Post by Victoire Beaudoin on Dec 29, 2009 21:43:40 GMT
Country: Paris, France
Area/Setting: Lapin Agile cabaret
Current Time: 23:47 pm
Weather Conditions: Warm, with a clear blue starry sky.
The Lapin Agile cabaret, founded in 1860, was located in Montmartre, housed in a small cottage behind a row of trees, in a stone building on the steep and cobbled Rue des Saules, on the right bank of the Seine River, and near the famous Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; many artistic people fancied visiting the place and having long discussions over what constituted art, whether art bore any meaning, and if indeed it was so, what that meaning was, for that was what artists most loved occupying themselves with – questions that bore no answers, they loved to torture their poor and complicated souls so that they would be talked about after their deaths. However, there were not only artists to be found in the cabaret, but also pimps, eccentric characters, simpletons wishing to engage in some good fun and watch the scantily clad women dance around them while having a glass of bourbon, and also students from the Latin Quarter, a contingent of local anarchists, and also a smidgen of high-heeled bourgeois out on a lark. Several painters loved portraying this entertainment hall in many of their works, namely Maurice Utrillo, who captured the cabaret on canvas, and also, Pablo Picasso, who represented the cabaret and made it famous with his 1905 oil painting ‘At the Lapin Agile’. Visitors would sit on wooden tables, upon which were carved people’s initials, secret codes of romance and love affairs, and other such sordid business.
The most interesting feature of the cabaret, the main reason why Victoire had chosen to perform in this entertainment place instead of any other, was the fact it had been formerly known as the Cabaret des Assassins. The reasoning behind such a name lay on the tradition of a group of murderers breaking inside and assassinating the owner’s son. This was enough attraction for someone like Victoire, who loved the darkness as much as feared it, who admired the beauty of words spoken in the cold pitch-blackness, and who loved mystery and murder. Therefore, despite her belief the building was exceptionally tacky and anti-aesthetic, only the name compensated for such an absurd setting. But the place was crowded tonight, there was considerable noise from all that animated conversation, passionate, zealous, while the waitresses walked around the hall and asked the visitors what drinks they wanted to get. Naturally, the men spent more time staring at their cleavages rather than on deciding whether they wanted bourbon or whiskey. Her number was up next, and she came out radiating, despite the fact it was only outward and never reached her soul. Wearing her eccentric dress of the evening, heavy make-up and dancing according to the vibrating music, she was singing a more risqué rendition of Edith Piaf’s “Mon Amant de la Coloniale.”
“Il était fort et puis si tender,” she began, walking her way into the stage with slow, steadfast steps, “que, dès notre première nuit, je sentais que je ne pourrais plus me reprendre, et pour toujours, j’étais à lui!” she sang along, while a sandy-haired and bearded man, several years older than her, appeared right next to her and tugged from the rear of the costume, making animalistic sounds from inside his throat to denote a more aggressive touch on her sensual voice. “Je voyais toutes les femmes lui sourire. Moi, je me cramponnais à son bras, et je les regardais comme pour leur dire: il est à moi, et je l’lâche pas!” she continued, ending the last words with a suggestive whisper, as she winked into a man sitting on the front table, and who was staring at her relentlessly – she found no fancy for him, for she could easily tell his mind was comprised of filthy objectives and uninteresting perspectives, and besides, she really disliked men with mustache. It was only part of her play, her cruel but feminine play, to turn those miserable bastards in passionate lovers with a simple glance from her, so that they would return to their own sordid, pathetic lives and feel as though they had done something – anything – that had on some level fulfilled them, awoken them. She had her way with men; she knew how to goad them, turn them greedy, how to irritate and mercilessly provoke them, how to reach her desires through them and use them for her own benefits. That was the benefit of beauty and youth. “C’était un gars de la Coloniale. Il avait là, partant du front, et descendant jusqu’au menton, une cicatrice en diagonale, des cheveux noirs, des yeux si pâles, la peau brûlée par le soleil. J’en ai plus jamais vu de pareils, amon amant de la Coloniale!” she ended her last word with an aggressive screech, which created a surprising contrast to the sheer depth of her voice, as heard from her previous singing, but she then walked across the stage and placed her hands across the red velvet wall, the other man still tugged from behind her, pretending to be her on-stage love affair, while she posed for her crowd with her almond-shaped and steel-gray eyes. The crowd that loved and cherished her.
