The most hotly anticipated release of 2011 for me isn’t an album, it is a book. Sheila Heti has taken the verbal offerings of the indubitable Misha Glouberman and reformatted those thoughts into a stunning book called, in an utterly Glubermanesque truism, “The Chairs Are Where The People Go”, published by Faber & Faber.

The Toronto Launch Party for The Chairs Are Where The People Go is at the Garrison this Wednesday at 7, as part of Trampoline Hall, the lecture series that is technically taking a summer break. It is a book with the revolutionary premise of Sheila Heti taking everything Misha Glouberman says, everything, and writing it down, distilled into 175 pages. If you know anything at all about either gamester philosophist Misha Glouberman or Canlit best-hope Sheila Heti, that is enough to make you want to own this book. If you don't know about them, well please allow me to upsell the product.

I first met both Sheila Heti and Misha Glouberman in 2003, when I was naively but determinedly helping to renovate and ultimately program the new fangled Drake Hotel, which at the time was naively but determinedly set to become an artist friendly hotbed for new culture. The well intentioned but unfortunate creature that we unleashed upon the world, slouching towards Parkdale to be born, is another topic for another day, but those heady days leading up to the hotel’s re-opening had the whole neighbourhood drunk with optimism and possibilities, and Sheila and Misha were emblematic of that. The ideas they captured, refined, and put into real life seemed to be tremendously important to the owner, who was utterly taken by the open minded salon mentality of Trampoline Hall, and he asked me to go find them specifically, and find a way to get them involved in the Drake’s programming in a way that suited them best.

My first memory of Sheila was like talking to the Tardis, she has a still and strong intellect, it simultaneously draws you in and frightens you with the same sanguine vitality. We met at the Beaver for coffee and I wanted to talk to her about starting some sort of Dorothy Parker salon in what would become the Drake’s lounge. The whole time she carried this wide and deep stillness with her like the Pacific carrying the great barrier reef, she assimilates all knowledge around her and filters it into a mother-of-pearl fortress of reformatted knowledge. Any new knowledge that approaches her gets disassembled by the shredding sharp reef and rebuilt into something quite unexpected, usually involving silences. I realized after meeting with her that the best thing to do to encourage her participation in Toronto’s burgeoning art + culture world would be to leave her alone, and to not ask her to do something at the Drake. The last time I saw her doing something at the Drake she turned off all the lights except the Exit sign and staged a reading in a pitch black room. Hard on beer sales, but a brilliant idea.

My first memory of Misha came a little while later, Misha’s take on the world was quite different than Sheila’s. No less thoughtful, but more upward & outward, looming less aquatic. You get the sense that while Heti’s ideas would grow like a field of poppies, Misha’s ideas would burst open and fire off in any direction like jackpine cones in a wildfire. As a fellow Torontopian emcee we both appreciated the art of the sidetrack and the gift of the non sqeuitor, but while my non-sqeuitors usually regather and conclude just in time to introduce the next band, Misha wraps that talent into an overreaching framework of everything-ness that allows all things to fit in their intellectual place, allowing small groups to collectively understand something in a way that an individual cannot, and allowed him to transmit that point of view to a roomful of people in a way that they too could hitch themselves to the framework and see the same (often obtusely non-linear and blindingly relevant) point. We met, we spoke, he went away, and a few days later sent me an email detailing the importance of folding chairs and card tables. No other chair would do, I didn’t realize until a few re-reads that he was proposing a games night, but not a games night like you’d see at a lazy coffee house with a copy of Trivial Persuit and Scrabble propping up a table leg. He wanted to have a games night made up of games nobody could possibly imagine, explain, or play. The game involved charades, numbers, turns of phrase. Again, a rough bit of programming for beer sales, but, again, a brilliant idea.

Sheila has spent many hours listening to Misha, ever since the formation of Trampoline Hall a decade ago. His unrelenting curiosity towards life would come crashing against the great barrier reef of her ancient eternal wisdom, and while most people would be exasperated and exhausted keeping up with Misha’s explosive popcorn bag of intellect, Sheila let the ideas shred themselves against her brain, simmer and steep, and patiently waited for the meaning to emerge in new and unexpected forms.

And that in a nutshell is what The Chairs Are Where The People Go is all about, the emergence of Misha Glouberman's one of a kind worldview distilled through Sheila Heti's unflappable wordview. Two of the most interesting people in the city – my little universe – balanced together into 175 pages. Sheila wrote down everything Misha ever said, and after a while, returned it to the universe in a book format, it’s either going to be the most explosive piece of new writing to appear in Canada in 40 years, or it’s going to keep archaeologists puzzled and bewildered for millennia.

 - The Toronto Launch of The Chairs Are Where The People Go happens this Wednesday July 27 at the Garrison, 1197 Dundas W., at 7pm.