Dancing on Ashes (Circle)
Johanna has always hated being named Johanna
She’d find it humiliating to be reminded
Of the lack of imagination of her parents
Each time someone would call her
(She would later benefit from this lack of imagination
Because no expectations meant no disappointment
They would be positively indifferent about her life choices)
So in her tomboy phase she called herself Jo
And she was still Jo when she evolved from tomboy to butch
And still Jo when she moved to Berlin to study at
The Dietrich Deich Institute for Optic Research
(Leading in laser engineering and one of its kind in Germany
The best way to leave Lower Saxony at eighteen)
But when she met Heike, she became Sheena
She feels grateful to Heike for this and many other things
Her love, her confidence, her passionate spirit
Her generosity, her sense of cool, her accuracy
Even her stubbornness and her lack of limits
When her sexual urges shift from kinky to twisted
With Heike, Sheena learned to let go
She could give up the hardcore dyke look she sported so far
And become half Punk-Rocker, half Queen-of-the-Jungle
Or whoever else she likes or just fancies for a while
She stopped defying the world and started enjoying herself
She was the one who introduced Roller Derby to the Circle
She even had a couple of affairs
That caused terrible rows with Heike
Followed by wholehearted reconciliations
The girls from the Circle were actually quite pissed at her
Because Heike has the status of a quasi-fairy godmother
She’s been there since the very beginning
And took part in the choice of their name
Runder Winkel –
The Rounded Triangle or Triangle Circle –
And amongst other things provides the Circle’s current HQ
A vacated storage in her building’s courtyard in Neukölln
Worth probably thrice the rent she pays for it
Since the area rose as hip Kreuzkölln
The reaction of the Circlettes unexpectedly upset Sheena
Until she figured out that these girls – however unlikely –
Had become her family, whose judgment she minds
At least her Sheena-self’s family
But Sheena is the one that matters now
Sheena is even happier about being Sheena
Since Johanna – the Johanna –
Took over the headlines
First with the Augean Stables big clean-up
When she exposed in a suicidal move
All the dirty secrets of the company she headed
And of the governments and corporates dealing with it
And made the whole system quake
Then there’ve been the lawsuits and the many side scandals
Then the shooting
And now Johanna is in her media guru phase
Appearing in all the TV talk-shows as the Naked Truth
Literally naked
Splitting the crowds into two irreconcilable blocs
Either fervent supporters, if not worshipers
Hoping she will pull down the whole system
Or just thinking that she’s so cool
Or those who despise her for being a fraud, a show-off
A traitor, an exhibitionist, a mythomaniac, a troublemonger
The Triangle Circle’s girls are quite equally split over Johanna
With as many supporters than opposers
But as usually within the group
There are as many positions as members
At the exception of Véronique
Who would always agree with Rosi
But with subs you never know when it is game
And when it is real
Tonight is the Triangle Circle’s weekly meeting –
Sheena is in charge of tidying and airing the den
The last issue of what they call a meeting was boosted
With alcohol, tobacco, MJ and generated much sweat –
And Johanna will be – again – the main topic
Because there is this gathering in a few weeks
There’ve been more and more of these over the last months
All over Germany, and a few in other European countries
But this one will be huge
There is a call to converge on Berlin this time
It’s one of these Facebook things without real organizers
That panic the authorities and the police
As always when they lack people to threaten and punish
It is acknowledged that the core of Johanna’s followers
Is composed of housewives, young pensioners
Unemployed graduates and teenage girls
And her later persona lost her all political credibility
But the social phenomena attracts more and more activists
And since the Berlin gathering is officially denounced
As illegal, seditious and dangerous for its participants
And drastic repression by the police is inevitable
The word propagates in the underground
That Black Blocs will get involved to righteously protect
The amateur protesters from the riot cops
The association of Johanna and Black Blocs
Will definitely stir the group tonight
It is obvious that Sabina will come up again
With her thing about starting an all-female Black Bloc
To not let all the fun and action go to the lads
And she will try again to talk some of the girls –
Mostly the Roller Derby players such as Sheena –
Into joining her project
Though the main agenda of the Circle
