The Eagle and the Fear

BANG BANG – Fire, flames, smoke, Explosions and colour flashes and the screaming of the it girls at the Ball and high density copper halides and fragments of destruction – all that is fun & true, conspiring to corrupt this Friday night.

It wasn't even late, 11pm perhaps, but the games had begun and anyone with the proper experience will say that this was not the moment to relax or be the Man – Never delay your reaction to a stimulus. And what fools we were to be caught unaware. In times of chaos, this kind of approach is the final stupidity – and it means that more of this Earth will belong to the fat whores of death, not less. No, as far as I can tell - when the Great Spirits call in, we must honour the savage within us – Grab it hard and grab it Fast. Finger to the trigger, boots on the ground, eyes locked forward and dammit, the predictable rush of hormones from the adrenal gland, always.

Now, it has taken me a little under an hour to explain that properly on paper with a pen to the sound of Britney Spears' first record, from 1999 – so I am filling with rage to imagine that my clouded mind had pursued the same thought processes in two-thirds of a second flat, and arrived at the same conclusions. The human brain is an amazing organ – until it develops a tumor or suffers from an exploded blood vessel and becomes flooded with the red stuff. Wow – an anecdote of fear and laughter has descended into a battle cry for the last remnants of the 'Too Much Fun' club, awful.

So, the incomprehensible colours of fury and the sounds of a black sky rupturing above Oxford cut right through to my core, initiating a specific form of internalised whiplash – and now, we are caught up with the story, this is nice. At the first flash and percussive boom, I was gone - launching myself from the back room of this 17^th Century watering hole, out through the in door and onto the road. The Oxford girls were letting off fireworks from the College quads – synchronised across the whole city like the last days of Berlin, with fewer civilian casualties but the same smell of chemical smoke and sense of victory. Only fireworks – but the sounds were real and the feelings were real also. I had seen the Oxford crew earlier, as they headed out in their sequins and silk. If these are the best minds of our generation, then I look forward to more fireworks – more vicious in nature perhaps, and rigged so they can hold nine times the amount of black powder, with special chambers for the silver shrapnel. Even in this moment, I couldn't explain to my Lebanese companion the kind of paranoia that those girls put on me – they broke my back and spat in my mouth. Whether they meant it or not, this is the height of intimidation, with only a hint of fun behind it all. Usually, there is something liberating about the surging blood flows and tight lungs of panic - but not now, the cracks between us were sharp and focused. I am not entirely bitter though, and I wish them well in their summer celebrations – part of me is resentful at the exhaustive capacity of youth and another part of me has just learnt to recognise a bitch when I pass her on the street, sequins et al.

Of course, the it girls were to blame for disturbing our peace, but it doesn't matter – they are a healthy species, their time is now. We saw them arrive with stilettos and champagne & I was happy when they disappeared. Now, my attention was divided between my dear friend, who I had just abandoned suddenly and without any explanation in the back room, and the disorienting explosions of light. I remember thinking that together, we should quickly finish our drinks and track down their source – climb a few walls and act natural – one of us, after all, belonged here in the official sense, and had the legal documents to prove it. This is the kind of place where most things are possible if you have the right signatures and rubber seals on some heavy-gauge cream paper. But no, we would not integrate into their parties and we would not pour wine with them and I would not be chatting with the oiled men that stand in small circular groups who do nothing but laugh and shuffle around like the herd animals of old. Hell, they would ruin us, they would spear us through the heart with sharp iron, and what a spectacle that would make, man - enough to beat their own firework show. They would chase us down like dirty dogs – no sympathy for the outsider. I ran back inside to the back room to gather advice and take two minutes to drink and plot our next move. My memory is slightly hazy but I must have messed up somewhere along the line because apparently, the wild movements of my instinct were not subtle and I had started to agitate the couple sat behind us – two Latin-American types. Mexican, Brazilian, Cuban – I don't know where they came from or why they were here – luxury tourist girls, or was I bearing witness to a kind of Amazonian Lesbian mating ritual, right here in the fields of Europe. They were drinking some form of Tequila sunrise and speaking in rapid Spanish and they were both young and very attractive, especially the one that I had managed to terrify the most. She, who we shall name Guadalupe, whipped around in her chair and threw her black hair so that it streamed behind her – speaking in a delicate but heavily accented English while launching out an arm to grasp my wrist.

“Excuse me – what is going on?”

“Oh, it's just fireworks, damn, I'm just excited that's all don't worry”

“I am sorry – what is happening? You think is everything OK?”

“Sure, there's a load of parties going on and I guess they decided to make a chemical mess across the sky, ignore me, honestly I'm just excitable, I think its fun... Um...”

