-intoxicating aperitif, further pulling us under. We are fully submerged in Meghan’s winning magic. Netflix knows that matters not what the baying detractors say, filled with lies and nonsense, doing #Peggalicious and the little grovelling bastard’s bidding, Meghan is not just the most feared woman on the planet. Netflix knows that Meghan is the most powerful woman on the planet… not just Black woman on the planet.

The Maddening Dissonance of Trolls, Royal Experts, Meghan & Harry Detractors

So let them sit there, cackling, baying and frothing at the mouth, perpetually lying and wishing ill, from Lady Battyface Camp-Balls, to gap-toothed Lady Tittydown, or the pasty XXXL Irish bully with an arse as wide as the fucking Panama Canal, to that disproportionate gaggle of genocide-deniers who know that every lie they tell, will be readily believed. How does it even matter? This also includes the barrel-hipped nez brun who’s on the outs with #Peggalicious’s *BAC posse; he who has to date driven two persons to suicide. Why even bother paying it any mind? Neither they nor their noise is any business of Meghan’s; they do not matter!

With Love, Meghan. Netflix

And there it is, the strategy of Meghan’s self-mastery. She is back and not just with a revamped version of The Tig. This time, she has gone one better, she is got a cooking lifestyle brand on Netflix with American Riviera Orchard kitchenware, dinnerware on offer. That is the greatest master stroke. With the aptly titled lifestyle series on Netflix, Meghan is reminding the royals what it was all about. She was removed from their midst because in having spearheaded and produced the Together cookbook, she showed up the Firm, the Royals and the Media for what lazy, ne’er-do-wells the royals truly are. Imagine that, in under a year, Meghan breezes into the institution and shows them by her actions what true charity looks like. She met without fanfare with the affected, displaced, untouchable Grenfell community, gave them a renewed sense of community and in the process, created a vehicle, the Together Our Community Cookbook, which to this day spectacularly fundraises for the ravaged community.

Pancake flipped by Catherine, The Princess of Wales – Looks more like Chittlins

Go on Meghan, prove to the world, across all time, that service truly is universal. It isn’t just about showing up in a pretty frock, grinning like a semi-feral gibbon en chaleur; it’s about doing the leg work, uplifting and inspiring others. It is not about showing up gurning like a drunken loon to flip a skillet that’s as flat as #Mumblelina’s arse, talking crap about flipping pancakes. Good lord, just look at Eliza Doolittle, drunk to the gills without so much as a fuck-all clue. The poor loon, no longer attending state banquets because as is the norm for separated royals, one can no longer wear a tiara. Then, too, there was the lack of a signature on the wreath left by William at the Cenotaph at Remembrance Sunday ceremony, November, 2024.

Meghan… The World’s most powerful woman

Meghan’s arrival on the scene proved disruptive. For that, the royals have unleashed a relentless campaign of character assassination, disinformation, enlisting all manner of readily bought detractors who troll for the prospect of proximity to the royals. These agents have multiple lines of attack, one being that the duchess was never pregnant and there are no offspring of Harry’s born to Meghan. Further, they try and eviscerate her Blackness from royal history by attempting to fracture the Sussexes’ relationship. They are forever implying that the couple are separated and living apart. Furthermore, they are ever implying that Harry is sick of being in America and desperate to return to the royal fold. Naturally, as everything is readily blamed on Meghan, they suggested that the Netflix deal has runs its course and as the Sussexes are running out of money, Harry will be returning to England but preferably without Meghan.

Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex & Tyler Perry

What are these desperate fabulists on about? Princess Lilibet’s godfather is a billionaire, which means that there is zero likelihood of Meghan and Harry going broke. Furthermore, with a billionaire godfather, there is positively no way that Harry & Meghan are leaving their bucolic California dream; more importantly, there is no need for the Sussex family to relocate to England. They have been racially preyed on, their lives threatened and police protection pulled.