Is to sip beers and gossip in fine company
Give a hand to the Anti-Christopher Street Day Parade –
The alternative gay pride demonstration in Kreuzberg –
Or lately loudly cheerlead and celebrate the victories
Of the Berliner Arbeiterin Sportverein –
Sheena and Britta’s Roller Derby team for which
The Triangle Circle became an unofficial supporters’ club
Heike and Devyani being the most fervent
Heike because Sheena is the jammer of the team
And Devyani at first because she has an acknowledged fetish
For tattooed and pierced girls
(Though she herself never indulged in body modifications –
She considers that this belongs to white folks)
And she particularly loves neo-classic white trash Americana
En vogue amongst 21st century German Roller Derby players
Sheena will decline again Sabina’s proposition
There are enough bruises to heal (with kisses or arnica)
After a match to seek more from the police truncheons
And she can’t believe in mass action even if she understands
People’s need to imagine that they have a say in public affairs
And that they can make things better
She thinks that many different avant-gardes are needed
Some have to confront directly the Powers-that-Be
To make clear that the status quo is not acceptable
Some have to explore new paths
And create new ways for the common good
She hopes that she doesn’t abuse herself
That promoting sisterhood is a valuable personal duty
That celebrating joy, liveliness, beauty, freedom
Is not just a selfish agenda but can benefit everybody
That freeing people from bitterness, frustration, ignorance
Narrow-mindedness, inhibition, anhedonism or malice
Matters as much – if not more –
As redistributing the means of production
Of whatever else is supposed to give people
Control over their destinies
That’s what gives Sheena wings
As she whirls around the Roller Derby elliptical track
Slaloming between her Amazonian adversaries
Dressed in a vinyl miniskirt and fishnet tights
Wearing wheeled knee-high boots
A DDR-khaki T-shirt with rainbow strips along the arms
And a black leather peaked cap toping her pink dyed hair
Fueled by the wild cheers of her exhilarated gang
Flying to the victory with style and gusto.
Dancing on Ashes (Amsterdam)
A few months before she flies to Java
To die on the land of her ancestors
(Well not exactly her ancestors but this is another story)
A land she never visited before
Or doesn’t know much about actually
Yu is in Amsterdam
She just had the confirmation that her Jonson syndrome
Has reached the lethal point she feared all her short life
Since her parents’ restaurant on Zeedijk closed
She hardly goes back to the Red Light District
And not at all since the dance studio on Koestraat closed as well
That was a couple years ago, and things changed a lot since
The new city council, under the pressure of EU
Started the gentrification process of the area
Now at least a third of the famous windows
Are rented to fashion designers
Who probably think they are so cool and daring
To share the district with prostitutes and drug dealers
Like on American TV series
Now the only guys dressed like pimps in the place
Are hyped young trendsetters and art students
Between their flea market phase and the minimalist one
Yu also used to wear layers of 1€ clothes from Waterlooplein
She wore hideous woollen skirts over Adidas pants cut knee-high
Over ragged jeans stuck in big flashy leg warmers
And AFC Ajax scarf and ski cap she was particularly fond of
Today for the very first time she wears heels and a miniskirt
(It’s springtime in A’dam)
Because on the list of what she has to do before dying
There are a few things related to sex
First Yu passes by Oudekerkplein
To see this renowned anonymous ground sculpture
Of a hand grabbing a tit
Today she takes the time to really look at it
And slowly she feels the bronze hand
Holding her own bronze breast
First she expects to sense nothing
Like usually
Dreadfulness and excitement cancelling each other
But today in this sluttish outfit
Yu catches something different
Something violent
Rising through her shielded perception
As she stands over the sculpture
A fat black woman in a white lace basque
Looks at her from her window, smiling
Strangely she reminds her of these Matongué mamas
Who board Euroline coaches at the Brussels bus stop
Then she remembers this trip a few years ago
When she first met this girl with the tattoo on her face
Who called her Buddhaface
Like Yu was the special one
By then the stone Buddha had already started growing in her
And had already taken control of her heart
And brain
And body
And face
Now, before the weight of the mineral Buddha
Drags her to the tomb
She must start her own quest
And experience… well, everything
Or at least something else
But there’s nothing she can share anymore
Neither with friend or lover
