We treat satisfaction like a finish line — permanent, polished, waiting for us if we hustle hard enough and heal “right”. And yet, what if that’s the wrong map? What if satisfaction isn’t a destination at all — rather, a weather pattern: passing through, beautiful when it visits, impossible to domesticate?
What if the baseline isn’t seamless fulfillment?
Psychoanalysts called it jouissance: those bright, disorienting flashes of more-than-pleasure that visit and vanish. We get moments, not permanence. Yet we keep trying to retrofit life into a continuous high: more goals, more apps, more “optimised mornings”, more distractions polished to look like purpose. We stack our calendars like sandbags against an inner tide we don’t want to feel.
And then something tears through the fabric. The diagnosis. The layoff. The quiet Tuesday you crumble for no obvious reason. The void you’ve been outrunning steps into the doorway, and the light goes strange. It feels like descent — like a cold, locked crypt — but it’s also a threshold. The ache isn’t evidence that you’re failing at life. It’s evidence that you’re alive.
We’re not built for perpetual plenitude. Every wisdom tradition has said this in its own dialect: dukkha, exile, the wound that opens the heart. Jung mapped it as shadow and descent. Lacan called it lack. Mystics describe a dark night where the old scaffolding collapses so something truer can breathe. Different names, same contour: there’s a gap at the core of things. We suffer when we try to plaster over it. We grow when we learn to relate to it.
So here’s the unsettling invitation: stop trying to seal the crack. Sit beside it. Let the draft move through you without rushing to fix the windows. Notice how much of your life is designed to outrun this exact feeling – the tabs, the tasks, the tiny screens that promise relief but deliver numbness. Notice the bargains you make with yourself: “When I get there, I’ll finally feel whole”. There is no there. There is only here, and the momentary sweetness that visits like birds at dusk.
This isn’t a call to resignation; it’s a call to intimacy. To meet the void is to meet yourself without costume. It’s to put down the role of the one-who-has-it-together and become the one-who-is-honest. It’s to trade the anesthesia of certainty for the medicine of contact. Paradoxically, that’s where steadiness lives — inside the willingness to feel the wobble.
Look around: when we refuse the ache, we outsource it. We build cultures that run on distraction, economies that monetise our longing, feeds that flood the cavity with glitter until we forget it’s there. The collective chaos is the echo of a shared refusal. We think we’re avoiding darkness; we’re manufacturing it at scale.
What shifts when we stop? When we let the void speak in plain language?
Sometimes it says: Rest. Sometimes: Tell the truth. Sometimes: Cry. Sometimes it says nothing at all, and you learn to sit with silence without turning it into a problem to solve. You breathe in the unfinishedness and, somehow, it stops feeling like a threat and starts feeling like a horizon.
Practically, this looks smaller than your ego wants. It’s making hot chocolate and tasting it. It’s putting your phone in another room and letting loneliness introduce itself by its real name: longing. It’s prayer without performance. It’s a page in a journal that doesn’t have to be profound. It’s a walk where you practice being a body, not a brand. It’s telling a friend, “I don’t need advice; I need witness.” It’s letting satisfaction be an unexpected guest, not a lease you’re trying to secure.
And when the next tear comes — as it will — you’ll recognise the terrain. You’ll know that the crypt has a back door, that the darkness is not empty but full of seeds. You’ll remember that you don’t climb out by force; you grow out by contact. The more you befriend the gap, the less power it has to terrify you. Not because it disappears, but because you do not abandon yourself inside it.
Maybe this is the quiet revolution: to stop demanding wholeness behave like a product, and start letting it behave like a rhythm. To become someone who can hold sweetness without gripping and hold sorrow without drowning. To build a life that isn’t a fortress against pain but a hearth that can host it.
You don’t have to wake the whole world up. You don’t have to prove you’ve “healed”. You don’t have to turn your ache into content. You just have to strike one small match in the dark room of your own life and look honestly at what’s there. The flame won’t seal the crack. It will make it visible. And in that light, you might find a needle and thread.