I'm certain that she kept on talking to me after that – surely repeating the question and cursing my staccato mumbles while trying to tame her mutant fear, but I was otherwise engaged. Actually, if I hadn't liked her big brown eyes and brown skin and the way her friend sat wide-eyed with confusion, I probably would have punched her in the fingers when she grabbed me – and spent the next five minutes apologising. That would be bad, you don't want to be someone like that. Still, when your mind locks down in a foreign country and you suspect that the demons of war and fire have finally caught up to you – you don't grab the nearest friend by the wrist, together we could be deadly, and then we'd stand a chance - so don't fuck around. Actually, it was only when she recoiled and I sat down in my chair that I understood subtext of her words. Guadalupe had been sat, enjoying God's great nectar with her possible lover when the sky opened up and she was cornered into making hasty preparations to meet her maker – at least they have celebrations for the dead in her culture. They also have television in her culture, with a state news network – so she had seen London for the tiny warzone it has briefly become, besieged by tiny squadrons of barbarians armed to the teeth with low-explosive bombs, second-hand vehicles and kitchen knives. Well, it was enough to stick in her brain and so here we were: partying our way to the apocalypse with a young, wild and free Latina and her partner thinking that the crazed terrorists of the West had finally landed on their doorstep, perfect. 

C.S Lewis and Tolkien used to hang out here at night, bouncing around the kind of crazy ideas that can only come from brains in the grip of narcotics or decades of the 'Oxford Syndrome'. No, the crazed demons of Guadalupe's nightmares are worse than anything found in the mind of Tolkien – and here lies the last frontier. The troubles & violence of her homelands are nothing & instead, it is here that she loses focus and slides into chaos. The fighter planes and all the drugs stopped working years ago – no, there is no known cure for this particular strain of virus – & all this so that now, all these years later, I can sit in my innocence and look upon a girl, twisted with the Fear, while the sky ignites around us.

You Bitch

Do you know which character of fiction I hate the most? The character of fiction I hate the most is Nicole from the movie '40 Days and 40 Nights'.

Some people will tell you that authentic love can exist only on the knife edge between darkness and danger. These people are mostly wrong, or in some cases, lying – or, they have rejected our archaic ideas of innocence to the deadly extreme. Nicole is dark and dangerous, but in the wrong sense – perhaps this is why she is motivated almost entirely by desires for Power and new money. By the way, there is nothing inherently wrong with power or money, but Nicole is a disaster for anyone who ever touched her body and looked too long upon her face. Stop making cracks in the ceiling & stop raping your ex-boyfriend – only a boy with a terminal and deep-seated psychological defect would sign that contract... You are not sexy – your red dress and red everything appeals only to the ultimate modern man. The nice boy who lives down the road, the one who thinks he just got lucky. No you silly bastard - roll again, go back 3 spaces – fuck this whole operation, for it has quickly gone sideways. Her colours work like the poison-arrow frog of the Amazon basin – she lies like the poison toad: fat and fast.

You are not sweet. Nicole is a psychotic twist of human nature – a living tribute to all the ways that Generation X fucked up. My admiration for the female heart is dying and you killed it. Anyone who resists you is fucking with the system, and I support them in their vow & mission. Your love of chaos, rape and control is the true sign of the bitch that took it too far - so no, You are not Sweet. You are corrupt and crooked and you have a warped sense of the bigger picture. Your fiance is gone and his replacement will be predictably pathological and the videos of you & Matt by San Francisco Bay are gone. This is how the story ends, and there is no planned sequel. Relax Baby, it's over.

Officially, Elliott.

x-x-o

Here Comes the Night Time Au Chat Noir, Part 2

My cocktail was delivered by a young 20-something year old girl, an authentic Parisian Mademoiseille Beauty. All desires for fun and happiness had surrendered to a single woman at the Midnight hour. Her name was Marie and in a weirdly literal sense, that is all she wrote. Before I describe Marie and my professional relationship to her on this January night, I will explain in writing that our interactions hinged on our strict and subliminal understanding of the 'game' – she was a master. Essentially, I was paying her to fuck with my emotions and to shape my experience – although it is a true blessing that I was acutely aware of this at the time, do not underestimate this fact either, or you will fail the test when your turn comes.

