Mild-mannered Berlin

1st September. No chance of a gig in Berlin, I think, no one gives a shit in a super-saturated market where international battalions deploy steely determination to making it as bohemian artists. Why are they all marching towards Berlin? How does this city manage to maintain its reputation of gritty, risk and avant-garde? I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of people living nasty lives in nasty environments here, like in all big capitalist cities, but where 99% of the tourists go Berlin is a stuffy bourgeois stronghold, roamed by bovine mothers pushing around chunks of boiled ham in designer little hats and booties and filled with wholesome restaurants where local yuppies indulge in their favourite brand of politics: eating organic falafel. During a brief walk in Charlottenburg we identify a slew of subversive places such as: organic hair salon; ayurvedic massage; evangelical church (three); pedicure salon (loads); and dog aromatherapy salon.

Such a mild-mannered city with such a bad reputation is manna for the faux-bohemian. You can stuff your face with delicatessen food in ritzy cafes in Prenzlauer for 10 euros, checking your facebook, and go back to tell your friends how cool was your week in Berlin, like, modernist, experimental, dangerous! Oh, how inspirational being in such an effervescent environment was for your ‘projects’ (of updating your Twatter profile). Simply whispering this magical name, “Berlin”, intimates to the listener, and yourself, that you have lived for a week in a squat with Karl Marx and Walter Benjamin, smoking opium, drinking methanol and discussing the death of the author until dawn. I want a flat here!
tchuss-tchuss,
la mordue

Bourgeois agonies in Berlin

30th August. I wouldn’t like to excessively bare my narcissistic self-scrutinizing but I often wake up in cold sweats around 5 am after a night of intoxication, paranoid about what I’ve said and done. Did I look smart, intellectual, artsy and edgy but in an unassuming, self-deprecating-way? Was I offensive, maybe? Grotesque?It's a symptom of my inability to forget about the disembodied mommy/daddy monster that always calls me to order, asking me if I’ve been a good girl/boy, worthy, conscientious and ambitious, if I did my homework, my prayers, stayed away from impure thoughts and washed behind my ears. I try not to respond, fake I don't hear it, but it is lodged somewhere outside my reach like an itchy point that makes you chase after your own tail, first furiously, then desperately, until you’re left panting and shamed. From there it pours its nocturnal call into my inner ear. I then crawl, whimpering, wet, a child debased by her gods again. We, the stodgy class, are dreaming of being the split receptacle of pleasure and death and end up splayed out in a doomed battle to be lost nightly at 5 a.m. in a puddle of bodily secretions.

We are in Berlin, in this apparently famous “Bar 25” place, chatting, intoxicating and watching a smart play I quite enjoy.

Next morning I’m in agony: How did I look? Was I too eager about the play thus loosing avant-garde credentials in front of the cooler sceptics? Was I, au contraire, pretentious? Did my accent sound fake? I’m considering giving up intoxication, but Primrose tells me that people find me weirder and more irritating when I’m sober. Anyway, it’s bloody hard to impress the European artsy crowd, they are so self-assured, so immutable:

“Young Parisians are so French, they eat patisserie.
Young Parisians are so French, not like you and me!” (Adam and the Ants)

tchuss-tchuss, la mordue.