Not to stitch the world shut — but to stitch yourself to it. To the gap, to the gust, to the gorgeous, fleeting weather of being here.
The delicate and peaceful sound of my cat drinking water, like raindrops tapping the surface of a still pond.
The papery sigh of a novel closing after a long emotional journey.
Catching the scent of old paper and instantly being transported to a library I’ve never actually been to.
Rereading a book and stumbling across a highlighted passage like a message from a past version of myself.
When a line in a film or book mirrors my inner monologue so precisely, as if the screenwriter or author borrowed my soul for a moment. Also, when the first sentence of a book or line of a film feels like the start of a new life.
Catching my reflection and thinking, “Who is she?!” but in a good, main-character way.
When my playlist shuffle feels personally and eerily curated by the universe.
When a song I forgot I loved starts playing in a random place.
When sunlight filters through curtains like a scene from a French New Wave film.
Watching the shadows of leaves perform a ballet on walls.
The eerie comfort of fog swallowing the landscape, softening the edges of reality.
Putting my ear to a seashell and pretending it’s whispering ancient stories just to me.
Overhearing a random snippet of a conversation that makes absolutely no sense but still cracks me up.
Talking to animals like they completely understand the emotional weight of my words.
The delicate rhythm of footsteps echoing down an empty corridor, like life composing its own score.
Witnessing two pigeons having what seems to be a very serious argument.
Catching a falling leaf mid-air and making a wish, even if I don’t necessarily believe in them.
When the shape of a cloud resembles something mythological like a sleeping Minotaur, a weeping Muse.
The strange nostalgia of walking into a room I’ve never seen before but swear I’ve dreamed of.
Realising I’ve designed entire cities in my dreams that I revisit as if they’re archived in a forgotten corner of the real world.
I’m grateful I’ve come to a stage in my life journey where I am far from being consumed by other people’s paths. Instead, I remain focused on my own alignment, recognising that what works for one person may not resonate with another – and that’s perfectly okay. I’ve gained clarity and serenity as a result of this discernment, which has also taught me to value my unique journey while honouring others’.
I like to believe that the universe ultimately has my back, as it guides me toward what aligns with my highest good (sometimes gently, other times not so much). The main purpose of some experiences is to redirect me towards opportunities I might not have otherwise seen. For instance, if I happen to be around people who are not a vibrational match for me, that should not discourage me; instead, it should make me realise what my needs and wishes are so that I direct my energy towards people who are right for me. In this context, I’m grateful that my instinct for self-preservation often acts as a social compass. Trusting this process brings me a profound sense of comfort and reinforces my belief in the beauty of life’s unfolding.
In this reflective moment, I extend my gratitude to all living beings – animals, plants, the elements, and the earth itself – that sustain and enrich my life. I honour the care and labour of the generations before me and the blessings of health, safety, and community that I am privileged to enjoy for these gifts, both tangible and intangible, represent reminders of the interconnectedness of all life.
The everyday blessings such as the cozy embrace of a warm blanket, the shelter of home, the nourishment of simple and fancy food, and the honesty of genuine connections – these are the basis of a fulfilling life. As time passes, I’ve come to value these seemingly ordinary experiences for the extraordinary joy and comfort they provide.
Gratitude transforms our perspective on life itself, enabling us to find joy in the simplest things such as the breath in our lungs or the resilience of our own hearts. Even amidst challenges, gratitude has the power to lighten burdens and allow moments of joy to shine through the darkness.
And so, I close this entry with gratitude for life in all its complexity. Life is not without its struggles, but it’s filled with opportunities for growth, beauty, and connection. May this gratitude continue to guide me – and anyone reading – towards joy, courage, and love.
I was watching a debate between Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson where Peterson alluded to a common psychological pattern that can be observed in daily life, known as self-licensing or moral licensing. It’s the tendency that occurs when some people perform a couple of casual, sometimes shallow and effortless good deeds and subsequently allow themselves to justify morally questionable actions as they – sometimes subconsciously – believe they have earned the right to do so. This phenomenon is related to cognitive dissonance, the desire to maintain a positive self-image, and the concept of moral entitlement.