Marie had rich brown hair, mostly tied so that it falls down to her upper back, leaving a selection of loose strands to fall at random in liquid cascades by her eyes - pools of molten brown that shimmered under the neon lights of the pre-dawn hours, like my own, framed in flesh and bone. Marie has high cheekbones with soft yet sharp, slashing features that made me look – reflecting on how she, from a long line of prostitutes & goddesses, represents the feminine divine in its penultimate form. Marie has rouged lips, parted slightly in a delicate smile, rehearsed a million times before this moment, preparing each day for the final cut. Marie moves with specific forms of balance and grace – her back is not broken and her neck is not crooked. Marie wears the slim white shirt of her archetype, and she pauses occasionally to drink cola. She picks up her suffering and bears it and in this alone, I think we can all learn something – she has stared the Gods down, she has looked into the eye of Horus and decided that she will pursue her Lust for Life.

...

“Do you know the warm progress under the Stars?,

The Moon is a dry blood Beast,

O' Great creator of being,

Grant us one more hour to perform our art & perfect our lives” - James Morrison, 1978

...

I Touched Her Thigh and Death Smiled.

...

Morrison's bones lie just 5 kilometres down the road, I checked they were still there that very morning and I think I always will whenever I am in town. But he is a burnt out wreck who finally exploded here in 1971, and the Now is far more electrifying in this small and loud Café of the Night.

Marie sits next to me, kissing me on the cheek and talking to me about her apartment, her holiday to Brazil and her passion for Salsa dancing amongst other things – apparently, the Latin-Jazz is also her kind of thing. The vibe is right, and Marie is having a good time at work; she likes my black hair & my money. And I like her eyes, perhaps more than she enjoys her work – who knows.

By this point, I had probably spoken and laughed with most of the strangers around me – the idea that drinking in a bar could be fun was new to me but the fact that I come from an old family of European & North African soldiers and artists has probably lent me a certain capacity for quick adaptation to my surroundings. If you fail here, then you are fucked – whether you are an artist or soldier or some mutant abomination that sits between the two.

I remember flexing my jaw and perching my eyes just behind the rim of my last empty glass – looking through the windows into the outside world. The 'Sexodrome' is lit up in white, easily the biggest establishment for sex work on this Boulevard, but it is perhaps best avoided – the art of paid sex is not honoured here, apparently - and you are sure to end up getting stomped by a selection of bald white dudes. Yes, this is all very hilarious – 24 hours ago I was hunting wild pigs and I think the original plan was to take a late night walk through the Jardin de Tuileries but duty calls, Namaste. Did Veronica Franco die for this? It might be worse than we ever imagined.

Well, 180 euros later and the Puerto Ricans are still giving it hell and the males here are still in the business of buying anyone drinks and generally making themselves obvious. I had Marie bring me over a menu for one last time, the idea being that I would finally tone things down with a light cocktail or Pastis, heavy on the water. I quickly abandoned this plan when I slipped on the stairs and cracked my shin coming back from the underground toilets – it was time to leave and retrace my steps back to the last moment where I was safe and obscure. I apologised to Marie & told her about the malicious staircase and that I would be ordering nothing more from this place – I was done – to which she replied “Trop chèr?”while smiling and slinking away towards a paying customer, grey with age and fat around the thighs.

WHAP! Bullseye – damn you all. A small part of me died quickly and suddenly. The brain locks down, recoiling in horror as the chemicals of my body turn savage and my cords and sinews go tight. Wow – do you want to burst into flames? The answer is no, roughly speaking. Do you want to freak out and shoot something until it vaporises in blue flame and gunshot glitter? We can sort something out, call me.

Marie is still sweet and kind, believe me, but I messed up on her and herein lies the lesson of the thing, friends. What a fool I was to see the first sign of art here and cling to it as a sign of good things to come. You do not walk into a nest of Coyotes to feel betrayed and victimised when the cute one sinks his teeth in between your ribs – so why had I failed this test, had I learnt nothing from our species' survival days? I demand answers, not right now but at some stage of my life, they will become necessary, or I am doomed to a cycle that none of us can properly name. The brutal reality of this realm is not to be ignored or underestimated in a drunken stupor – the French spirit of revolution rests on a knife edge. The statues of Lady Liberty in Paris all flash their tits, and the possibilities of life here are fragile, and diminishing rapidly – the fact that Marie resorts to money insults with a child like me surely accelerates the process – you tell me, please and thank you. 