The Sussexes Happy Holidays, 2024: Harry, Lilibet, Meghan, Archie & adored familiars

Master strategists, Meghan and Harry have been guided to their point of power. With Love, Meghan is about to show the world precisely why Meghan and Harry were sent packing. In a few short months, with Together Our Community Cookbook, Meghan exposed the fraudulent operations of the Firm which masquerade its staged appearances and passing them off as acts of charity. In essence, the royals do not do sweet fuck all. So Meghan’s character was attacked and made out to be a bully and wanting to do things as never before they had been done. Of course C4’s Dispatches: The King, The Prince & Their Secret Millions serves to further expose the extent of the fraudulence on the part of the royals and the great lengths to which they go to maintain and protect their unscrupulous swindle. The investigation was undertaken by C4’s Dispatches program in conjunction with The Times and Daily Mirror newspapers. Between the Together cookbook & Netflix’s With Love, Meghan, Charles & William have been further exposed for the venal, racist, money-grubbing boors that they are. Indeed, karma is like that.

Phoenix Mandala for John Hirsch by Merlin, 1979

Recently, when having my burgeoning art collection appraised, I happened on this glorious gem, created by Merlin forty-five years ago in 1979. After having been mentored by him, and directed shows at The Stratford Festival Theatre, where John Hirsch was artistic director, Merlin created the mandala for his mentor. John and his artist lover, Jean-Emile Sanscartier, lived at 187 Hudson Drive in Toronto’s tony Moore Park neighbourhood. Both Merlin & John were sick with full-blown AIDS, though, John had taken ill after Merlin. John’s last birthday, his 59th, proved quite the send-off. Everyone from the Hungarian Jewish mafia as John lovingly called his friends and colleagues was there, including Merlin & I – Merlin at that point was birdlike and frail even more so than John. Barbara & Murray Frum were there and many in the film world had also flown in from Los Angeles. It was a very grey, drizzly spring evening, for his May 1, birthday celebration. There were lots of tears, never displayed before John.

John Hirsch

Here was a man who had been spirited out of Hungary by train as every other relative in every possible direction had continued on to concentration camps and death. Though for being Black, I was made to feel at times as though the help, no one there knew, save Merlin who thought it best never to advertise the fact, that I was of Sephardic heritage to their Ashkenazy blood. Barrick Gold CEO Peter Munk had been earlier before our arrival and it had been Peter’s father, Louis who had spirited John Hirsch and other young kids by train to eventually settle in Canada. John felt especially guilty, as he confided in Merlin towards the end, in not having carried on the bloodline; of course, today it would have been possible where not so when he lived. It was overwhelming seeing this mandala after all those years tucked away. I lost a few tears but as John would have it, I began playing his ‘Ella’ the music of Ella Fitzgerald because let’s face it, we are – all of us, men-loving-men, drag queens who readily howl in tune when no one’s watching, be it Edith Piaf, Madonna, Céline Dion, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan and most of all John’s favourite, Ella!

Stratford Festival Theatre – Main Stage

In the dead of the night, on August 1, 1989, John Hirsch died at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. The next day, my 29th birthday, Merlin insisted that I go to work at the greenhouse. He wanted to be alone and privately mourn his mentor, John. Calling him at noon as the most massive thunderstorm drenched the city, we both cried silently, mostly drowned out by the rain and thunder. Excusing myself from work early, I hurried home and together we hugged and cried as John was gone, which inevitably meant that Merlin would be leaving in due course. We listened to the recording, Vladimir Horowitz At Home, then bravely headed to celebrate my birthday at a lovely restaurant in Yorkville. Merlin died three months later, on his mother’s 75th birthday.

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Hirsch, John 1/5/30, Soifok, Hungary<O>1/8/89 Toronto

Michael: John was a fifth level mature warrior in passion mode, with a goal of dominance, a pragmatist in the moving part of intellectual centre.  

This fragment had a Mars/Saturn body type. 

John’s primary chief feature was arrogance with a strong secondary of impatience.  

This fragment has a warrior essence twin, who is alive, and they may choose to meet when the fragment who was John reincarnates, during the first two decades of the new millennium.  

In fact, he may choose to be born to his essence twin who is now a 16-year-old school girl but who would probably be closer to 26 years when the fragment who was John decides to reincarnate.  She is Israeli, living in the city of Jerusalem.  

