I should have never confirmed him as a friend on Facebook. Ever since I started just blindly confirming ‘friend requests’, my news-feed has been clogging up with various nauseating posts: cute cats, babies and wired comments consisting mainly of oddly-produced ‘hearts’ and ‘sprinkles’. Worst of all, though, are the self-proclaimed gurus barfing their semi-digested eastern wisdom onto my morning coffee.
“Worries live in the future, regrets in the past; if you stay in this moment you will be happy,” one of them writes. Well actually this moment sucks: I was almost out of coffee so I’ve brewed this cup from the absolute last remains of the bag – I’m basically drinking lukewarm, light-brown water. Forgot to buy bread as well so I’m eating jam from the jar with a spoon (okay, not that bad), and I haven’t done the laundry for weeks so I have to put on ‘crunchy’ socks and a stinky shirt – no dude, I will not be happier “in this moment”. Actually I’ll just skip it. Instead of taking a deep breath and feeling the power of the ‘Now’, I’ll take a deep breath and feel the power of ‘Last Weekend’ instead. Forget this moment for a moment. Reminisce.
The night is warm and I’m wearing black. A small crowd is gathered in an even smaller enclosure in front of the entrance to Warehouse 9, the legendary queer oasis of Copenhagen. Bashing eyelashes, voluptuous forms and tight corsets are enjoying each other, and what appears to be an endless amount of cava and joints. I sail into the eternal ‘now’ on a raft of alcohol. The night is called Burlesque Hypnotic and for a while I am indeed hypnotised. To be nowhere but here, to believe it will go on forever – a parallel dimension for the true believers.
Alas. “Last show,” a siren voice suddenly calls from behind the velvet curtain covering the entrance, driving a stake of temporality into my endless night. “Gentleman is closing,” the faceless voice continues. Filled with the revived sense of importance following in the wake of Closing Time, I throw down my cigar and rush inside. Gentleman is brilliant. In a wildfire of top hat, chest hair, laces and ejaculating magnum champagne, he spellbinds the crowd firmly to the moment. Everyone is moved, no-one can move. Only shout, whistle, clap and stomp the floors in mad ecstasy. That was a moment!
Aaahh, there’s nothing like reminiscing about Last Weekend’s madness to put things into perspective. I wash down my diarrhoea-coffee, jump barefoot into my sneaks, type “G-E-N-T-L-E-M-A-N!” in a private message to the auto-erect Facebook guru, and rush out the door humming lines from Cohen’s ‘Closing Time’: “And I just don’t care what happens next/Looks like freedom but it feels like death/It’s something in between, I guess/It’s Closing Time.”
BABEL
French Street artist Nelio will be filling the new gallery B15 at Islands Brygge (and hopefully the streets of Copenhagen) with crisp works – don’t miss!
Gallery B15, Islands Brygge 15, 2300 Cph S; starts Aug 10, ends Sep 4, open Wed-Fri 13:00-18:00; free adm; www.flickr.com/photos/neli0
RAW 2012
Mind-numbing and teeth-grinding psycho-rave with seven stages, twelve hours of music and thousands of ravers. Go if you have deep-rooted primal frustrations that need to be sweated out of your system, or else stay far, far away!
Docken, Færgehavnsvej 35, Cph Ø; Aug 4, 21:00-07:00; 220kr, www.billetlugen.dk
Ever since he was old enough to put dirt in his mouth, Erik B Duckert has been attracted to the ground level and below. The attraction of the underground, he says, is that: “When you’re looking at a city from its gutters, you see both the faeces and the silk.” His favourite sewers are those of Copenhagen and in particular those of Nørrebro and Amager, but any place where trash is tossed and skirts are worn, he will want to rest his eyes and say his piece.
