Louboutindarella (a true story)

Once Upon a Time there was a beautiful girl named Zoja. She had the most gorgeous dark brown hair and a unique accent. One day, an evil fairy casted a spell on her and gave her the ‘In Flux’ misfortune. From that day on, Zoja forgot where and who she was supposed to be, brought up in South Africa in a Serbian family with an education in France, travelling from New Dehli to Mumbai to Bangkok to Dubai for work, Zoj-Zoj-Zoj dearest Zoj needed an anchor.

One day, as she was walking down the serpentine streets of Paris, a light came out of a store, a strange golden light. It seemed as if the air had turned into fairy dust and a sweet sweet music could be heard emanating from inside. Zoja tip toed to the door and the voice kept singing and it seemed like the voice was singing her name. Could it be possible? ‘Zooooooooja, zooooooja, follow me to this coooooooorna’ She entered the store hypnotised by the voice calling her over and over again.

What she saw was of a beauty, of a charm, of a folly that none could put in words. But I will try my best to define the traits that brought Zoja to her ‘enchanteresse’. There, in the middle of the store, shining like a gem on its own throne was the most beautiful slipper one could dream off, a subtle black line carrying the kind of timelessness that only a virtuose could ever draft and a delicate sole tinted in the most elegant red. Zoja’s eyes were like two young flies caught in the light of this new vibrating colour. And the world turned entirely red for a second, and Zoja fell to the floor. Suddenly, in the middle of this strange sea of red, Zoja saw an outline of crimson growing above her. ‘Zooooooja, Zooooooooja’, the rest of the store slowly reappeared in flashes of pink, fuchsia and scarlet and the outline looked more and more like a fairy, but was it a man? Was it a fairy? Was it a Persian fairy man?

When she eventually came back to consciousness and blues and greens and yellows had re-entered her palette, Zoja discovered a short fairy dressed like a Persian man, she/he said: ‘I am your good fairy, and I wish you the gift of settlement, you will no longer feel lost in this world, but this, to the condition that you always wear these two slippers, my friend, try them on promptly and dare tell me that you are still in Flux!’ Zoja got up, a little dizzy and put on the godly objects. She slipped her delicate feet in their off white fluffy beds, the moment her toes met the smooth leather, her entire vision changed, everything seemed suddenly so clear, evenly contrasted, smooth and so perfectly in harmony. Zoja thanked the ambiguous fairy with a kiss that oddly prickled.

The following day Zoja had a huge smile on her face, everything was that simple eh? ‘Arrgh Man!’ She thought ‘How could you have been so tortured my dearest Zoj? What beauty holds the world in all its simplicity!’ And the following day she rang her beloved boyfriend and said : ‘It is all so simple and easy now and I would like to tell you about the world I see and maybe this has been the world you have always seen as well, and if we both see the same world, the same world as it is, we should stay together always, because the world sees us same”.

That evening, Zoja was walking through the streets, her face lit by a new inner joy, she followed her heart and skipped on Canal St Martin, ran up and down the stairs of Sacre Coeur, danced on Pont des Arts, and finished with an improvised solo around the pyramid of the Louvre, she walked home exhausted and while getting to bed realized that she had scraped her left foot. A single drip of blood had come out and crystallised, the crimson outline of a drip. She figured it would heal through the night, took off her shoes and dreamed of her life to come.

The next day, Zoja woke up and realised, as she was trying to put on her slippers that her feet had swollen during the night and that it would be far too painful to walk around with them all day. Lunch was an hour away and she thought : ‘Well, it isn’t that bad, I will walk around in my flip flops and keep the slippers in my bag. When it is time to meet my beloved, I will swap the shoes, and I will get to see the world as it ought to be.” Back in the streets of Paris, Zoja didn’t feel like skipping and dancing that much, the clouds felt low and she thought about her family in South Africa, it started to rain a little and she could smell the scent of rain on her clothes, her hair got caught with the strap of her bag and she started laughing at herself while untangling the vicious knot. She was a street away from the brasserie she had planned to meet her beloved for lunch, so she stopped, took out her magical slippers, placed them in front of her, took off the flip flops and squeezed a little painfully into the Persian man/fairy’s gift. She met her beloved and they talked and talked and it was all so perfect, and they had never been so much in love. Zoja didn’t dare tell him about the Persian fairy man, but her feet were swelling and burning and although she was having wonders of a time she said she had to go, which seemed alright since her beloved was now very busy with his phone.

She rushed into the street, took out the flip flops out of the bag, placed them in front of her. She got her left foot out of her left slipper, placed the slipper in her bag then her left foot into the left flip flop. She got her right foot out of her right slipper then her right foot into the right flip flop. And although the wind started to blow a little, she felt much much better and walked back to her hotel, her mind spinning at all the questions and thoughts she was having.

The next day she woke up and looked for her slippers, surely they would fit perfectly today. But when she opened the bag, there was only one left, the right one must’ve been forgotten by the restaurant. The fairy fairy Persian man’s voice resonated in her head ‘ Zoooooja, Zojaaaaaaaa!’ She went back to the scene of the crime and asked the people at the restaurant, then the store to its right, the store to its left, the store upfront, behind and around and none of them had found the slipper. She asked a homeless man across the street, she offered him money, but he had no idea and so he kept the money and Zoja got on her phone. She called the garbagemen, the firemen, the policemen. No men had seen her magical slipper.