Here Comes the Night Time Au Chat Noir, Part 1

The sky had been dark for about six hours before we finally descended on Boulevard Clichy – a one kilometre span of asphalt, corruption and debauchery, stretching between Moulin Rouge on its western edge to the Anvers metro station: a gross and ugly manifestation of the white man's culture. In some ways, it is really just a rusted monument and cemetery for all the showgirls, artists and Opium freaks who owned this town in the 1920s and 1930s. Only after the Third Reich showed up did they stop playing games – the reality of it all will screw with your head. They even had a Café decorated like the fifth circle of Hell called Cabaret de l'Enfer but Satan was driven out and now it is a museum of eroticism, with a large wooden dildo of Hindu origin in the window. Arriving here at midnight, you are alone in the final sense, and must claim a small territory of your own between the trinity of Sex, Drugs and Money. But, there is no sense in hiding these things and I have long thought that it is probably best for all of us that they are illuminated in dirty neon and billboards on the North side of Paris, France. This is a kingdom of whores and pigs – keep this in mind, it will be useful later on.

Le Chat Noir – this was my destination, an infamous bar supported almost entirely by Steinlen's 1896 poster, the icon of modernist culture that decorates almost every home in Western Europe; including the back of my own bedroom door where it is pinned, in postcard form, above a print of a 17^th Century Dutch portrait of a sitting cat and just to the right of a faded release poster for 'Rebel Without a Cause'. Walking here from Place Du Tertre had taken us past an African barbershop leaking Marijuana smoke from its open windows and a series of parties on the lower balconies of the apartment blocks. For good or ill, this boulevard was alive and kicking. Boulevard Clichy itself is Europe's last and best claim to 'Pure Comedy' as an ideology – the idea that an 18 year old ethnical half-cast might be offered cocaine and warm pussy within the space of 15 minutes is a true bullet to the systems, the same basic reflexes that had survived 14 years of the national education system and a short lifetime of protected fun. Nonetheless, I am inebriated and determined to get my kicks for free.

Le Chat Noir is a classy and perverted establishment. Walking through the glass doors immediately twisted my perception of space and time. A female Latin-jazz duo from Puerto Rico played flamenco by the bar. I have never understood the psyche of the Latina – what makes her so fiery and passionate? I don't know and I don't even want to know, but I love it and I want to connect with her spirit. Never fuck with a female Hispanic, they will destroy you and you will deserve it.

My cousin and I took seats next to a stone pillar – this positioned us near the bar and some kind of Bachelorette party going on at a nearby table. This place was loud; the pink-lit bar bounces around sounds of laughter and Caribbean Jazz, but I was occupied with a shallow sense of personal paranoia – this is an alien environment and I sense my heart pulsing like the young deer who cocks her neck back and forth before darting out across the night highway. I ordered a slate of Italian cured meats & cheeses and two cocktails. For me, a 'Moulin Rouge'; I may as well accept my status as an outsider, drop the pretence of self-assurance and revert to the behaviour of a repressed hypochondriac. This was a 10 euro cocktail of Champagne and Chambord – a Kir Royale essentially, but the manager decided to have it integrated with a shot of Agave Tequila, just to push the whole thing off the edge and get his clientele wild.

If you are foolish enough to visit one of the great European cities without a true mission or purpose then you too will gradually become familiar with the sense of ominous despair that encourages heavy drinking. Le Chat Noir is a safe haven of sorts - a guaranteed escape up until the two-hour mark, when you will either break down and enter one of the many nearby sex clubs or go and sleep back at the hotel. If you fall for either of these traps, I have no choice but to call you a bastard and a failure. Perhaps it is not obvious, but nonetheless – Boulevard Clichy has a lot to offer, provided that you arrive here with no heavy baggage and an appetite for fun. 

God Knows the Boar Runs Free

It was around 1am when we decided to unhook the great curved bow from the wall. In these moments, your energy is affirmed by the great magnet, and you have no choice but to ride the undertow, being careful to keep your moral compass aimed North and avoid getting arrested. The five of us were heading out on a Boar hunt – we were going to use the mahogany weapon to plunge two inches of high-carbon steel through the throat of a swine. I was in the valley of the Loire river and, if it makes you feel more comfortable, we were around one mile from the closest neighbour – a fat vineyard owner with an affinity for corruption and a pack of German Shepherds that prowled through the grapes and hills at night.

My cousin and I were headed for Paris, leaving Le Mans that morning after espresso at the brasserie under Cathedral hill. It was only logical that we head South, stopping that evening at Denée in the Loire valley with Manu, Karine and their 11 year old daughter Clémentine for the usual French reunion. I have known these people for years, and they are good people – but after five hours of heavy drinking and laughter, the skin begins to splinter and crack. Fissures blister open and some deep-seated loop of primordial DNA will emerge – commanding its host to revert to a savage caricature of her socialised self. This explained why Manu was now taking me to his 15^th Century cellar for a pivotal discussion on the appropriate footwear and arrowhead. The crescent head, I learned, would sever the tendons and mangle the ligaments, provoking serious blood loss and a gradual failure of the motor systems. Jesus Christ – What has happened here & who would make sense of this night? Well, I'm telling you your honour! I was outside soaking in the pool, stargazing if you like – and this giant Boar, I think his name was Brutus – he gored my cousin and opened a gash down my inner groin with his twisted yellow tusk & if it hadn't been for Clémentine in the window, we'd be finished. Of course it took seven arrows to cut him down! One in each knee and three between the eyes, she's an expert marksman at 11, you have to believe me! … No, this would not do at all.

