Ah, L’amour

We at the Luminato blog know that love takes many forms: The love a mom has for her daughter, the love between two friends who hooked up one night a few years ago and might do so again tonight, to the love a ten-year-old kid has for a gigantic spotlight that responds to his hearbeat.

Love was in the air Monday night at the Harbourfront Centre.

Wanda and Blair, a mother and daughter who declined to give last names (which makes them extra hip, like Prince or Madonna), were on hand to spend some quality, post-college time together. Blair is finally home for the semester (she goes to Guelph) (go Gryphons!), and Wanda took a day off from her job as an office administrator for a chiropractor so they could spend the day touring Luminato. They took in Leonard Cohen’s Drawn to Words (“He’s a really talented artist,” Blair said) and headed to the Harbourfront for some traditional mom-and-daughter fare: A Hawksley Workman concert. They also took in The Stills. Like everyone, they’re fascinated by the spotlights that surround them, mimicking people’s hearbeats (part of Pulse Front).

“We wondered what everyone was doing, actually,” said Wanda, looking at the sky.

A few feet away stood Michelle Alexander and Kelly Penner, actors who just moved to Toronto from British Columbia and Windsor respectively. They’re not a couple. Not really. But if you ask them what their status is, they smile, and shift from foot to foot, and their eyes meet and they laugh.

“We have been in the past,” Alexander says.

They’re here to see Hawksley Workman, who, according to Alexander, was huge at the University of Windsor, where she and Penner went to school. Just huge.

A short walk away from them is the highlight (whoops!) of the evening: A little boy named Todd (his mother, Jocelyn, didn’t let us print his last name either). Todd isn’t here for Hawksley Workman. Todd couldn’t care less about the unique cabaret-rock stylings of Hawksley Workman. Todd is holding onto a pair of sensors like they were his only link to the real world, and staring at the light beam blinking on and off over his head. See, each of the lights of Pulse Front respond to anyone who grasps the sensors linked to them. They respond by blinking on and off, perfectly in tune with the rhythm of the grasper’s pulse.

“That’s my heartbeat?” he asks. “That’s awesome.”

Love. It’s a beautiful thing.