And then she reduced her tone to that of the minimal whisper, and ground the back of her body against the wall, lowering herself and looking at her equally eccentric partner with eyes that glinted. “Des fois, quand il avait la fièvre, il parlait trop et j’avais peur. Je mettais la main sur ses lèvres pour pas connaître le fond de son cœur car je sentais que, dans son âme,y avait des larmes et du cafard. Longtemps, j’ai cru que c’était une femme. Quand j’ai compris, c’était trop tard.” Turning to face the audience and dancing with the rhythm of the invigourating music, her long raven hair moving along with the movement of her elegant and pure white shoulders, she stretched out her hand like a purring cat and motioned it towards the audience, singing only for them, for their pleasure, in her attempt to lessen the pain and anguish a whole nation had received upon those dreadful days of occupation. And when she continued with her song, her voice came out in a more aggressive manner than she had rehearsed it in the morning, more fiercely passionate and zealous, in a way more complaining and proud, consumed as she was by a rush of contradictory and all-embracing emotions from everything that had happened these few days.
“Lorsque j'ai connu ma rivale, alors j’ai serré fort mes bras pour que cette grande garce de la Coloniale, lui foute la paix et ne me le vole pas, et lui, il m’avait dit: ‘Je reste’! Mais un beau jour, il est reparti, vers ce pays que je déteste, dont il rêvait souvent la nuit.” The deadly news, the very fact of the Nazi occupation of France had been shocking, and she had received it with a pang of anxiety and a stab of bitter detestation, enough to create such a storm of loathing from her part as enabled prejudice and lack of rationale to reign upon her youthful heart. Only three days after a whole nation had succumbed to the Nazi regime, she had been forced to abandon her art studies in the University of Paris, Sorbonne, and make money by becoming a showgirl, nothing more but a cabaret girl, despite her intelligence, despite all those years of being well-nourished, despite all the elite social circles which had surrounded her family name and the reputation she once had had. Only to be lessened to the level of a silly, little showgirl. How absurd! How ridiculously and humiliatingly absurd!
Area/Setting: Lapin Agile cabaret
Current Time: 23:47 pm
Weather Conditions: Warm, with a clear blue starry sky.
The Lapin Agile cabaret, founded in 1860, was located in Montmartre, housed in a small cottage behind a row of trees, in a stone building on the steep and cobbled Rue des Saules, on the right bank of the Seine River, and near the famous Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; many artistic people fancied visiting the place and having long discussions over what constituted art, whether art bore any meaning, and if indeed it was so, what that meaning was, for that was what artists most loved occupying themselves with – questions that bore no answers, they loved to torture their poor and complicated souls so that they would be talked about after their deaths. However, there were not only artists to be found in the cabaret, but also pimps, eccentric characters, simpletons wishing to engage in some good fun and watch the scantily clad women dance around them while having a glass of bourbon, and also students from the Latin Quarter, a contingent of local anarchists, and also a smidgen of high-heeled bourgeois out on a lark. Several painters loved portraying this entertainment hall in many of their works, namely Maurice Utrillo, who captured the cabaret on canvas, and also, Pablo Picasso, who represented the cabaret and made it famous with his 1905 oil painting ‘At the Lapin Agile’. Visitors would sit on wooden tables, upon which were carved people’s initials, secret codes of romance and love affairs, and other such sordid business.
The most interesting feature of the cabaret, the main reason why Victoire had chosen to perform in this entertainment place instead of any other, was the fact it had been formerly known as the Cabaret des Assassins. The reasoning behind such a name lay on the tradition of a group of murderers breaking inside and assassinating the owner’s son. This was enough attraction for someone like Victoire, who loved the darkness as much as feared it, who admired the beauty of words spoken in the cold pitch-blackness, and who loved mystery and murder. Therefore, despite her belief the building was exceptionally tacky and anti-aesthetic, only the name compensated for such an absurd setting. But the place was crowded tonight, there was considerable noise from all that animated conversation, passionate, zealous, while the waitresses walked around the hall and asked the visitors what drinks they wanted to get. Naturally, the men spent more time staring at their cleavages rather than on deciding whether they wanted bourbon or whiskey. Her number was up next, and she came out radiating, despite the fact it was only outward and never reached her soul. Wearing her eccentric dress of the evening, heavy make-up and dancing according to the vibrating music, she was singing a more risqué rendition of Edith Piaf’s “Mon Amant de la Coloniale.”
