Here, we LOVE stories of the night!
Do you have an incredible story, or one that marked you, that you would like to see kept somewhere in the great story of the underground night…?
No need to be a DJ, an artist or a dancer. If music, the night and people have mattered in your life, your story belongs here.
saved
my life
Tell us, how did music save your life?
This is the big question of Soul Memory. Whatever your answer, it belongs here.
“When I suffer, when I hurt, when I have no more words or ears left to say or hear what needs to be said, there is only one thing left: dancing, music, to forget everything so I can find myself a little more.”
So what is this SOUL spirit you're telling us about?
You may have lived it already.
That well-being.
That feeling of belonging, an impression of simply being part of the whole when everything is perfect.
It's so perfect you don't even notice the perfection, because everything is perfect. It's awesome.
What unites us, when you think about it, isn't it all those experiences shared throughout your underground life in Montreal, or elsewhere in the world... ?
You share stories, values, principles with people, in an activity you all CHOSE to live, like all those other people.
You know... life at night, night as life...
So yes, you carry within you the Spirit of an underground life, and Soul Montreal proposes to name it, with everything that ties us to it, under the acronym S.O.U.L., Spirit Of Underground Living.
So yes, there is a culture that tells its story, communicates, has its own codes and strong identity divides because of the emotional weight music carries for everyone who is there for THAT!
All of this doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from thousands of conversations, encounters, laughs, fits of laughter, ideas of genius or madness. All of it flows from that.
It's like, you know, that random night when you knew nobody, yet you never felt alone. Or that time when a total stranger helped you because you were having a bit of a hard time.
And that one... the time you started talking with a total stranger, in the smoking area.
You know! You had only stepped out for a little air or a few puffs... but then, all of a sudden, there are people around, and someone you start talking with. And then we talk about what we're passionate about, what we love, what we think is cool. We're brilliant, we're funny, we find people interesting, we have compassion. We're so happy to share this moment with them.
Sometimes, often, 5 minutes turn into 45 minutes, an hour, and then, all of a sudden, time has vanished, and it's insane.
Those moments that don't exist, born of the unexpected, revealed in the timeless, carried by the absolute acceptance of the present moment, welcoming it as if there were no tomorrow.
You know, that famous cigarette, well it turned out you saw each other again, and you became friends. It's been ten years now...
Damn, that's hot.
That's what I call the spirit of an underground life.
Well, THAT's what I'm talking about.
You carry it within you, and I would love to hear it.
When you've finished reading, if you feel like it: Costa talks about this spirit in an interview with Charles Drolet.L'Envers de la Nuit · 1 hOne hour on the underground spirit and the birth of S.O.U.L.
What can a night story look like?
Not necessarily a single night. Sometimes an encounter, sometimes years of nights shared with people we know almost nothing about.
Encounters
A night story can be about encounters. A love. A friendship. People with whom the conversation just can't stop, all the way out of the bar onto the sidewalk, staying there for hours smoking cigarettes.
For years
Night stories are also those encounters that happen one day and repeat for years, without ever really knowing the name or the private life of the people you share so many moments with.
The ones we keep running into
They are the people we keep running into. The ones we dance with. The ones we talk with. The ones we share nights, habits, moments with, sometimes a whole part of our life. And whose life outside the night we sometimes know surprisingly little about.
And not only the beautiful ones
A bad experience, a lack of respect, an inappropriate gesture, a night that went wrong: those stories matter too. They teach us what could be done differently.
Read some storiesTexts written years ago, long before the project took shape
Les paroles de Chris, is the blog where Costa writes about the night: party reviews, encounters, thoughts born on the dance floor. His series La nuit, la vie forms the very first pages of this book.
Now…
tell me your story
As you would tell it to a friend…
“If you know Costa, tell it to him the way you talk to him when he listens to you. You know what he loves to hear? So go ahead, tell it.”
If you'd like to read stories already published in the Soul magazine, it's right here.
Thank you.
Your story has arrived. It will be read by our committee.
SOUL MEMORY
The memory of the night is written here. To become the memories of a lifetime
The Soul Memory project, the project of the Soul memory, aims to keep some of the stories shared by the public about their experiences from the heart of the night, from the very depths of their memories, so those experiences can finally rise up and be shared in the light.
The four letters
- Spirit — the spirit, the soul of the night
- Of — of a shared culture
- Underground — the scene, the free space
- Living — living fully, consciously
A lineage across cities and years
This spirit has a history. It goes back to 1977, to Larry Levan's Paradise Garage in New York, then to the clubs of Detroit, Chicago, London and Berlin: places built on inclusion, freedom and music as a bond between people.
In Montréal, it found one of its homes at Stereo, opened on October 3, 1998, and in all the nights that followed. S.O.U.L. belongs to this lineage; Soul Memory wants to keep its trace, for those who lived it and for those still to come.
The origin
The founder of the project is above all a keen observer of life, of thought, and of everything that makes up observable, measurable, quantifiable, qualifiable matter.
By nature and curiosity, he has written hundreds, if not thousands, of notes and memories about all these nights for more than 20 years, for everything positive or instructive they brought him. Over the years, that adds up to thousands of pages scattered across hard drives...
But by talking with people who also all have stories, often far more interesting ones (sometimes written, sometimes told, sometimes cried), one thing became obvious: it was time to give the community a way to express itself and to organize its memories.
The very humble goal of this project, still in its early days, is to offer a space to listen to, capture and safeguard your memories, so they can enter the great book of the night, made of all your stories.
“Me, I love to learn everything, I love to hear everything. Your stories fascinate me and move me.”
— Costa, founder of S.O.U.L.Where it all started
Costa talks about the underground spirit and the birth of S.O.U.L. in an episode of the podcast L'Envers de la Nuit.
L'Envers de la Nuit — L'esprit undergroundEpisode 11 · See where it all started →