It was the cherries that finished me, hundreds of them, preserved for months in a potent blend of triple distilled cognac, gifted to Manu by my own grandfather – a veteran artillery captain of the Algerian war who was at this very moment sleeping just six miles downriver. We had gone through the agave tequila, tonnes of these preserved cherries with vanilla ice cream, a small bottle of Irish whiskey and at least three bottles of merlot from the previously mentioned winegrower – the third tasted like German Shepherd shit.

I was also in a period of serious recovery from a short period of grappling with Clémentine's cat – a savage animal, motivated entirely by greed and a Darwinian desire to fulfil her daily iron quotas with red blood cells from a fresh kill. This bitch pounced on my shoulder, claws bared – and so I crushed her between the flesh of my own back and the cold stone of the Medieval walls. No, I am not proud but the excitement factor outweighed my moral obligation – and I do not care if this cat now suffers from short-term memory loss or a depressed skull fracture – Fuck her. We took a photo together five minutes later on the wooden staircase – a symbol of my enduring love and our commitment to 'Peace on Earth'. Neither of us had gained the upper hand or ascended the dominance hierarchy, and so a mutual distrust straddled the rift between us, captured forever. It reminds me of the times when President Trump meets with a foreign leader – similar to an ape experimenting with a petroleum fire. I'm sure there's a reference to Greek mythology here but there is no time, and besides, I need her around me like I need cancer in my left testicle.

Clémentine's cat would not join us on the hunt, her pouncing action is obsolete. The family Husky would join us instead to flush the swine out. I emerged from the cellar, stumbling, with a quiver of crescent-heads in my left hand and 88 pounds of Alaskan canine in my right.

The night river wind is strong and true and the Boar will be active at this time. He knows that only the best and worst of humanity is awake at this hour; the moon, the alcohol and the aggressive feline have all conspired to produce victimised you. My disgusting revenge streak is in condition Red, pulsing deep in my subconscious. So, Clémentine and I stalk through the forest, she controls the bow, I hand her arrows and let the hound guide me – Like Robin Hood gone mad on tequila and poison cherries, responsible for my inner integrity and the safety of an 11 year old Princess.

Where were you when the arrows began to fly?

...

Shrieking to my right, the hound pulls to the West; we are close, apparently. Clémentine looses an arrow deep into the undergrowth, Manu laughs 150 yards to my left. The river runs fast, swollen with the winter rains and everything is darkness. The Hound pushes on, she is born with an innate understanding of survival. 40 days & 40 nights alone in the desert, it will change a man and his dog - you can never catch us now Mr. President. An arrow buries itself into a tree to my right, I am deeply disturbed – screw the Boar. Arrows fly again, three or four of them and now I am shooting in the direction of the scuffling noises, as advised. I have been reduced to the famous Nuremberg defence of 1945 - “I was just following orders!”. The she-dog is barking now, echoed in sequence by the fat man's German Shepherds. In their ignorance, these creatures think only of chaos and decay.

There is a kind of sexual psychology, placed deep in the mentality of the chase. The virgin strives to outpace her oppression and must settle instead for flesh and bone. The prey desires only what she is allowed to know – constrained to a rudimentary understanding of love and the inconstant tryst, a lover's rendezvous.

I think Clémentine might have wounded the beast, but I was not paying attention. I heard the sounds of panic and mauling ahead of me. But no, the moon sinks low and I am tired of pursuing a corrupt ideology – firing arrows into the curious dark and stopping only to pet the dog and re-establish my connection with this earth. God knows that blood has been spilled by the riverbank, but God also knows that this Boar will run free. The deep winter is no time for death. He is what you would call his own man. Autonomy is a rare commodity, and the soil here is dark, rich and wet. I trust that the Boar has survived our assault and I know that he will continue to wreak havoc here, long after we are gone. 

Damn, I am finished writing this trash and my fuel tank struck empty about twenty minutes ago. The Boar is sleeping or healing – we should not drop bombs on him or pierce his hide - this will kill our vibe, possibly forever.