BREL DE JOUR: DIARY OF A BRUSSELS CHANTEUR
I was looking forward to getting out in a large group after the Bruges show. My work can be so intense. I go through 15 packets of Gitanes in the first half of the show alone - I even get to take a drag once in a while. And two crates of mussels. I have lungs like a muddied road tarmaced with black pudding and my farts smell of the sea. And the material is such a downer - sex, war, guilt, death, blah blah blah. And then, after the break, I start on the serious themes. I sometimes wonder how I get the will to carry on - "My Death", If you go away" - hardly a barrel of laughs, is it? By the time I get to the bit "In the Port of Amsterdam" where the pissed up sailor laughs, it's a blessed relief. Then there are the groupies. It's like having a vacuum cleaner down your y-fronts, struggling to keep your end of the arrangement up, all the while knowing very little is going to come of it all. Except death, eventually - death and the black extinction of the soul by the black angel of death. It's so draining. Then there are all the hangers on at the after show party - "Oh, Jackie, you were wonderful..." And while I can't say I don't enjoy hanging around in cafes and coffee bars with a group of friends, smoking yet more Gitanes and discussing the Schengen agreement, there is always the danger that by knowing too much about each other, all those useful conversational skills will be lost. Lost like a childhood toy hurled into the abyss by a frightened trawlerman on a benzedrine spazz. So we end up talking about last night's Poirot yet again. Suchet was marvellous though, wasn't he?
// posted by brel @ 4:07 PM
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