spiegeltent withdrawal symptoms.

probably the most beautiful fun-tent to never come to melbourne this season.

following on from the introduction of amazing cabaret loveliness that is the butterfly club; i miss spiegeltent. not that i'll be in melbourne during spiegel season. but still. come back please. we can play dress-ups and talk to the boy in the top hat and have nice cocktails and watch your brilliant gypsy music and jazz music and interpretive fucking dance. croque monsieur and amanda palmer will come back. there will be tim minchin-ing and ali macgregor-ing and people watching while waiting in lines and overpriced coffee and sleeping in the grass. we good?

"A European Mirror Tent - the ultimate cabaret and music salon.

Spiegeltents are hand-hewn pavilions used as traveling dance halls, bars and entertainment salons since they were created in the early 20th century. There are only a hand-full of these unique and legendary ‘tents of mirrors’ left in the world today. Built of wood, mirrors, canvas, leaded glass and detailed in velvet and brocade, each has its own personality and style.
The most beautiful of the last remaining Belgian Spiegeltents, The Famous Spiegeltent, was built in 1920 by master craftsmen Oscar Mols Dom and Loius Goor. This Grande Dame has spent her lifetime at the bequest of festivals and fairgrounds throughout Europe and beyond, playing host to the world’s greatest cabaret artists, musicians and circus burlesque performers.

Since Marlene Dietrich sang ‘Falling In love Again’ on The Famous Spiegeltent stage in the 1930’s, its magic mirrors have reflected thousands of images of artists, audiences and exotic gatherings.

The Famous Spiegeltent is the very essence of a festival club, ‘kabaret salon’ and intimate concert hall. Like every old theatre, her ghosts travel with her, woven into ballooning velvet canopies, circular teak dance floor and stained, cut-glass windows. Her intimate booths, ornate bar and beveled mirror columns hold a million secrets while her glorious Art Nouveau chandelier, or trapeze rig, swings overhead.

The Famous Spiegeltent is a mainstay of the Edinburgh Festivals season and is a star in her own right, hosting parties, concerts, clubs and a myriad stunning performances. She has launched the careers of countless artists and travels to the four corners of the world from Edinburgh to Melbourne, Brighton to Montreal.

The Famous Spiegeltent embodies the living spirit of her operational team of the cheekiest hat checkers in the business. She is a living legend and will forever remain the stuff of dreams!
Welcome to the unique world within a world of The Famous Spiegeltent!

The Spiegelmaestro "

au cabaret

some places just feel like home.

like kitsch, victorian style, cocktail-ed, non-traditional home.

old hat basquiat.

potentially uncool, but i like jean-michael. i like him alot.

dada and graffiti and text-type and grotesqueries and colour. nice.

last night my papa and i talked art. he paid out yoko. i paid out dali. i don't like his colours. he pointed out - quite correctly - that he couldn't really comment.

i told him green wasn't really that special.

red, now if i couldn't see red, i'd be sad.

it's a bit uncool these days to be a basquiat fan. a little silly.

but he's nice.

i don't mind silliness. i think.

history on the brain.

OR: Casi pretends to study.

the waves

"But when we sit together, close,' said Bernard, 'we melt into each other with phrases. We are edged with mist. We make an unsubstantial territory"
- Virginia Woolf

the listmaker

1. learn the guitar
2. let this one go?
3. it's a directionless story, and the dialogue is lame
4. just one other
5. rearrange
6. double and triple reflections
7. paint the world you want to see
8. paint the world by the harsh light of reality
9. paint the anti-world
10. lady macbeth and marie antoinette
11. dali moustache, great beard
12. boys qui portent nice shoes
13. read your child classic literature. play them belle and sebastian.
14. seriously talk
15. this is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.
16. name it untitled
17. stick it all together
18. remember, friends
19. clean up your room and yourself
20. get a fucking coffee.

page four

'i'm far from the idyllic being you described'
OR
'in my defence, i never asked to be born in the first place'

the relationships i lead and don't lead.

That moment between goodbye and leaving - the waiting, shaking, heart-beating coffee-mess of people we become. It's all there. It's always been there, if you cared to look. If you wanted to see it.

put it into context. really.

Midnight and the blood of mutts fall bleak and heavy. Cobblestones and concrete catch and watch it dry. Together, apart, engaged in a rough dance of death, dogs, teeth, dripping, drooling, bleeding, howling, welcome strangers to their circle as the sun welcomes violence to her streets. One jumps. Teeth pierce matted fur but do not stop, no, not until they scrape bone, rough and cold of victory. There are no whimpers – ‘all that’ stopped long ago – and so it is without ceremony that one dog eats another, picking organs from a broken neck and swallowing what, just moments ago, had coughed up nature’s blood, nature’s life.
Morning and the drink of last night was still yellow in their eyes. She alludes to nothing but he knows they mean each other. They do not speak, but then, what is intimacy if not barely interrupted silences? Bruises, thick and heavy, marked the paths of others – fathers, mothers, strangers – and the only thing to do was staring from the corpses of unburied foes. Beat up, gashed, from eye to chin, from nave to chops, there was no gallantry in battles – just swift ambition, towards nothing. Whilst he may not believe in her, and her, not in him, chance had brought them to each other, and chance, no doubt, would pull them apart when they could no longer use what the other had to give. Barren, both would walk away, believing themselves to have won.
Midday, though the cool sun did not dry the throats of youth – they were all invincible, safe from themselves and really, what else was there? Men of discipline reached tops of buildings and fronts of lines, only to be pushed off, wrenched back and fallen. There was nothing. No top to climb to, no front to push to. Only hot-blooded street-corners and old-gang-games to win. And so the winners were not men of sharpness, precision, ambition or drive, but those without consequence. They slept soundly despite the blood which stained their hands, gathering, clogging the fine lines which seemed to say, ‘I am me, I am real, I am somebody’. They did not care. What mattered was the win.
At midday the game was welded scraps of metal, gold and silver, ruby red stones and sparkling accidents. No one needed them – even the winners, the Keepers, would still be hungry, cold and wanting – but want was want, and the game was there for all who recognized it. Bare hands broke glass. Past protections of such supposed precious things were gone, and the boys, greased up and drugged down, took what they wanted. Old man at the counter sits hopeless. Care? He knows chance will have him get them soon, by way of blood or drug or fear. Nothing mattered, not that much. Outside in the light and boys divide up what useless treasures make them better. Words are for the weak, so beyond grunts and snarls and clinks of chance, street silence stayed, watching them dividing up the bones of a life long dead. Like Gods and Governments had once, twisted want followed actions, but also ran ahead of them, pre-empting choice.