Zoja sat on the Pont des Arts and cried and cried until even her gorgeous black hair was entirely soaked and after feeling a little too sorry for herself, she pulled herself together and went back to the serpentine street she had found the store on. She finally found it but no light was emanating from it and no Persian fairy man was in view. Only a couple witch looking women trying on arches far to steep for their fragile ankles. Zoja, recognized similar looking slippers, and out of despair, presented her credit card to the shop girl, closed her eyes and signed. She left with her shoe pouch and got back to her hotel, not quite sure about the powers of this particular pair. She slipped her feet into them but nothing happened, the hotel room felt as lonely as before, and the gloomy whistling of the air conditioning was still the only sound to be heard. She decided to go for a walk, but nothing seemed as beautiful as before, men and women passed by and she kept wondering about their lives, are they happy? Are they good? Are they faithful? Are they ambitious or hopeless? And she thought about her mom and her dad and her brother and her job and her age and her dreams. The slippers weren’t doing any trick this time, so she safely put them back in their pouch and thought she might as well be more comfortable in her flip-flops.

‘Zoja, poor Zoja, your life galloped back to your eyes, and your vision may not be the most certain but God, is it diverse!’ she thought. She called her friend Kiki for a drink and met her at Cafe Nemours. She told her her story and Kiki was speechless for a while then ordered some champagne: ‘To celebrate the terrible beauties and profound mysteries of reality!’ They smiled at each other and Zoja found complicity and a single tear fell from her right eye: ‘What is it? Asked Kiki

-For a second I thought I had recognized in your eyes that for a second we both saw the same world, the world as it is, and that second has brought me immense comfort. To friendship!’

And they both smiled and talked and laughed some more and even realized that an 80s rock star was sitting next to them, a certain Michael Bolton with an anorexic new girlfriend and a bored looking bodyguard. They laughed some more and it was soon time to leave: ‘Let me at least see the slippers’ said Kiki to Zoja. Zoja took the pouch out of her bag and showed Kiki the shoes. Kiki bursted out laughing, and Zoja did too and they took le Pont des Arts to get back to the left bank and sang, giggled and confessed their most twisted thoughts and dreams.

When Zoja got back to her hotel and looked through her bag to find her phone, she realized the pouch was no longer there. ‘Dear, dear Zoja! Again! You must’ve forgotten it at the café!’ She called the café and asked them ‘I forgot a red pouch, a red pouch with black slippers at your café, has anyone found it?’ and the answer was:‘Non, Madame, nous sommes desoles’. The next day she stopped by and asked again, asked everyone in the staff and the answer was the same over and over again. And she thought about her mom and her dad and her brother and her job and her age and her dreams and she got on a plane to South Africa.

A little before landing, an air hostess offered her a refreshment: ‘An orange juice, please’. As she reached for the glass, her eyes met the air hostess’s, a Persian looking man hostess with a huge smile on her face winked at her and disappeared.

A Giant Sauceman

The other day, Manuel and Anne invited me to join them to a barbecue in the middle of the Ardennes: the only remote area in Belgium, a haven for boars, pine trees, actual snow in the winter, lakes, old houses and sordid stories to be told around campfires. I had had a ten hour shift day and grabbed a redbull to drive the 1h40 from Brussels to mystery land. I eventually got to the place, a beautiful old family house squashed in between a lake and a dark forest. We were a small group composed of performance and installation artists, musicians and a large chap who had started his own manufacture of sauces, all sorts of sauces, but mainly the kind of sauces one needs for a Belgian barbecue that is: mayonnaise, cocktail, tartare, andalouse and poivre. It sometimes seems like barbecues in Belgium, which solely occur when the weather permits it, which means generally a week or two a year, are really all about the sauce. Whatever meat, potatoe, salad goes with it is an accessory to the –always mayo-based- wonders of sauces.

The theory was clearly demonstrated when one of the guests, growing a little impatient and hungry, grabbed a slice of bread and started spreading mayo all over it. Anne cringed and had a little cry of distress which she soon enough managed to contain. Anne is French and consequently despises sliced bread (first motto: baguette) and clearly misunderstands the Belgian obsession with mayo (second motto: butter preferably mixed with big chunks of natural salt). Of course when one does it, everyone follows, it’s like a pack of cigarettes thrown in a 35 year old party, no one brought any, everyone’s trying to quit, but if someone lights up, ten people follow the flow.

We eventually met the chap who is behind the organic production of mayo, a giant man who had just resurrected after a weed induced three-hour nap. Manuel had cautioned me : "Be prepared, he looks like a fritkot* owner", he appeared to be rather nice and told me all about his sauces, a conversation which my inherently perverted mind tried hard not to misinterpret.