She was never deprived of either
She was always eager to bathe herself in warm feelings
But now she’s beyond that
Beyond the illusion of love and friendship
Now it’s time for the body to be crude and raw and free
Yu walks by the sex-shop windows along the Voorburgwal
As a teenager she used to come around with her gang
Pointing at giant dildos, crotchless panties and riding crops
Bursting into laughter and squeaky screams
Hissed away by half-irritated half-amused hookers
Alone she’d usually just look straight and walk slightly faster
Today she stops and looks for good
She looks to see and see beyond
The whole city revolves around merchandised sex
And later in school when amongst a group of foreign students
It’s understood that you talk casually and slightly blasé
About sex toys, porn, prostitution, group sex and stuff
But kids have a way here to develop selective blindness
About grown-up matters, and later on it’s simpler to go on like this
So today she really looks
For the first time
She tries to imagine manufactured objects loving her
How their technological indifference would be stimulating
She tries to imagine herself attired in fishnet and rubber
Warmth underlaid by cold and soft by hard
Being exposed in this ineptly inverted intimacy
Would somehow feel right again in our upside-down reality
Yu checks around if people noticed her staring at a window
But here it’s all very normal, and it looks mostly
Like a cheap souvenir shop window
For loudmouth Russian businessmen who couldn’t come home
Without a penis-shaped crystal bong and a few salacious stories
And aroused French couples on extended weekend trips
Yu wants to get inside one of these shops
But not a cheap one with plastic day-glow gadgets and pink lace
So she walks around to find a more attractive place
Until she remembers
That the only shops that are not targeted at philistines
Sell fetish clothes and bondage accessories
Then she knows where to go
Yu contemplates a wall-display covered with leather masks
Surgical steel butt-plugs, handcuffs, anal hooks, ball-gags, whips
Corsets, slave collars, hoods, chain harnesses, chastity belts,
Cock rings and cages, nipple clamps, leg-spreaders, straps, ropes
Strap-on dildos, spanking skirts, love balls and designer sex toys
Slightly high with the heady smell of rubber
A part of her feels overwhelmed
But mostly she feels distant and a little bit sad
As if all this belongs to a past that never occurred
She can’t be burdened with objects
She can’t be hidden or disguised
She’s standing there for a long while in front of this love weaponry
As if entranced
The shop hostess leaves her alone
A pretty, sexy and seemingly crazy Asian girl
Staring at the complete paraphernalia
Meant to turn her into the ultimate sex slave
This is good for business
Yu knows now what she was looking for in the Red Light District
She wants to be looked at
With nothing between her and the viewer
No clothes, no dance, no love, no feelings
She wants to be freed from saṃsāra
She doesn’t want to think too much because she will be scared
She has to do it right now
She remembers this club on Warmoesstraat
A kind of underground place mixing sex shows and cabaret
One or two girls from school have been dancing there
For the thrills, quick money and street credibility
It is open 24/7, but you have to know how to find it
They pretend to be illegal, that’s the best advertisement
This strong stench of beer yeast and sweat
People have to get used to since smoking is forbidden
Rises from the descending staircase
In the hall there are big photos of live sex acts from the 80s
And black and white posters announcing the current show
“Dancing on Ashes” aka “the Lumpenkabarett”
The room is very dark but the stage is brightly lit
A half-naked girl in kabuki make-up just stepped in the spotlights
Yu sits at the table closest to the entrance door
And waits for the end of the sketch to try to get noticed by the crew.
video
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Lumpenkabarett, thank you for paying us a visit – thank you for paying anyway! After all, that’s what you do: you’ve been working like morons all day long to pay your boss’s sex tour in Bangkok next month, and to pay your taxes so Lumpenproletarien and artists can survive on public subsidies. Anyway, this is one of the few happy times you’ll have this year, so, let’s have fun…
This is the Lumpenkabarett, here we have sharp Kunst, good music and hot ladies, such as I. And I tell you, people, it’s good to be a lady. I say, I feel sorry for the men here but really it’s so good to be a woman. Only a woman can look beautiful and dignified in heels and stockings, on all four, gagged and chained in the basement with a ponytail butt-plug stuck in the ass. I can tell you, I was there 10 minutes ago!
