I’ve just gotten back from a place called the Hotel Bar (generic title, yes, but also concise, irreverent, sceney and thereby securely pomo). I went to hear my good friend Tommy’s brilliant sister, Alex, sing.
She sang. She was fantastic. As the final chord of her last song died, I turned around and immediately realized that Dorothy was no longer in Kansas.
It was one of those scenes. Hard to describe, but I’ll try. In a room full of people that are so obviously, unquestionably, practically exhibitionalistically “creative types”, I always find myself isolated.
Stranded.
Girls with artfully spiky (or spikily arty, whichever you’d prefer) hair, wearing painstakingly effortless scarves—a vast ocean of short men with wild, greasy hair and varying degrees of painstakingly effortless facial hair. All milling around ballad night at the Hotel Bar with vacantly pleasant expressions that tacitly say “don’t talk to me unless you run a gallery or a gig bar…or if you’ve got some green.”
The infuriating part of the evening, is that I knew a good few of the people there. I’d been introduced before by Tommy or others (at which time they’d all produced a heroically tolerant courtesy…which on this lot can look like anything from a “this speculum might be a bit cold” expression to…well, Terry Schiavo).
As I spoke to Alex (God bless the woman for her company at that moment) after her set, two prime examples approached [Alex] to congratulate her. As they were waved on toward the email list (without so much as a glance in my direction), I said (loudly, yet cheerfully) “It’s nice to see you again”.
No response.
I caught the female of the species by the arm as she passed again, and repeated my phrase, louder. She turned, with a pitying look that said “Sorry if you’d think I know you. I surely don’t know you. Look at you.” The look had an accent. It was weird.
Me (the gist): Yeah. Hi. We’ve met. At your place. We watched THX-1138 together. And all of the special features. We ate Xmas cookies, I played with your dog, wore your guest house slippers…
(Dear reader…I was one of only two guests on that occasion.)
She sputtered artily for a second without ever looking remorseful for her oversight. I grabbed my coat.
Sometimes Berlin can look like a freakishly inverted incarnation of high school. The tragically misunderstood THEREFORE (unassailably) artistically potent have transmogrified into a thin, pale, spiky, blank-eyed overclass…sort of like the jocks and sluts of yore, I guess. The rest of us…the ones who sell out to the man (read: have institutional jobs), smile when introduced to someone, and wear color…
Well, I don’t know what you’d call us—but I’ve definitely been here before.
On a positive (and definitely unpomo) note, I discovered online banking today. Yup. To celebrate, I bought myself a big bag of Xmas potpourri and put some in every room of my apartment.
I’m really looking forward to waking up to something other than the smell of my own halitosis tomorrow morning.
Night night.
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