The Matts - bad feet
Falconer, Copenhagen
I couldn't sleep very well so I listened to lots of Scott Walker, which is very evocative of young men wandering heartbroken through the cities of Europe; his eyes take in the grandeur of the architecture and the beauty of the vistas but inside he feels nothing. He lives only for the next pack of Gauloises and the dancing eyes of the hat-check girl at the Intercontinental; they promise much ... maybe ... nothing. Perhaps tomorrow he will wake up in her bed, watching the flies circling the ceiling fan in her appartement on the Rue de Valoir as she brews coffee and fixes her make-up, murmuring something about work, asking him to post the key through the letterbox when he leaves. There are lifestyle magazines scattered about the cramped sitting room which he flicks through in a desultory way; gaudy technicolor; lips smeared, teeth bared. Print-thin facsimilie of beauty. The hot water runs out part way through the shower. He sits naked and shivering on the balcony and smokes the last of his cigarettes. There is a woman beating a rug on the fire escape two floors above him. Their eyes meet. The next morning it is her blankets and her ceiling fan and the stench of her desperation he wakes up to.
We're in Copenhagen, but there is no sign of Danny Kaye. We don't manage to find the little mermaid, but we pass the Aladdin take away. We find our way to the river and Christiania, the ex-hippy commune and now slightly dubious bohemian shanty town. It is an intriguing place, but I for one did not feel that I had found the promised land. When I get home I am going to join the Young Conservatives.
The gig was a little odd. Elements of the crowd seemed a little hostile, unless "fuck off" is a compliment in Danish.
It is hard to wash your feet properly if you only have showers.