Much joy in being a woman, indeed, and again, I feel sorry for men! The problem with guys is that they only have one dick, this is far from enough! We know it, they know it, that’s where all the trouble starts. So the smart ones comfort each other, and we girls are left with the dumb ones! Oh, what a misery.
Dumb for dumb, that is why many ladies choose to have a special friend that comes without any annoying side effects. So do I, so let me introduce you, not with but to my best friend here… I always carry him around, not in my pocket though, he doesn’t fit in my pocket, of course – otherwise he wouldn’t be my best friend! You know, size matters… So hey, this is G., say hello to G! He is always on the spot, dear little darling! He’s so cute, he’s like a liquorice popsicle.
G. is a little bit fat and needs to exercise, so we train together everyday, but not too much because I want him to stay a little bit fat… Well yes, men take pride in having a long cock, but of course ladies, we know, it is the width that matters. It has to be a bit difficult to be enjoyable, doesn’t it? Ladies, tell this to your partners, it’s time the truth comes into daylight! Anyway, I do try not to use it too much because I want to stay tight like a politician’s grip on power.
What? What do you say, G.? I talk too much? But little darling, that’s what I’m here for! No, the live sex show is later, sorry… What, you think you know how to make me shut up? But you’re too big to fit in my mouth, naughty boy, aren’t you? But if you think (mumble)… well that’s all right with me. Oh lala, anyway, let’s go on now.
I can see you all marvel at this beauty, who would not? Yes I will share it; I already have a date tonight actually. Yes, with you lady, you with the white blouse! You can come backstage after the show, like we agreed, G. will happily service you while you lick my pussy; I just had it waxed and it’s smooth like George Bush’s brainwave. I’ve always been very anti-bush… And if you’re not vigilant, it can come back without you noticing! What, your husband wants to come too? No problem, I just wanted to try a new trick with gaffer-tape that I learned yesterday from Herr Bürgermeister… Well, OK, where was I?
And now, ladies and gentlemen! It is high time to introduce my other best friend. For G. would be a lonely little boy and I would be of course a frustrated little girl without our dear friend Hans-Heinrich - better threesome than lonesome. Hello Hans-Heinrich, say hello to our lovely audience. Don’t be upset with the spotlights, I know that you’re more used to darker places, but this is the Lumpenkabarett, everything must go into the light!
As you can see Hans-Heinrich is a sophisticated fellow, a beautiful synthesis of technology, anatomy and fantasy and – sorry G., I need my two hands so I must stick you there for a while… - he can serve a variety of purposes that are all highly enjoyable. He’s an honorable whip and a fantastic butt-plug for pony play. He’s also slightly oversized for an honorable lady such as I, but everything is in the process, very slow and lubricated. But it’s getting too intimate, isn’t it?
You know, you often hear that in love, I mean in sex… actually, no, in love, the foreplay is very important. Well, this is not true, the foreplay is actually everything! And for people like me, the foreplay is happening all the time. Night and day, everything I do, whatever I wear, it’s always a part of the foreplay. That’s also why I’m here in front of you in the Lumpenkabarett, ladies and gentlemen, when I’m on stage I’m making love to you… That doesn’t mean that you make love to me, but hey, one has to choose her side!
But it’s getting late, people, it’s time to get a good resting night because you start working at dawn tomorrow. So a light dinner, a little honeyfuck and hop into bed! And me? I must now satisfy my little friends, for we have a rule, they can never go back to their scabbards without being used… So, duty calls, bye-bye!”
Dancing on Ashes (North)
Just imagine a cold morning, a very cold one
After a wild party in the woods, a wild wild one
The cabin reeks of cold tobacco, sweat, spilled beer and kerosene
Skullface - who is not Skullface yet, but will be very soon -
Wakes up from pain, then cold, then more pain
The kerosene heater is far from enough, the wood fire is dead
She has to pick a few logs outside to start a new one
Or these drunken morons will freeze to death
Adrift in the vapors of their alcoholic sleep
Her face is burning like hell
She also feels frozen and nauseated, but this is more familiar
Wrapped in a rough blanket over the clothes she slept in
(For at least five days now)
She loosely puts on her army boots and drags her feet to the door
She stands shivering a couple of minutes in the doorway
Staring at what seems to her an almost petrified forest
Until she notices the liveliness of morning birds’ singing
Moving has reactivated her blood circulation
And revives the pain, and blood starts to drip on her face
She enjoys every bit of it
Because she wanted it so badly
And now she is the queen of her tribe
She reached the acme of her street credibility
And she’s lost forever to the Christian capitalist bourgeois society
She can’t smile because of the crusts on her lips
She puts three logs in the rusted cast iron stove
And adds a glass of kerosene to start a quick fire
They won’t call her Snow White anymore
Like these suckers used to
And they won’t call her the Austrian Virgin anymore
(She used to pretend to be a virgin
It aroused the guys
Who talked of sacrificing her to Satan, or Odin, or Hitler
But of course she hadn’t been a virgin for a while already
Wasn’t she raised in the Commune
Under the rule of free love?)