John was second-cast in his cadence and his cadence is fourth in the greater cadence.  He is a member of entity two – making him entity mates with George Hawken and Jesse Hawken – cadre four, greater cadre 7, pod/node 414; he has known both the fragment Arvin and the fragment who was Merlin in many prior lives.

He and Merlin are, in fact, old comrades-at-arms, which is the closest non-essence bond of all.  

He has an artisan task companion, who is the fragment Jean-Emile Sanscartier, his lover in the immediate past life.  Unfortunately, Jean-Emile’s chief feature stood in the way of their life task and it will likely be completed in a future life together.  

This is an artisan-cast warrior with strong scholar energy in his casting.  There is also a great deal of drama here and in the past, this has been put to good use on the stage, both in classical Greece and in fairly contemporary times in England.  

A recent pivotal life for this warrior fragment was in the late nineteenth century, in 1878, when as a Zulu Warrior/shaman; he fought alongside Cetewayo, against the British and learned the agonising power of defeat, when they lost their struggle in following years and lived to see their homeland annexed.  

He also learned, in this very recent life, the power of the dance in uniting the tribe and this lesson aided him greatly in his immediate past life. (1998)

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Ella Fitzgerald in Concert in Sweden, 1963

Ella Fitzgerald – Vocals

Don Abney & Oscar Peterson – Piano

Ray Brown – Bass

Jo Jones – Drums

Herb Ellis – Guitar

Roy Eldridge – Trumpet

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*BAC – backward-pussied, ass-eating, cocksuckers of which #Peggalicious’s posse includes the foxy but straight-acting, Christian type, The Duke of Buckingham & Norfolk, Jaysun Nuffnuff – the chinless hillbilly fabulist, Jasmine, the aggressive bottom retriever, Simi, the shit-obsessed encased pet fly. There are others, of course, but they all have this much in common – they favour beards, moustaches and are passionately obsessed with dining out en derrière.

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You are to Jazz what wings are to an ostrich; what the fuck do eagles care that queer, unaware ostriches have wings?

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©2013-2025 Arvin da Brgha. All Rights Reserved.

Yoko, Meghan & Cécile.

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One thing that the marriage of the TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex has revealed, is just how hideously racist Britons are. Naturally, as all bigots especially the most invidious racially predatory will have you know, ‘It has nothing to do with race!’ The DailyMail has made an industry of acting as a de facto wing of the EDL in its campaign of destroying the marriage of the Sussexes.

Every single day its gaggle of writers launch another volley of hate to feed their hate-filled multitude of devotees whom they simply abuse in their quest for more advertising revenue. Last week, their legions of bigots were gleeful when not only was the Duchess of Sussex not at Royal Ascot but neither was her husband. Naturally, the rumour was that Her Majesty The Queen had banned the Sussexes from attending Royal Ascot. Of course, last year when Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge was on maternity leave, she did not attend Royal Ascot. Furthermore, not once did her husband attend Royal Ascot. That is the tradition.

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Naturally, when these photographs of this year’s Royal Ascot emerged, the plethora of bigoted DailyMail trolls were celebratory of how happy and wholesome everyone looked. Of course, they were commenting on the homogeneity of the group; their was even talk that the RF looked so much happier without the American in their midst.

The following day, it was announced that the Royal Foundation was disbanding. This not only gave cause for wild celebration by the DailyMail trolls but in hindsight, it was speculated that the group looked as happy as they did at Royal Ascot because at that point, the dissolution of the Royal Foundation would have been known to all. This was seen as more proof that HM The Queen did not want Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex around Indeed, clearly, the Sussexes were headed for divorce and it was only a matter of time before there would be an announcement to that effect.

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By no means was tabloid culture then what it is today; however, there was no getting around the fact that there was unrelenting animus that was decidedly racist towards Yoko Ono because she was non-white. Of course, at the time as now and is always the case, there was strident denial that there was prejudice involved in the animus towards Yoko Ono. Heaven only knows that Linda Eastman was not a Briton, yet she was not reviled and hated for being an outsider as was Yoko Ono.

