I was not prepared to run an artist residency.
I trusted something I had been carrying for years. A quiet, stubborn conviction that my home in East Toronto could become more than a place to live. A space where creativity could breathe. Where people I believed in could do the work that matters.
Last week, that conviction became music.
I welcomed Kerven Lebrun, the Montréal-based Haitian singer-composer who goes by Kabysh, for a week-long creative retreat. We worked in my living room, surrounded by art made by friends, and by the end of the week, we had recorded a dozen songs together. Three of them we never planned. Those are always the ones.
But what happened last week was bigger than music. It was a lesson in brotherhood, in roots, and in what becomes possible when two Black men from different islands decide to be fully present with each other.
To understand why a week like this matters, you have to understand what it was pushing against. One of the most important conversations Kabysh and I had was not about music. It was about what makes music possible, and what gets in the way.