People may be more likely to engage in morally questionable behaviour when they have previously performed a good deed (e.g. donating to charity or volunteering). Moral licensing is also frequently used as an excuse to justify treating others poorly. Some people may feel that, because they have previously done something good, they now have the “right” to do something bad – even if it is undeserved and unjustified.
This type of behaviour can be observed in many different contexts, involving social or family dynamics. Sometimes, when a person has simply assumed a moral higher ground for whatever reason, real or imagined, and they’ve reinforced their self-concept as a good person, they paradoxically feel entitled to do something less considerate; thus their own feelings of morality become distorted and don’t make a lot of sense as their current behaviour contradicts their positive self-image and values, as reflected through past deeds.
Essentially, this happens when their positive self-image has led to a sense of toxic moral entitlement, where they believe they are beyond reproach and their behaviour is acceptable, even when it’s harmful. If you’re an external observer noticing this phenomenon at play within someone else, you might feel mistrust and ‘moral repulsion’ and, if you’re personally affected, righteous indignation. But we have to acknowledge that this behaviour is not always conscious. Some people may not be aware of the detrimental effect that moral licensing can have on them and on others, and may genuinely believe that their actions are justified even when they are inconsistent with behaving in an ethical manner.
The phenomenon can usually be attributed to cognitive dissonance, the uncomfortable psychological state of holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously or acting in ways that contradict one’s values. As a way of relieving the discomfort of cognitive dissonance and restoring their good self-image, people will justify the less respectable behaviour by putting themselves on a pedestal and wrongfully attributing negative qualities to the person being treated poorly, for instance, which helps them reduce the dissonance.
Moral licensing can lead to unconscious bias and discrimination. Some people who engage in behaviours perceived as moral, such as supporting a charitable cause or volunteering, may be more likely to engage in discriminatory behaviour towards members of stigmatised or marginalised groups. This is because they feel morally entitled to do so based on the good deeds they have previously done, and therefore may not consider their subsequent discriminatory behaviour and prejudiced judgments as being morally wrong. In many cases, these actions are carried out without the subject being aware of their own biases or prejudices. This occurrence is especially concerning given the negative consequences it can have on people who are on the receiving end of this type of discrimination.
Research has also revealed that moral licensing can occur in the context of diversity and inclusion initiatives. In these cases, a company or organisation that promotes diversity and inclusion may subsequently engage in discriminatory behaviour towards people from underrepresented groups, because they feel that their prior support of diversity and inclusion initiatives gives them a license to act in unjust ways without being questioned.
Moral licensing often leads to great long-term negative effects, as the phenomenon can create an endless cycle of self-justification and rationalisation, making it incrementally difficult for people to act morally in the long run. They will regularly attempt to excuse their bad behaviour, justifying it through past moral acts. This can be conducive to a gradual erosion of moral standards and values, as they may become increasingly desensitised to immoral behaviour. Over time, there will be an increased tendency towards unethical decisions and actions. Keeping an eye out for this kind of behaviour in our peers and taking a stand against it is important in order to ensure that everyone is being treated fairly and with respect.
Tired of false assumptions, projections, and flawed worldviews — tired of patriarchy, misogyny, misrepresentations, malice, arrogance, duplicity, and needless snark. Tired of finding myself caught in vicious cycles. Tired of a world that sometimes drains me, so I naturally retreat within. Tired of judgmental attitudes. Tired of jealous people. Tired of manipulation. Tired of toxicity. Tired of obsessions about aging. Tired of pathologising our differences. Tired of neurotic tendencies. Tired of inauthentic friendships. Tired of feeling expected to feign constant enthusiasm — joy, passion, care, even empathy for those who seem wicked. Tired of the quiet seep of others’ insecurities and projections into my mind. Tired of being judged for embracing my disenchantment. Tired of double meanings. Tired of ignoring the imminent necessity for a chemical dependency. Tired of being perceived. Tired of being misperceived. Tired of caring about being misperceived to the point of extreme self-censorship. Tired of succumbing to the impulse of being authentic and regretting it. Tired of dissecting everything I say from dozens of shifting perspectives. Tired of noticing everyone’s blind spots. Tired of both encountering misanthropic attitudes and, at times, harbouring them myself. I know I’m not immune — I sometimes quietly slip into misanthropy, and I’m learning to accept that shadow side as part of who I am. Tired of thinking in rigid binaries. And no, this isn’t what a mental health breakdown looks like for me. When I sense myself beginning to spiral, I tend to freeze, finding it difficult to update my personal social media channels or engage much at all.