She softly touches her swollen face with icy fingertips
It relieves the pain for a short while
She has a pocket mirror somewhere in her rucksack
But she wants to feel it from the inside before seeing it
And she knows that for a few days
Her face will be bruised and bleeding
Right now she probably looks as scary as the Krampus
The devil that hunts children on the 5th of December
Every year she expected and feared its celebration
When she visited her grand parents in the Berchtesgadener Alps
She also brought some healing cream and her favorite painkillers
But yesterday’s cheap and strong Estonian vodka
Still keeps her numb enough for the moment
A growl comes from one of the human shapes
Cocooned in sleeping bags on the cabin’s floor
It’s big Varulv, who spent half of the night
Drunkenly screaming to the trees
His hatred of humans and society and above all Christians
Varulv who sang of destruction and blood and fire
Imploring unresponsive Nordic Gods to assist him
In his desperate fight against Christian capitalist nihilism
That allows the weak to rule the powerful
In Norwegian police files
Varulv is recorded as the leader of this Black Metal gang
That gather today in the woods north of Lillehammer
Half celebrating loose spring rites
And actually half running from the police
After the last wooden church arson reactivated
The media’s hysteria against the rising Black Metal Satanism
And the gang’s latent and constitutive paranoia
She plays with the thought of Varulv’s reaction
When he sees her ravaged face
Despite his outrageously staged misanthropy
He’s a sensitive and ambiguous boy
Though struggling with his appetite for personal power
He will love her and hate her for what she did
She will be the living icon of this gang of wrecked kids
She who sacrificed her juvenile beauty to the Darkness
When most of them are mere turbulent teenagers
On vacation from dull parents, schools and futures
But where she’s from, standards are different
Otto will hate her, she can tell for sure
For the same reasons that Varulv will
Because she overpowered them
The old Viennese actionist
And the young Black Metal thug
She is both a living piece of art walking the earth
And a bloody spit at the face of society
And she did it alone, she’s only sixteen and already far ahead
Well she did it almost alone
The Russian guy who tattooed her claims to have learnt his art
In a Uralian gulag
Not a political prisoner though, but what they called a hooligan
A street kid re-educated in camps
Who learned to love the Soviet Union like the mother he never had
And still does, though it has collapsed a couple of years ago
He had plenty of tattoo practice on his fellow zeks
Including shocking face tattoos
Once relocated in the west (it’s not clear how this happened)
He realized that there, tattooing pays much better than thievery
The metalhead kids in Oslo love his genuine Mafiya tattoos
They line up in front of his tiny shop to get inked
And they invite him to their crazy parties
Sometimes they do quite scare him
These little spoiled brats have no principles and no limits
The girls are particularly scary
In Motherland they never had to display this level of machismo
The German one he’s tattooed last night
Seemed to have plotted for months
For this conjunction to happen
The group of kids gathering in the forest away from Oslo
Him invited to supposedly the wildest party ever
The presence of an unusual amount of fierce alcohol
Everybody collapsing a little bit to soon
Himself drunk enough to be convinced to do a face tattoo
On an under-aged runaway
(He would never have done this in his renowned tattoo parlor
In fear of loosing his license – wild days are behind!)
But still he was able to hold firmly the needle and draw the lines
Of a stylized skull
On this pretty face.
