For optimal experience, put on headphones and listen to accordion music, and pretend you are reading this from ur attic at saint-germain-des-prés.
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Foreword
to better understand the innuendos mentioned here, please make sure you are au fait with the theatre of the absurd, satire, and an imagination fairly froth with plot twists and dark humor. you ought to also make sure this is a wrapping of actual messages in what Slavoj Zizek would like to call ‘pure ideology’.
***
At the boulevard de clichy in Paris, lives ‘Henri’. They, and their grand grandparents lived in that house since time immemorial. It was as old as the moulin rouge itself. If memory serves, it was built during my holiday in Bretagne, ergo, two months before moulin rouge was founded. Henri were my friend, a champagne socialist but a socialist still. They grew up in a rich family, but they were eager to devote their own sense of critical geist towards bashing capitalism. In 1899, with the release of ‘The Development of Capitalism in Russia’ by Vladimir Lenin, while exiled in Siberia, Henri and I met at a Parisian salon right next to the Marché Paul Bert of antiques. We met by accident. I was there to discuss the latest signs of a decadent modernist society whose potential telos, is to debase les beaux-arts with whoever is interested. I was desperate for a conversation that will satiate the bouts of my mal-du-siècle depression. I needed a friend for the night to bicker over the evil specter of capitalism, modernity, and whatnot. A far cry from my corner, I beheld a red-cheeked rotund lady, putting on a risqué robe displaying a symmetrically attractive pixie cut. They were obese and oddly timid. They were Henri reading a dust jacket book version of Lenin’s work.
In three weeks’ time, I will be 151 of age. I was born on October 2, 1870. And today, I am going to recount my story with Henri.
I went to Henri and talked to them. Something I rarely preach to my ego. “I am a writer manqué myself,” I said. “But I’m constantly thinking about a theatre that blends Aristophanes and Aristotle, as a feels, and as a manifestation of my society’s angst,” I added
Henri: “did you just interrupt me while reading Lenin?”
Me: “c’mon, it’s interesting, isn’t it?”
- “and by the way, are you sure Lenin was the writer of that? ‘cause that nom de plume is irreversibly suggesting otherwise. just saying”
Henri: “how about this: your idea of blended theatre, already exists. now scram!”
- still think Lenin wasn’t aware of using a nom de plume?
Me: “fair enough, let’s call it a tie” - even?
Henri: *smirks and shrugs* “whatevs!”
Me: “how about I invite you to dinner somewhere of your own choosing?”
Henri: “could you be any extrovert?”
- okay, there’s this place next to where I live, it’s burlesque. I love it there.
Me: sure thing.
toward the burlesque, we’d exchanged conversations about our lives, interests, and book recommendations obviously.
description of the burlesque.
moulin rouge is basically a cabaret that was celebrating its 2nd anniversary the day I set foot in it. It had lots of red light and naked women. well not entirely naked, yet more like inviting bustiers and corsets here and there. women at moulin rouge are somehow of literati themselves, unlike average striptease cabarets women.
Henri: “remember the blended theatre idea you had?” *pointing to a stripper* “Celine introduced me to it first.”
Henri kept talking about how smart, well-educated, and sage Celine was. hyping her had me put her image on a higher pedestal. and that was exactly why I resorted to my old friend defense mechanism I’d call: denial and co. denial and the gang had me walk away from quite a bunch of interesting ladies because I had this anxiety of overthinking the life cycle of relationships. At moulin rouge, there was a windmill at the façade where bird nests were being replaced with huge light bulbs on the day we arrived october 6th, 1891. The alley next moulin rouge was a queue for homeless-yet-well-dressed old men. On the inside, there were retro-futuristic oil paintings and expensive heirloom unguard. The backstage, where underaged dancers can be seen, wasn’t hidden from the audience. People didn’t seem to be perturbed, but they seemed entirely gobsmacked and focused. Celine and I became partners. But I was deeply saddened by Henri being left off in their love life, and friendship after my new lover. It was ten years after we’ve got to see each other again. Henri were still the same rotund hottie, and I was slowly becoming Celine’s skinny lover. My attempts to train Henri how to love, in their behest of course, would always end up with little to no avail. It was until 1997 in Rabat, where we’d meet Alain Badiou, at his book tour. Henri and I bought the book and had a chat with Alain Badiou.
Badiou: “what’s gotten into you guys to buy this piece of capitalist self-help?”
Henri: “my friend here is a desperate old man, desperate-yet-drunk in love. How could that be a geist he had carried for an arch angel’s age?”
Badiou: “you know an archangel, Lucifer himself, has an Achilles heel, and that’s love.” - So, if you think this piece of gibberish would restore love in you, you’re mistaken! - *As Henri’s cheeks seemed to be tearing at the seams of reddishness, Badiou utters* difference!
Henri: “I beg your pardon?!”
Badiou: “love is an experience of difference, once you endorse this difference, that would be the moment your love makes meaning out of itself” Henri found in repose in Alain Badiou’s book. A passage that made them find love reads: “Here, I am opposing “construction” to “experience”. When I lean on the shoulder of the woman I love, and can see, let’s say, the peace of twilight over a mountain landscape, gold-green fields, the shadow of trees, black-nosed sheep motionless behind hedges and the sun about to disappear behind craggy peaks, and know – not from the expression on her face, but from within the world as it is – that the woman I love is seeing the same world, and that this convergence is part of the world and that love constitutes precisely, at that very moment, the paradox of an identical difference, then love exists, and promises to continue to exist. The fact is she and I are now incorporated into this unique Subject, the Subject of love that views the panorama of the world through the prism of our difference, so this world can be conceived, be born, and not simply represent what fills my own individual gaze. Love is always the possibility of being present at the birth of the world. The birth of a child, if born from within love, is yet another example of this possibility.”
to be continued…
ps: most names are intentionally written in lower case.
ps2: Alain Badiou's book was published in 2009, events are fragment here.
ps3: the miniature took me an hour and a half to make and relate to the events.
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