Editor’s note: Dante Cimadamore is a Bristol born musician, recording artist, and award-winning writer for the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History. You can find his music online under the moniker Give Me Motion. He currently lives in Los Angeles and writes from his great-great grandparent’s Forestvillian antique kitchen table when he’s not on the road as a touring musician.
By Dante Cimadamore
Vancouver, B.C.
Today I find myself seated in the vast encased rotunda of the Vancouver Central Library. I’m nested between plays of Noel Coward and anthologies of Canadian poetry. I look forward to perusing some of the selections, but for now I’d like to tell you about my “ah-ha” moment with libraries.
I’ve been touring the continent for more than 15 years now and not once in my time did I ever decide to visit a library and sit down among our greatest minds and allow myself to wander.
How easily I distracted myself with cafes and croissants and other cozy oases of consumerism when stacks and stacks of solace awaited me.
All I had to do was walk through the front door. No passport, no ID, no credit card needed. No music to be heard except for the steady hum of the HVAC, the flip of a neighbor’s page, the occasional printer whirling to life in the distance.
I am now recognizing how much of this public good I have taken for granted.
In this library, where a facsimile is available to me in virtually every populated area on this continent, I can unplug and remove myself for as long as I like. I can immerse myself as much as I want in the pursuit of whatever moves me.
I imagine myself in my parent’s care turning off of High Street on to Main Street and pulling into the new side entrance of the Bristol Public Library. I imagine myself holding my mother’s hand walking up the granite steps of the Bristol Public Library. I can see the rack for latest VHS rentals and a return rack across from it. I am excited to walk down the steps in the children’s section where I am excited to see my friends and hear a story read by one of our librarians.
The light pours in through the tall windows above and everything is bright and colorful. I have so many titles to explore once story time is over. I’m certainly going to be picking up something new for the next several weeks.
Time passes and card catalogs — which first felt like such an achievement to learn — turn into the computer databases we have now. They are certainly easier to maintain, but there isn’t the same payoff from the hunt.
I move from the children’s section upstairs to darker rooms with older books. My need for the local library is overtaken by the ease and availability of our school libraries and then comes the internet — and I’m gone.
I look up occasionally from a collection of Joseph Conrad short stories and I have to remember I am not in the battlefields of a Franco-Russian war, I am here in Vancouver, and I have a near infinite number of realities to explore all around me.
I am thankful for Scholastic summer reading programs and its holy matrimony with Pizza Hut. I love a stuffed-crust and late nights with R.L. Stine — keeping me fed.
But there is a new kind of freedom to be found again in this last public shelter. There’re discoveries to be made to send us down new avenues of knowledge and inspiration.
And most importantly we can be freer from the tyrannical dopamine fueled grips of our devices. At least for a few hours.
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