After a wild party in the woods, a wild wild one
The cabin reeks of cold tobacco, sweat, spilled beer and kerosene
Skullface - who is not Skullface yet, but will be very soon -
Wakes up from pain, then cold, then more pain
The kerosene heater is far from enough, the wood fire is dead
She has to pick a few logs outside to start a new one
Or these drunken morons will freeze to death
Adrift in the vapors of their alcoholic sleep
Her face is burning like hell
She also feels frozen and nauseated, but this is more familiar
Wrapped in a rough blanket over the clothes she slept in
(For at least five days now)
She loosely puts on her army boots and drags her feet to the door
She stands shivering a couple of minutes in the doorway
Staring at what seems to her an almost petrified forest
Until she notices the liveliness of morning birds’ singing
Moving has reactivated her blood circulation
And revives the pain, and blood starts to drip on her face
She enjoys every bit of it
Because she wanted it so badly
And now she is the queen of her tribe
She reached the acme of her street credibility
And she’s lost forever to the Christian capitalist bourgeois society
She can’t smile because of the crusts on her lips
She puts three logs in the rusted cast iron stove
And adds a glass of kerosene to start a quick fire
They won’t call her Snow White anymore
Like these suckers used to
And they won’t call her the Austrian Virgin anymore
(She used to pretend to be a virgin
It aroused the guys
Who talked of sacrificing her to Satan, or Odin, or Hitler
But of course she hadn’t been a virgin for a while already
Wasn’t she raised in the Commune
Under the rule of free love?)
She softly touches her swollen face with icy fingertips
It relieves the pain for a short while
She has a pocket mirror somewhere in her rucksack
But she wants to feel it from the inside before seeing it
And she knows that for a few days
Her face will be bruised and bleeding
Right now she probably looks as scary as the Krampus
The devil that hunts children on the 5th of December
Every year she expected and feared its celebration
When she visited her grand parents in the Berchtesgadener Alps
She also brought some healing cream and her favorite painkillers
But yesterday’s cheap and strong Estonian vodka
Still keeps her numb enough for the moment
A growl comes from one of the human shapes
Cocooned in sleeping bags on the cabin’s floor
It’s big Varulv, who spent half of the night
Drunkenly screaming to the trees
His hatred of humans and society and above all Christians
Varulv who sang of destruction and blood and fire
Imploring unresponsive Nordic Gods to assist him
In his desperate fight against Christian capitalist nihilism
That allows the weak to rule the powerful
In Norwegian police files
Varulv is recorded as the leader of this Black Metal gang
That gather today in the woods north of Lillehammer
Half celebrating loose spring rites
And actually half running from the police
After the last wooden church arson reactivated
The media’s hysteria against the rising Black Metal Satanism
And the gang’s latent and constitutive paranoia
She plays with the thought of Varulv’s reaction
When he sees her ravaged face
Despite his outrageously staged misanthropy
He’s a sensitive and ambiguous boy
Though struggling with his appetite for personal power
He will love her and hate her for what she did
She will be the living icon of this gang of wrecked kids
She who sacrificed her juvenile beauty to the Darkness
When most of them are mere turbulent teenagers
On vacation from dull parents, schools and futures
But where she’s from, standards are different
Otto will hate her, she can tell for sure
For the same reasons that Varulv will
Because she overpowered them
The old Viennese actionist
And the young Black Metal thug
She is both a living piece of art walking the earth
And a bloody spit at the face of society
And she did it alone, she’s only sixteen and already far ahead
Well she did it almost alone
The Russian guy who tattooed her claims to have learnt his art
In a Uralian gulag
Not a political prisoner though, but what they called a hooligan
A street kid re-educated in camps
Who learned to love the Soviet Union like the mother he never had
And still does, though it has collapsed a couple of years ago
He had plenty of tattoo practice on his fellow zeks
Including shocking face tattoos
Once relocated in the west (it’s not clear how this happened)
He realized that there, tattooing pays much better than thievery
The metalhead kids in Oslo love his genuine Mafiya tattoos
They line up in front of his tiny shop to get inked
And they invite him to their crazy parties
Sometimes they do quite scare him
These little spoiled brats have no principles and no limits
The girls are particularly scary
In Motherland they never had to display this level of machismo
The German one he’s tattooed last night
Seemed to have plotted for months
For this conjunction to happen
The group of kids gathering in the forest away from Oslo
Him invited to supposedly the wildest party ever
The presence of an unusual amount of fierce alcohol
Everybody collapsing a little bit to soon
Himself drunk enough to be convinced to do a face tattoo
On an under-aged runaway
(He would never have done this in his renowned tattoo parlor
In fear of loosing his license – wild days are behind!)