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So intense was the racial animus towards Yoko Ono that John Lennon had to relocate to New York City to seek peace away from being unrelentingly reviled by Britons, who were nothing more than unmasked Klansfolk; though there were three other wives, Yoko Ono was solely to blame for the demise of the Beatles. Indeed, Britons have John Lennon’s blood on their hands for having racially preyed on this man and his wife to the point where he had to flee and take refuge in a land where guns rule. Paul, Ringo nor George had to flee England because Britons did not approve of their choice of a wife.

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Neither Linda Eastman nor Montréalaise Autumn Kelly were subjected to the same animus as Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex for being outsiders marrying much-loved Britons. True, every woman marrying into the BRF experiences blow-back. Sarah Ferguson, Camilla Parker-Bowles, Catherine Middleton and on and on. Truth be told, neither Linda nor Autumn were subjected to similar animus as Yoko or Meghan simply for being Caucasian and therefore, deemed acceptable.

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Britons may well succeed with running TRH Duke & Duchess of Sussex out of town as they did John Lennon and Yoko Ono but know this, Tungsten has got powerful players in her corner. For starters, if the Sussexes were exiled, Oprah et al have the power to have her appointed as honorary chairperson of the Academy Awards – some such title of an American-British film society – not the American wing of BAFTA – which would see Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex each year present the award for Best Film at the Academy Awards.

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More to the point, when are Americans going to stop kowtowing to Britons because of the latter’s archly over-compensatory inferiority complex, of all things, masquerading as posh, sophisticated, superior and aristocratic. Why should an American actor, after having graduated with distinction from Julliard sit by and watch yet another English actor waltz in and claim the American award for best actor in a film which was not even an American production; this has repeatedly happened in the past. And so like Britons it is; they are the only island dwellers in the English-speaking world who never lose their god-awful accent regardless how long they sojourn abroad. Whether five years or fifty, you can also count on the expat English to maintain their posher-than-though English accent. Some may be readily charmed/fooled by all that posh posturing but it is so much obvious BS.

Glenn Close did not win the Best Actress BAFTA in 2019 that honour went to Briton, Olivia Colman in The Favourite. Ever possessed of this obsequious need to suck up, the Academy and its members voted Olivia Colman Best Actress at an American Awards show when the production was not an American production and Glenn Close was not going to win the Best Actress BAFTA and did not. One thing is clear from her acceptance speech, Olivia Colman is a one-hit wonder and will never win an Oscar again, just as Matthew McConaughey never will; after all, his Best Actor award was by default – so great was the need to deny Chiwetel Ejiofor an Oscar for his masterful performance in 12 Years A Slave.

When Britons prove themselves such ugly racist boors as with Yoko Ono and now Meghan Markle, why indulge, suffer or tolerate these people overlong? Throwing Oscars at them because they talk as though they’ve got a horse’s hoof stuck up their arse, there is nothing much to celebrate when one’s claim to fame is having subjugated 2/3s the world way back when and having enslaved and or brutalised those persons.

Of course, Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex chose not to move next-door to the Cambridges at Kensington Palace. For one, there is every reason to believe that the Cambridges’ marriage currently is nine parts façade and with a numerology attitude of 9, HRH Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, apart from not being the sharpest tool in the box, is also conceited, stubborn, bigoted and intolerant and also is in tight with those pompous-arsed minor royals the Michaels of Kent et famille who with their racist perspective were none-too-shy about showing their true colours, blackamoor and all with Meghan suddenly in their midst and to whom they would have to curtsy.

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A den of racial predators is no environment in which to bring up black children and that would also include those generational members of Kensington Palace staff, who would think nothing of being openly racist towards Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex and her children, For Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex the minor royal Micheals of Kent are no different to Samantha Grant and Thomas Markle Jr. She endured the racially predatory bullying in childhood, which is precisely why she has absolutely nothing to do with them and with damn good reason. Trust you me, there is not a single black person on this planet who would suffer any such environment. It is not human, not civilised and a goddamn waste of time.