[This is an older blog post. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the date.]
I awaken in pure exaltation in a meadow bathed in sunlight. Everything is enveloped in luminous splendour. The lake of memory ripples and glistens with echoes of myths and fairy tales. There is something intrinsically immaculate about this moment. It feels as if this corner of the world has been ritualistically transfigured by forces that have had access to moments that evoked my noblest emotions. Or that my dream-weaving mind from a parallel reality is actively manifesting a mosaic of a world that I could feel in perfect alignment with.
I decide to explore my surroundings. I increasingly get the feeling that the place is sentient – a living, breathing, intoxicating sanctuary. The breeze touches my body with the ambivalent gentleness of a yearning spirit. There is an enigmatic scent cloaked in various elements, clothed with the vibrancy of an undefined passion. I reach an alien stone structure on top of which there is a crystal coffin. The woman inside looks like me. Her clothing embodies an exquisite, non-clichéd version of the cybergoth aesthetic. Although motionless, her body seems neither lifeless nor in the alluring state of catalepsy of most female waxworks stuck in reverie. She awakens, with her face bathed in sunlight. Her presence is enveloped in luminous splendour. There is something intrinsically immaculate about her, like her substance has been ritualistically transfigured by celestial beings.
She starts exploring her surroundings. As she appears to strangely, naturally assimilate the environment, I feel like I’m witnessing a process of symbiosis. Her movements are of an uncanny, refined quality that blends in with the landscape and speaks with the language of light. This world seems to have been created in her image. In her I catch glimpses of a level of aliveness that I’ve never seen in anyone else. Her discreet glances over her bare shoulder make me think she is waiting for someone, or some external thing.
I hear a disturbing, mystical interference sound and see flickering lights. The fabric of the world is briefly cracking to make space for another body, which materialises out of thin air. Twilight falls. She looks at him. It’s apparent they know each other from a parallel universe; the encounter is not serendipitous. Their eyes – both life-giving and annihilating – are glinting with rapture. She moves towards him through the dusky landscape, soft and languid, proceeding with a whimsical charm on the fragrant earth. What follows is their embrace – the drowsy sweetness of it.
Her resonant words are breaking the overpowering silence, being hauntingly echoed within all the natural elements around them. Listening to the melodious outpouring, his liquid gaze subtly changes. Their substances intertwine. Her life source becomes a part of him. His life source – a part of her. Their pupils are wide as they both take close-up views into each other. Here, this means experiencing the other’s entire life in a flash. Every moment of agony, ecstasy, every glimpse of the soul and of the dark night of the soul in its various manifestations. Everything around them shifts vibration: the elusive, undefined sense of ontological yearning becomes palpable. The atmosphere turns sultry. The ecstatic movements of nature fluctuate between frantic, impetuous, violent and soft, languorous, soothing. I am filled with a deep sense of rapture under the light of creation. Visible and invisible forces are harmonising and constantly replicating, giving birth to their higher selves, until the landscape is of an ineffable resplendence. Their encounter nurtures and transfigures the eco-system.
