bonobos got me on the run

It's just like that, you know, one moment you're happy to stay inside, next thing you know the temperature drops and there are suddenly more options than bee's bottoms. So, Wednesday night, headed off to the Cartoucherie, the dark lodge in the Eastern Woods of Paris. Hidden behind the forest are a series of barnlike buildings, which hosts various theatre performances. I think it's supposed to be famous for some Communist woman being charge. Those days are done. This place is strictly bonobo now (boheme bourgeois - richies who talk about healing Indian salt baths, bio-soy while paying several thousand dollars for genuine Peruvian 19th century pottery, but would never take the metro because of the ethnics).

Well, the performance was as expected... ethnic. It was a celebration of the Korean New Year of the Cock, which isn't very much different from the Chinese idea of New Year celebrations. The performance started with some Korean shaman dude hopping around and murmering stuff. He was a lovely little bouncing ball of a man, jiggling around in about 6 different layers of primary coloured silk dressing gowns. After that, he stuck a pin cushion on his head, then a black top hat, turned to the audience and said he was free to grant wishes. The deal is, you go up to him, you make a wish, pick a flag, then he laughs at you and takes your money. I think the guy raked in over 250Eu in under 7 minutes. He may not be a good shaman but he's definitely a great showman (nyuck hnyuck).

Then there was some singing and stuff but I was really sleepy and did old trick of tilting my head back to look down my nose, so as to minimize opening of eyelids.

Aside: I haven't been sleeping too well lately. Some weird moonrock has been gnawing through my Mandy shoulder. I try and I try and I try... warm milk, extremely long tracks of dense philosophy, and still my lights flash blankly in the night.

Insomnia... is there any real cure for it besides pills (which I don't do). You know, I once had insomnia all summer, at the age of 9. I would lie in bed for hours and hours, reading in the hopes of getting drowsy enough for sleepland, but the moment I put the book down, I was wide awake. Then, when I finally fell asleep, I would have the same dream, every night. This got so bad that I was averaging maybe 3 hours of sleep a night. At the end of the summer, my mother, who, bless her soul is not the most sensitive person in the world, noticed I was acting very erratically and generally avoiding all sunlight. She asked me if I wanted to see a shrink. I said yes. And then she laughed and said she was joking. Of course, I didn't see a shrink, and the insomnia tapered off noticeably in the fall. However, that was the first occurrence of what is now a regular feature in my life. Seems to be triggered right before extremely creative stages though.

So... there I am, painting circles on my eyelids, when suddenly the guy pops up and says intermission. Oh goodie. I run down the steps, off the right side, and there was already a massive queue at the counter. Benichou, our host, pointed up to some Korean totems, which he and his Korean girlfriend verified were the real thing. However, through my bleary sleep deprived eyes, they just looked like wooden sticks some dingbat sporto made in Industrial Arts. Not too impressive, those totems. (yeah yeah, I think maybe angering the gods with such agnostic grumbling can be dangerous, especially regarding my rather tentative luck situation... but they really do look like painted sticks with a shitty ikea sheet on them).

After the noodles, it's time for more grunting and singing. It's ok, this blind man song about his daughter being murdered, then married, then murdered again, and maybe he could see her... then he squats like he's going to crap on the stage and falls down. *thunderous applause* But, I like the crap motion... he's a very convincing actor. And the whole murder, marriage, murder sequence is effective.

Finally, these guys, about 7 of them, come onto the scene and whip the crowd into some crazy tribal frenzy with wailing rhythmic drums. Surprisingly reminiscent of teenage years tucked into some bad rave by the lakeside, where thundering hammering sound was only made supportable by indecent amounts of drugs. Alas, said drugs have also wasted my brain and made me unserviceable for normal life. Thus, these Korean drumming thing was like having a thunderous message of "you're fucking your life over" smashed against the skull. Made me weary and delirious... almost nauseous.

Then, to make things even better, all those bonobos went a whooping and hooting, like some strange new breed of primate about to hump the stage in exotic satisfaction. Gosh, that started another reign of terror as the koreans took to banging away again. I'm swooning out the side of my chair my now, saliva barely controlled... dribbling... eyes are doing figure eights... Then the audience jumps up and swarms downstage... doing some crazy tribal dance round the drummers. There was even some swami looking middle aged bag doing the reach to the sky manouveurs... I felt the swimming of ancient tides streaming through my salty brine blood... the thunderous tribal tornado lasted another ten minutes, long enough for me to hold myself in reasonable shape before running to the parking lot.

Yo! I know there's many of you out there chinning around thinking this nardac girl is up the wazoo. It's not that I'm immune to real emotion, music or rhythm or the thunderous opening of heavens. Au contraire! I like it fine enough. But, I'm not a fan of techno, not anymore. The whole thing just reminds me of long-fanged cannibalistic white men, with their lost souls, sucking the brains out of the cushion-headed. I half expected to see their jagged canines tuck into soft skulls and the wailing frenzy of steel-headed matrons as they randomly humped multi-coloured handkerchiefs.

Basically, I got back... and it took me a long time to unwind, even with Harpo's inane Jewish Mamie stories... and I slept extraordinarily late, woke up later... long enough to fire off a missile down the information superhighway... then back to bed. Luckily, my early student was sick with the flu, otherwise my head would probably be crashed dead into the computer by now.