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Carping on about how much better Cressida Bonas would have been as a wife to HRH Prince Henry of Wales, is a moot point. Who knows, perhaps, Harry was being forced into the relationship so that his older brother could have access to Cressida’s older sister, Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe. Is it any wonder why Sam Branson keeps his wife as far away from the isle of England as possible. Of course, had Harry married Cressida, this newfound media love for Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge would not have eventualised. She would be portrayed, even more so, by the DailyMail as workshy and they would even up the practise of only printing photographs of her when her face is at rest, which is a decidedly hard affair. For being blonde, blue-eyed and with an artisan’s fey beauty, Cressida, had Prince Harry married her in May 2018, would currently be eclipsing Catherine, who is now being seen as a fashion icon. No matter how DailyMail repackage and champion Catherine, she is a relative dud when publicly speaking as Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex has time and again proven. The Duchess of Sussex’s commanding performance at the 2018 British Fashion Awards at Royal Albert Hall truly was a study is grace, poise, elegance and commanding stage presence. You’ve either got it or, as in Catherine’s case, you don’t. Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex is quite confidently aware that a mic is Catherine, HRH Duchess of Cambridge’s kryptonite.

The DailyMail and its gang of racist boors can vent and gloat all they want but if HRH Prince Henry, Duke of Sussex were to have married a conservative Muslim and converted, for fear of ending up with their fetid skull on the small of their back, every one of their cowardly racist boors would know to keep their damn mouths shut. Of one thing they are certain, fucking with blacks will earn you no serious repercussions. The DailyMail‘s hacks have proven that England is the isle of the original hooded klansfolk; they are just a little bit more evolved to the point where their hoods have become invisible but no less ugly are they. In the end, who could give a fuck; the boors of the isle of England most certainly did not invent Jazz and speaking of which…

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After having pored through this year’s TD Toronto Jazz Festival lineup, I knew that there was only one show that I cared to attend. The Diana Ross show at the Sony Centre though tempting, however, the centre is just too cavernous a space. Jazz needs the warmth and intimacy of a smaller venue. Besides, I knew damn well that coming the day after the Pride parade, there would be queens aplenty in the audience. Most of them would be expecting the usual Diana Ross show; however, this was going to be a Jazz show.

As ever, I did not attend Pride parade, never have. Back in 1986, Merlin and I hauled arse to a dinner party in the Annex where an artistic director associate of his, held court. Frankly, neither men liked each other but for professional reasons one endured much. Among the group of 8 souls was a redhead interior decorator from New York City who was the most vile dirty-arsed bigot conceivable. Naturally, with yours truly present, he just had to wax overlong about what a scourge on human civilisation blacks the world over were.

Merlin stealthily reached across my plate and removed my steak knife from the plate and placed it to his left as I sat on his right. Finally, when we got home by cab as Merlin sought to shift my mood by playing some Miles Davis, I went and retrieved a pair of scissors and demonstrated to him on returning to the living room, “That’s it, I am cancelling my membership in Gay society. God only knows it is not as if these blasted, motherfucking lisping, bottom-feeding people invented Jazz.” For me what really settled it, was the redhead boor’s decree, “Sorry dear but there is no black in the rainbow.”

Of course, a couple of years back the Black Lives Matter delegation, which had been invited to march in the Gay Pride parade, were booed, heckled and pelted with unopened water bottles. That very day on my way home, I was also attached and it was much fuelled by the general anger at having had the Black Lives Matter contingent in the parade. To this day, the pride community are still mad at the Police and had banned them from participating in the parade, all because they allowed the Black Lives Matter group into the parade. Even though the group had been invited, they were treated by spectators as though they did something as irresponsible as simply showed up and high-jacked the parade.

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The above photograph was the look for the opening act, one of those regrettable experiences, which alas the Canada Council foists on one, god only knows why. Banal and as sexually intriguing as a live webcam set up on a couple of koala bears in repose, some things just have to be endured to get one through to the real deal. As my date, an ageing Jewish actor/writer with the most wicked sense of humour is always great company, we sat in the back row, all to ourselves, in fits of delicious giggles – we were poring through online photographs of Céline Dion parading in haute couture in Paris in the lead up to Paris Fashion Week; when asked what I thought of her whacky, over-the-top, beyond desperate behaviour, I flatly put in, “it ought damn well to be kept leashed and staked out back.”