“Il était fort et puis si tender,” she began, walking her way into the stage with slow, steadfast steps, “que, dès notre première nuit, je sentais que je ne pourrais plus me reprendre, et pour toujours, j’étais à lui!” she sang along, while a sandy-haired and bearded man, several years older than her, appeared right next to her and tugged from the rear of the costume, making animalistic sounds from inside his throat to denote a more aggressive touch on her sensual voice. “Je voyais toutes les femmes lui sourire. Moi, je me cramponnais à son bras, et je les regardais comme pour leur dire: il est à moi, et je l’lâche pas!” she continued, ending the last words with a suggestive whisper, as she winked into a man sitting on the front table, and who was staring at her relentlessly – she found no fancy for him, for she could easily tell his mind was comprised of filthy objectives and uninteresting perspectives, and besides, she really disliked men with mustache. It was only part of her play, her cruel but feminine play, to turn those miserable bastards in passionate lovers with a simple glance from her, so that they would return to their own sordid, pathetic lives and feel as though they had done something – anything – that had on some level fulfilled them, awoken them. She had her way with men; she knew how to goad them, turn them greedy, how to irritate and mercilessly provoke them, how to reach her desires through them and use them for her own benefits. That was the benefit of beauty and youth. “C’était un gars de la Coloniale. Il avait là, partant du front, et descendant jusqu’au menton, une cicatrice en diagonale, des cheveux noirs, des yeux si pâles, la peau brûlée par le soleil. J’en ai plus jamais vu de pareils, amon amant de la Coloniale!” she ended her last word with an aggressive screech, which created a surprising contrast to the sheer depth of her voice, as heard from her previous singing, but she then walked across the stage and placed her hands across the red velvet wall, the other man still tugged from behind her, pretending to be her on-stage love affair, while she posed for her crowd with her almond-shaped and steel-gray eyes. The crowd that loved and cherished her.
And then she reduced her tone to that of the minimal whisper, and ground the back of her body against the wall, lowering herself and looking at her equally eccentric partner with eyes that glinted. “Des fois, quand il avait la fièvre, il parlait trop et j’avais peur. Je mettais la main sur ses lèvres pour pas connaître le fond de son cœur car je sentais que, dans son âme,y avait des larmes et du cafard. Longtemps, j’ai cru que c’était une femme. Quand j’ai compris, c’était trop tard.” Turning to face the audience and dancing with the rhythm of the invigourating music, her long raven hair moving along with the movement of her elegant and pure white shoulders, she stretched out her hand like a purring cat and motioned it towards the audience, singing only for them, for their pleasure, in her attempt to lessen the pain and anguish a whole nation had received upon those dreadful days of occupation. And when she continued with her song, her voice came out in a more aggressive manner than she had rehearsed it in the morning, more fiercely passionate and zealous, in a way more complaining and proud, consumed as she was by a rush of contradictory and all-embracing emotions from everything that had happened these few days.
“Lorsque j'ai connu ma rivale, alors j’ai serré fort mes bras pour que cette grande garce de la Coloniale, lui foute la paix et ne me le vole pas, et lui, il m’avait dit: ‘Je reste’! Mais un beau jour, il est reparti, vers ce pays que je déteste, dont il rêvait souvent la nuit.” The deadly news, the very fact of the Nazi occupation of France had been shocking, and she had received it with a pang of anxiety and a stab of bitter detestation, enough to create such a storm of loathing from her part as enabled prejudice and lack of rationale to reign upon her youthful heart. Only three days after a whole nation had succumbed to the Nazi regime, she had been forced to abandon her art studies in the University of Paris, Sorbonne, and make money by becoming a showgirl, nothing more but a cabaret girl, despite her intelligence, despite all those years of being well-nourished, despite all the elite social circles which had surrounded her family name and the reputation she once had had. Only to be lessened to the level of a silly, little showgirl. How absurd! How ridiculously and humiliatingly absurd!