The narrative of our relationship with space is shaped and re-shaped by our minds, and not always in predictable ways. Mesmerising and haunting, that is how I would describe the aesthetics of Brutalist architecture now, although it hasn’t always been this way. I’ve mentioned before how impactful the relationship between ontology and aesthetics is to me. The way I relate to new landscapes featuring cold concrete, imposing facades, and the towering silhouettes of brutalism often constitutes an uncanny experience. In England, it happened when I gazed at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, when I first walked the path next to the Roger Stevens Building in Leeds, and when I stepped on the grounds of Barbican in London.
The cold rawness of the stark, monolithic, slightly dystopian aesthetic carries echoes of the past seeping into the future, haunting my perception of self and place. It helps if the spaces appear desolate, without disruptions. And the atmosphere of a new place feels slightly more otherworldly when the boundary between Brutalist architecture and nature is blurred. Even better if the structure is abandoned and derelict. Although the haunting quality is already inherent in the eerie architecture of Brutalism. Moreover, for me, since I lived in a brutalist-socialist block – a type of structure that was ubiquitous during childhood, when I encounter a different version of the aesthetic of brutalism, in a new environment, the familiar and the unfamiliar collide.
It’s an uncanny feeling of revisiting a liminal place, the archetypal presence of the homely that is rendered alien, a ghostly intersection of memory and materiality. Being haunted by a double, the self becomes partly ‘other’, being watched by a higher external force whilst existing ‘elsewhere’, until that sense diminishes as the self acclimates to the environment and everything else outside that space actually becomes temporarily otherworldly. Temporary identity and place are interlinked, so whenever I see a new architectural space with Brutalist exterior design, my past selves which visited other Brutalist spaces are having a gathering and collectively pondering how inhabiting such an architectural space both preserves and erodes the past.
Brutalist design…both intimate and vaguely distant, startling and infused with echoes of sci-fi narratives, comforting yet unsettling. Inspiring a homesickness for a place that never actually existed and will probably never materialise, a chimeric shadow world of inner phantoms, a world that borrows elements from the geography of my childhood as well as from tech-noir films. Such experiences have a destabilising effect – surreal, almost. With their ghostly, whispery grey walls, the buildings seem to be living, breathing things, rather than static. There is an undertone of fear and anxiety, mixed with rapture. As we know, the uncanny can also signify a longing for a return to a state of unity, which may be intertwined with a more sinister primal desire, a pull towards inorganic dissolution. Hunting the familiar image of tech-noir dystopia, both living and dead, can symbolise a repetition compulsion.
Whilst exploring and intimately absorbing a Brutalist space, I uncover lost poetry and sensory fragments of my inner world, feeling strangely at home even as I find myself in a place of liminality. When I exit a Brutalist Zone (particularly one that I’ve just seen for the first time), everything else feels temporarily alien, unreal (I say a new one because through repetition, the allure is demystified and diminished). It’s a state of mild spiritual dissociation that makes me feel like I can gain essential knowledge about myself, about consciousness and about the universe, whilst acquiring a sense of distance from myself.
The spiritual (‘spiritual’ in a secular sense) pride sometimes accompanying the feeling of being attuned to the universe and highly perceptive of shifts in energies, angst, desires, signs of discomfort, motivations, attractions, repulsions, projections, insecurities, prejudice, coping mechanisms, vibrations, the multidimensionality of the human experience, and so on when I walk into a room means that when I am – not by choice – in the disposition that I actually have to go through a break from the reality of existence, I find it hard to open up about my inner experiences even a long time afterwards. Granted, that’s also due to the nature of my experiences, the way they unfold, and the type of real-life material they tend to feed on and feed into. It’s that and the fact that, in my darkest yet lucid hours, my worldview tends to become more assertive, particularly when I feel my boundaries are being crossed, which is what is amplified (and internalised) to surreal levels when I’m thrown into the vortex of my ‘other’ self, which is not something I’d like to consciously/actively even indirectly nurture outside of that.