Next, it was my turn to come undone when no sooner than having slipped in the breath mint that he whispered, “those are the new mint-flavoured super laxatives, I was telling you about.” How soul-gnawing is emulative institutional Jazz whose practitioners know nothing either of blacks or black culture? Hell, even after the bass solo, there was no applause from the house.

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Finally, like a lover with the most foul breath but whose girthsome jousting simply won’t be denied – then the malodorous rogue leaves and you shudder in disgust and return to breathing like a human rather than a goddamn humpback whale – the opening act vacated the stage and when the stagehands were done, only the grand piano was left. Out then walked Cécile McLorin Salvant with a puckish accompanist and it was readily obvious that there is an indelible soul connection between the two, which speaks to intimacy most rare and also more than a dozen past-life connections. Even Cécile’s body had changed, she looked more lived in, she was getting good loving and it showed.

Before proceeding, let me just state that this was the most phenomenal and best Jazz concert that I have ever attended. From Hoagy Carmichael, to Barbara Streisand, to Bessie Smith, every song was her own and every song was a master class in musicianship and phrasing. Then two things happened that blew me even further away; firstly, she sang, Midnight Sun. This is a song that for me as long as I live, will always evoke the most pleasurable memories of living at John Hirsch and Brian Trottier’s Moore Park Home at 187 Hudson Drive in the summer of 1990 after Merlin had passed and I reinvented self and took the time to travel. Until this concert, no one had ever done a better version of Midnight Sun than Sarah Vaughan, whose version daily played at that lovely Moore Park home.

Secondly, Cécile paused and asked if anyone in the audience was French, to which there was a boisterous response and then she asked to sing a song in French. By the time she was done, I was reduced to tears, even my usual jaded friend was blown away. At the conclusion the house went wild and I was reminded of those years living in Montréal and attending all those summer festivals across the province.

Let’s see Canadian, Diana Krall sing en Français in this supposed bilingual country and I am not talking any of that tawdry attempt at French musicianship as with the likes of Emilie-Claire Barlow et al. Unlike those frauds who suffocated the blackness out of Jazz in the 90s and beyond, Cécile is the real McCoy. The primary musical instrument in human civilisation is the voice and when it comes to Jazz, not only is it a language that is the extension of the griot tradition, nothing sounds like, feels like, moves you like the instrument that is the black voice; there simply aren’t any comparisons. This is the voice, the instrument, when on walking through your door can revivify and empower you like no other instrument can and most especially so after having experienced racial animus for the 14th millionth and fifty-seventh time in this lifetime.

During the course of the show, her accompanist did something that I had never before witnessed, Sullivan Fortner got from the piano stool to reach inside and pluck on the strings, making for all intents the most beautiful mbira imaginable. Sullivan proved himself the perfect accompanist to Cécile and it was clear by the end of the concert that these two lovely, magical and gifted souls have thankfully found each other and how we are better for them being in the world. The love and harmony they share, was as rich and smooth as the warmest honey satiating the palate. Even the encores were concerts onto themselves. If there is anything that can be said to be good, to have come from Roy Hargrove’s passing, is that it created the opportunity for both Sullivan and Cécile to form a most productive collaboration.

As we left Koerner Hall, both of us giddy with joy for having been richly inspired, there was a guy outside the theatre, hawking the program for Jazz FM. Brusquely, I declined taking one, I soon explained that I had no desire to be associated with the Jazz radio when they went and hired someone whom Merlin dismissed back in his early on-air days as VJ at MuchMusic as a smug bigoted asshole. Indeed, an ageing leopard does not his spots lose. Just for writing a few hit songs and having made a few million dollars changes nothing. As Merlin always said, “a man changes clothes and nothing else.”

Though last year, there were three good concerts during the Jazz Festival; this year, one only needed to have attended one concert and boy am I richly inspired for having done so. On parting, we both agreed that it really was an awesome concert; more than that, we admitted that it was high time that we saw Rocketman before it goes to video.

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