After a first serving of food, Anne, Manu and I migrated to the campfire with a bottle of vodka. Manu started playing an endless blues, which brought Anne and I to some sort of trance which made us say and sing the most inappropriate narration, involving artists adopting and experimenting new performance techniques with African orphans. I don’t think it was such a big deal but Anne is convinced that we shocked everyone, which I have decided to deny because the conversation, as diplomatically incorrect as it was, made me laugh immensely, and I was in bed at midnight with a huge smile on my face. And that: that is a good thing.

Anyway, I was glad that Manah, our host, had showed me earlier that evening where I was to sleep. Indeed the house was a huge maze, where rooms opened up to another bedroom, to a corridor, and a room, another bedroom and a bathroom. Locks, double doors for heat, sinks hidden in closets, old squeaky floors.

The next day we walked around her family property and ended up at this pond. The weather was muggy and we were all sweating and hoping for a thunderstorm to loosen up the air. A cold pond was exactly what was needed by this temperature and we slowly made our way into the dark water, swam under willow trees, stood up in the thick and tickling silt by the reeds. It was delicious. There was something melancholic about the whole scene that was certainly exacerbated by Mr Sauce getting on a rowing boat and slowly navigating around the lake while singing opera, projecting his deep voice on the surface of water, the notes echoing through the branches of the willow trees. Everything was still for a while, some of us were gently enjoying the water, others were sitting on the jetty dipping a toe in the sepia colored liquid. Manu and Anne were curled up in the grass nearby and all we heard for a while was the voice of the giant man rowing on his small blue boat.

*a fries stall.

Madame Moustache

The other night, I went to see some friends play at a venue in Brussels called Madame Moustache. The venue itself came as a surprise, a gem in the middle of the fish district in Brussels, that is: a little door lost in the middle of lobster restaurants, fish retailers, fish market stands, fried fish, fresh fish, fish fish.
Entering Madame Moustache is a little bit like going to Disneyland, the corridor is Moresque, a first room on the left is Mexican-ish, the bar is dressed like it’s Bastille day, another little room has a 50s milkshake sort of feeling, which might explain why it never seems to be particularly populated. The main room has a giant cardboard looking caravan painted in the most intense colours on the left and further back, the stage which has a little burlesque twist with its red velvet drape of a proscenium.
Strangely enough, that evening, it seemed like all of Brussels had ended up at Madame Moustache for all sorts of cryptic, drunk or random reasons. We hung out with the band drinking beer and chatting while another one was performing on stage. The music was excellent which put us all in great spirits. I constantly bumped into people I knew or had already met and I suddenly felt like I was living in a small village. I suppose that may also mean I’m officially ‘back in the old country’. My friends band eventually got on stage, so we all crowded upfront holding tight on our beers while snaking through the crowd. We were a couple girls on the front row, one of which, Anne, the guitarist’s girlfriend and of course, the founder of Indigeste (see prior blog entries) had had to bring her mother to the concert. Her mother was visiting from Paris and kept taking pictures of the band with some digital zoom monster of sorts. Anne kept yelling at her : "Who cares about taking pictures! You have to listen to the music mom! Just listen to it!" Anne was drunk, her mother too so I shifted towards Vero and Steph who had a slightly more relaxed vibe going on. We sang along the lyrics and I kept feeding Nico, the singer, with well-deserved beer throughout the concert.
By the time the last song had ended, the place was so crowded we could hardly move. After trying to have a good time in the space, we ended up having to migrate to the backroom. To access it, we had to walk up a number of flights of stairs in pitch darkness, then we ended up in some huge room lit by electric chandeliers, the bulbs of which tinted the space with a dusty dirty yellow light. The room’s architecture pointed at a Medieval Flemish style home, the first encounter with reality since the entrance of Madame Moustache. A couple of people were lounging already, constellations of bottles of gin and beer spread out on office like tables. A chap was cutting a line of blow in a corner for a friend.
I suddenly measured the amount of alcohol consumed in the evening and realized I needed to sleep, or at least sit down for a moment. I made myself comfortable on a pile of pillows while chatting with Vero about her last shag. Eventually Anne reappeared after having dumped her mother in a taxi and started the typical French monolog about weight, that is: an anorexic looking girl with a tiny waist trying to convince you that she needs to loose "6 kilos, I need to loose 6 kilos. See, I use to have a very pronounced jaw line and I feel like somehow, I’ve lost it, I don’t know, I look at pictures, and something’s missing, or really something’s extra". So I candidly suggested she stop drinking for a while. She smiled and me, then bursted out laughing and finally said : "No, I have a better idea, and this is what I always do, I keep drinking but I stop eating… of course the problem is that end up drunk all the time which becomes depressing, so then, I usually shift to vodka which makes me even more irritable, and it’s a terrible cycle but when I keep it going for a couple weeks, it usually does the trick". Hysterical, ridiculous Anne, gotta love her and her beautiful full-lived punkness.
Although the night was far from being over for them, I decided to be good and took off. I thought I’d stay at my studio space that night, a 10 min car drive from Moustache. As I was getting ready to open the door of my studio, a friend called me from across the street : "Hey ! Fred ! How’s it going ? Wanna come over to my place for a last drink ?". Very tempting proposal, I followed him to his place and as I sat on his patio, the Belgian expression ‘Bruxelles village’ resonated in my head.