Whenever I’ve tried opening up, things have gone chaotically wrong both interpersonally – as once I add that layer it becomes nearly impossible to know others’ angles, and in my subsequent experience of the breaks, which have gone hopelessly meta and more labyrinthine. Things no longer flow naturally in my interactions. And I put a lot of pressure on myself to rewire my thinking patterns in ways that are beneficial to me, but unfortunately, this has come to mean detachment, which implies automatically being less likely to experience positive emotions as well. I have come to accept that only those with a very similar predisposition and psychological history and configuration in addition to moral compass would ever be able to connect with me in any significant way. Perhaps meeting them will give me a feeling of belonging that I’ve not found anywhere, in any context, in my entire life, if I’m totally honest. I mean among those around whom I’ve actually considered (and entertained the thought that) I might belong, as there are many that I’m happy and proud I could never even remotely relate to. I’ve always been pretty individualistic and self-oriented though.
When I welcomed the possibility of connection, I realised I’m too secular for the spiritual. Too dreamy for the materialistically-inclined. Too pragmatic for the ones who ignore everything worldly. Too realistic and down-to-earth for the self-help community. Too willing to work on myself to be among those with a tendency to neglect and deny all responsibility in a quest for self-preservation. Too pessimistic for the idealistic. Too idealistic for the pessimistic. Too neurotic for the stoic. Too self-contained for the openly and unapologetically neurotic. Too guarded for the emotionally transparent. Too transparency/authenticity-inclined for the ones who repress all ‘negative’ human emotion. This either makes me sound perfectly balanced or dispassionate and insipid. Either way, what I care about is – would I be happy to meet someone ‘like’ me (i.e. alike in significant ways)? Would I be ready? Scared? Threatened due to shadow self denial? Exhilarated? Relieved? Would I even truly see them, and myself in them? I welcome the opportunity to discover, for I usually only feel like I can be myself when I am by myself.
An ineffable sense of rapture of the mind, body, and soul.
A substitute for the spirit molecule.
A place where it’s safe to be human and where the concept of being human is unravelled at various stages in a way that will add to one’s self-worth, empathy, and awareness.
The texture of reality is mutable here. Your substance might go through physical and spiritual metamorphoses in tempestuous waves. Fragments of souls that are no longer around will reflect back at you unexplored feelings and aspects of your self on a visceral level.
You will witness the miracle of the self unfold. During your paradigm-shifting odyssey into this state of overwhelming multitudes, your core will be shaken and re-examined, but despite that, you will overflow with self-love even as you go through the transformative process. Your memories and dreams will be your friends, not your foes.
There will be upheavals, eventually followed by a sense of enlightenment and profound emotional intensity that will set new foundations in stone. No more lingering intrusive thoughts. No longer projecting and no longer being affected by other projections. An elation and liberation of the self.
Inserted myself in film stills from Stalker, Annihilation, and Solaris; photos edited and composited by me.
I had actually written a little uncanny story that these images were just accompanying, but I’ve decided to integrate that one exclusively in a greater project of the future.
While meandering through the vastness of cyberspace, I found myself immersed in old analogue photographs and archival material of the intriguing Parisian phenomenon known as the “Cabarets of the Beyond”: the Cabaret De L’Enfer (the Cabaret of Hell), the Cabaret du Ciel (of Heaven), and the Cabaret du Néant (of Nothingness). As night deepened in the heart of the glittering capital’s Montmartre neighbourhood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, flâneurs could escape the mundane and seek refuge in the enrapturing and otherworldly embraces of both Heaven and Hell during the same night, as they were situated at the same address. Diminishing the veil between worlds, the Dantesque cabarets represented a stirring source of entertainment and inspiration for guests from different walks of life, as well as a fitting backdrop for avant-garde artists and bohemian intellectuals in particular.
The Cabaret du Ciel greeted wandering – damned and divine – souls with blue lights and ethereal archways, whilst the neighbouring entrance of the Cabaret de l’Enfer allowed them to be devoured by the flames of hell in the grotesque jaws of the Leviathan. A little bit further away, one could find the arguably more unsettling Cabaret of Nothingness, which was a celebration of the essence and process of death, embodying a more worldly and macabre approach to the concept. The grim exterior of the latter was black and unadorned, except for the eerie green lanterns casting an otherworldly, cadaverous glow upon the unwary faces of the guests.