But still he was able to hold firmly the needle and draw the lines
Of a stylized skull
On this pretty face.
Dancing on Ashes (Welcome)
Aika is a little bit from everywhere
She doesn’t want it, but she’s a little bit from everywhere
Aika is genetically cool
She can’t really do anything else, but this she does perfectly
In such a cool world, she even can make a living out of it
But then she can never leave
She can never leave the cool world
Tonight Aika is at the Lumpenkabarett
Because it’s the cool place to be
And of course, she’s a friend of one of the musicians
The one with the spooky make up
(And she is a friend of the sister of the PR of the place
Who sometimes subcontracts the cabaret program layout to her)
When Aika entered the cabaret,
She noticed right away this hip costume designer
She absolutely has to talk to him after the show
Boris first of all checks the outfits he made for the show
The chick with the flute is going to dance at some point
That’s why he put zippers on the sides of the leather mini
Quite sexy for a girl, Boris thinks absent-mindedly
Somehow he dumbly expected actual glowing cinder on the ground
I’d put her in a see-through black lace Victorian dress, he chuckles
Boris discretely takes a photo with his iPhone
It will be on his blog tonight
When does the show really start? he mutters
Boris looks around
And gets a glimpse of the girl with the tattoo on her face
Somewhere at a table in the back of the Lumpenkabarett
Fuck, Skullface looks as serene as ever
How does she do that? he wonders
Skullface appreciates the fact that people in the audience are so quiet
So far she enjoys the show – its slow unravelling
She likes this kind of focused work, it helps her to refocus
It’s easy to lose your point even when you have an imperious agenda
She’s so used to being looked at with her eerie face tattoo
That she herself became a very good watcher
But tonight Skullface worries that people will think
That she’s part of the show or something
And then she gets angry at herself
For having such insignificant thoughts
And tries to forget herself
And to open her soul to what happens on stage
Johanna is not at the Cabaret show tonight, of course
Later she will be on Das Erste again
Guest starring on Harald Schmidt’s new night-show
For the moment Johanna is still in her apartment in Cologne
She just sits still and concentrates
The people around her spontaneously became silent themselves
Like always
She just wears a long white cotton tunic
Like always
That she will drop when she enters the TV set
Like always
Because she is the naked truth
Because she is dressed with the sky
Dressed with the four cardinal points
Because when she comes naked into the spotlights and speaks
They listen to her
They let her preach about the malevolence in our consumerist society
They let her tell her story again, because that’s what the audience wants
Because she is the last TV guru
But they don’t get that she could really be the last TV guru
Still, she’s missing the Lumpenkabarett show tonight
And then the flute player puts the flute on the floor
And starts a slow dance
And Aika watches but she doesn’t see her
She sees Iggy Pop and she sees Akira Kasai
And she sees herself at the age of 10
And Boris feels drawn to the dance
He feels his thigh muscles contract in unison with her movements
And Skullface notes how the dancer’s movements create
A strange cluster of invisible lines in space
Lines and shapes that grow their own liveliness
And Johanna would have observed how the smoke slowly stirs on stage
And wraps the artists and the audience in an almost mystical fragrance
And Aika loves the transparent black Thunderbird bass
Everything on stage seems to revolve around it now
And Boris remembers the taste of his new lover last night
Then he observes himself remembering, then he dives into himself
And something in Skullface thinks of how the aspen leaves tremble
In the late spring breeze up north
And Johanna could have felt something about humility and casualness
That she will never reach again
And he bartender stretches and gets ready for the post-show beer rush
Though the show lacks the excitement that makes people thirsty
And Aika smiles genuinely at Boris
And Boris wishes he would play guitar
And Skullface resolves a long lasting problem
And nobody thinks that Johanna could have come to the show tonight
And Aika marvels at the sight of a rotating wrist
And Boris hasn’t ever been so at peace for months
And Skullface feels like going home to work right now
And Johanna is told that the limo is waiting
And the dancer leaves the stage, the musician stops playing and it’s over.
