It’s been a long while since I’ve posted on Invective, and in the grand tradition of New Year’s resolutions, here I am, with all good intentions. It seems the right time to return to this project, given not only the dawn of the new year, but also the arrival of a new decade; and while I wish world events were less bleak, it’s important that we keep going. So in the spirit of positivity, I start as I mean to continue.
Yesterday I went to the Barbican Gallery with my friend, the poet and publisher Paul Rossiter, to see the exhibition Into the Night: Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art . The show was at its best when it amplified the excitement of those often clandestine spots — the crazy pick & mix of artists and provocateurs, scandalous sartorial statements (or their naked absence), potent drinks with names such as Whiskey Flipp and Kiss Me Quick. While the harsh-lit brutalist bunker of the Barbican was sometimes at odds with the wildly louche material, there was an undeniable energy in seeing how people came together and created a space for themselves, often in times of war or difficulty, often with the forces of the law against them.
My favourite club in the show was the Cabaret Fledermaus in Vienna (a city that still oozes a hidden degeneracy in its golden Klimtian swirls), which the Barbican nobly attempted to recreate, right down to the mosaic of rainbow bright ceramic tiles that crammed the walls of the original room. But it was undeniably missing debauched punters, a thick cloud of fag smoke and Miss Macara performing her Grotesktanz.
And of course both Paul and I would’ve been front row for Hugo Ball and his experiments with Lautgedichte (sound poems) at the Cabaret Voltaire. Ball’s project was to reinvigorate poetry by inventing a new language: I don't want words that other people have invented . . . I want my own stuff, my own rhythm . . . I want words that are seven yards long. But even if in the world then, we’d have had to be quick — we were shocked to learn the club only lasted five months (its impact still reverberating with us now) in its futile attempt to make a stand against the war raging all over Europe.
Like the Cabaret Voltaire, most of the clubs in the show were short-lived; perhaps it’s not so surprising, considering the makeshift nature of their existence. Art really was underground and precarious, and happened without grants and advance preparations.
As we sat in the concrete-clad coffee bunker afterwards, Paul and I mused on the clubs of our youth — his beloved Soho jazz cafés of the 60s, my Lower East Side dives of the 80s — and wondered why their kind no longer exists. We talked about places in London like Café Oto and Iklectik that showcase what’s current in music and poetry, but they feel like notable exceptions. It’s true our city currently feels devoid of joy as we face our separation from the continent. Perhaps that’s part of the reason — we are not open to what’s new as we once were.
Again, like Cabaret Voltaire, it’s interesting to realise that many clubs rose up in times of crisis, so perhaps we are ready for a revival. It’s time to inject a little Weimar decadence into grey old London. We have just entered the Twenties after all . . .