Inside the Cabaret du Néant, people were led by a monk-like figure through a dark hall towards a sinister café. In the Intoxication Hall, a chandelier crafted entirely from human bones cast a flickering eerie light upon the setting below, which consisted of coffin-shaped tables adorned with deathly flowers, dismembered arms with candles in their fingers, waiters dressed as undertakers who addressed the patrons as “corpses”, and disquieting depictions of battles and executions seemingly resurrected by the flickering lights. The unearthly, foreboding ambiance of the stage was merely a prelude to the performance that was about to unfold. Bells tolled. A funeral march entranced the audience. A sombre young man dressed in black held a transfixing discourse on the anguish and misery of death, pointing at the macabre imagery on the walls. The visuals would suddenly glow and become imbued with life as ghastly figures started emerging from the frames. Portrayals of fighting, living men turned into haunting images of skeletons writhing in a deathly embrace, as if they were fighting a never-ending battle.
With the help of mirrors, lights, and hidden rooms, the disoriented audience could witness the gradual decomposition of bodies. In a smaller room, the “Room of Disintegration”, a beautiful, pale, uncannily alive young woman in a white veil was enclosed in a coffin. Here is an excerpt from William Chambers Morris’ “Bohemian Paris of Today” (1899), which describes the experience through his eyes:
“Soon it was evident that she was very much alive, for she smiled and looked at us saucily. But that was not for long… Her face slowly became white and rigid; her eyes sank; her lips tightened across her teeth; her cheeks took on the hollowness of death—she was dead. But it did not end with that. From white the face slowly grew livid… then purplish black… the eyes visibly shrank away into their greenish-yellow sockets… Slowly the hair fell away… The nose melted away into a purple putrid spot. The whole face became a semi-liquid mass of corruption. Presently all this had disappeared, and a gleaming skull shown where so recently had been the handsome face of a woman; naked teeth grinned inanely and savagely where rose lips had so recently smiled.”
Compared to the other two cabarets, the Cabaret du Néant was notably different mood-wise and far less light-hearted. Not everyone appreciated the cabaret’s earthly, corporeal, macabre approach to death. Jules Claretie noted, “a sinister irony was expressed, not with angels and devils, but with people, mortals, death”. The French journalist also perceived the Cabaret du Néant created by illusionist M. Dorville to be ghastly and mean-spirited compared to Antonin Alexander’s Cabaret of Hell.
Renault and Château expressed their critical point of view in their book, “Montmartre”, stating: “if the Ciel and Enfer of the lovable M. Antonin merit a visit, this is not true of the Néant, which is frequented by hysterical and neurotic persons”.
Despite the scarcity of visual archive material featuring the cabarets, judging by literary accounts providing first-hand snap shots of nightlife in Paris, it’s hardly surprising that the Cabaret du Néant was found to be more disturbing. It seems to have embodied a visceral approach with painful reminders of mortality whilst focusing on the actual process and ritual of death in a way that made people face a primal fear. Moreover, some aspects of it created an uncanny experience, which would automatically involve the elements of emotional shock and repulsion. Besides the uncanny acts from the room of disintegration, there were other elements that were subtly frightening, nihilistic, and potentially psychologically scarring for some, as the cabaret of the void focused on conveying the emptiness of existence in a surreal way that had the effects of psychological horror.
Meanwhile, despite the profane theme it depicted, the unholy Cabaret de l’Enfer was less anchored in secular, materialistic reality and more rooted in the intangible and unearthly, which might have been one of the characteristics that made it less disconcerting. However, it was also not exactly for the faint of heart. After entering the infernal mouth-portal, past the embers that were stirred by a frenzied scarlet demon in the depths of hell, one would be welcomed by meticulous hell-themed decorations, ghoulish images of demons, dioramas of sinners being punished, and staff dressed in devil costumes. A cauldron was hanging over a hellfire, partially enveloping several devil musicians eerily playing “Faust” on stringed instruments, being prodded with red-hot irons for every discordant note.
After having their orders taken by a devilish being whose discourse was characterised by consistently twisted, macabre, yet playful words and arcane incantations, the damned souls who ventured in this hellish place would get to drink liquids that were supposed to ease their upcoming suffering, from glasses with an eerie, phosphorescent, unearthly glow. Meanwhile, the place pulsed with dark energy. There was a palpable, ominous sense of unholiness in the air. Volcanos were blasting and streams of molten precious metals were trickling from the crevices of the underground rock structure of the walls.
Imagine being there, surrounded by figures and symbols of the macabre, witnessing nightmarish scenes, soaking up the atmosphere, sipping glowy liquids, and catching sight of André Breton in one of his meetings with the Surrealists. The Cabaret de l’Enfer served as a gathering place for the Surrealists in the 1920s – and a popular one, at that. Unsurprisingly, the Surrealists were drawn to the cabaret’s macabre aesthetic, due to their fascination with the unconscious mind and penchant for the bizarre and the subversive. Breton’s studio was located on the fourth floor above the cabaret, which is where he and Robert Desnos arranged his well-known surrealism sessions.
The souls that graced the vibrant Cabaret du Ciel were enveloped in a cold blue light. The patrons stepped into an ethereal realm featuring plays that depicted the bliss of heavenly afterlife. Divine, dreamlike harp music as well as gloomier organ music filled the air. A priest recited a typical invocation from a small altar. St. Peter would stick his head through a hole in the celestial cupola to sprinkle holy water from the heavens, while reenactments of scenes from Dante’s Paradiso mesmerised the audience. Waiters were adorned with lacy translucent wings and halos that seemed to glow in the ethereal light. Fluttering among sacred palms and gilded candelabras, the performers were dressed as nuns, angels, and saints. After a brief procession, guests were invited to a separate room in order to become angels themselves through an uplifting, ritualistic, choreographed performance involving singing, incense, getting dressed in white robes, being adorned with wings and halos, holding a harp, and gaining access to the empyrean – a cloud structure.
Many visitors, including British poet Arthur Symons, described the Cabaret du Ciel as a Parisian gem of divine enchantment, a slice of heaven, appreciating its serene atmosphere, uplifting show, and otherworldliness. However, some naysayers seemed to be of the opinion that it was strangely irreverent, vaguely sinister, or, worse – kitsch. Others said it was actually more depressing and grotesque than the Cabaret of Hell, which provided an intriguing spectacle.
Despite being staged like a religious ceremony, according to British visitor Trevor Greenwood, the Cabaret du Ciel had something dark and sinister in its ambiance and mise-en-scene. In his view:
“I just couldn’t believe my own eyes. What a room! Down the centre, lengthwise, was a long table covered with a white cloth… and lots of ash-trays: around the long table were seats, some already occupied by bewildered looking Americans: I suppose there would be about thirty seats all told. At the far end of the room was a small screen about eight feet square… presumably hiding a stage of some sort… And the room itself!! It might have been a temple for the sinister performances of black magic or something. The walls were covered with cheap imitations of religious knick-knacks. There was a large bell suspended from an imitation beam… and it was a wooden bell! Close to the bell was a banner-pole, with a silver coloured effigy of a bull mounted on top… The whole place reeked of something sinister… and the general effect was the very essence of tawdriness.”
An iconic and inspiring piece of the cultural landscape of 19th and 20th century Montmartre, the Cabarets of the Beyond provided a tantalising glimpse into vivid worlds lying beyond the veil by inducing uncanny, surreal Dantesque experiences. Testaments to the alchemical and polarising effects of art, the well-known entertainment venues were places where the ordinary was endowed with uncanniness, and where curious souls could immerse themselves in a sea of unfamiliar and strangely familiar sensations. Through their macabre and celestial decorations, their unsettling performances and music, as well as the otherworldly themes that they brought to life, the Cabarets created a space where the boundaries of reality and imagination were stretched and distorted.
DIANA MARIN 