Picos Gemeos

John Fowles, The Magus, 1965
How much did this novel influence J.G. Ballard? And did the makers of the TV show Lost also take from it some of the ideas for their plot? John Fowles creates a setting in Greece that has the same labyrinthine and disorienting power as the island on Lost (not to mention the references to ancient mythology and secret cults) and J.G. Ballard's fascination with powerful psychologists (such as the ones in Cocaine Nights and Super Cannes) finds a prototype in Conchis, one of the island's older and wealthier residents.

When Nicholas Urfe arrives at this small Greek island to work as a teacher he thinks his hours will be filled with students and leisurely strolls along cliffs. Slowly, the island and its people unravel under an intricate spiderweb laid out for Nicholas, for reasons he is unable to understand. He is as equally caught by a spell cast by the island's Prospero as he is lost running through a maze that might lead him to the Minotaur's jaws. And so is the reader.

Although the story somewhat flags during a slow-burning middle section, things pick up again 2/3 of the way in when the novel's thriller element kicks in. I wish I had read this on my holiday to Crete last year

I think it's safe to say that my first trip to Slimelight was a success. What I thought would be a club filled with attitude and unfriendliness turned out to be a darker, campier version of Popstarz when it was housed at The Scala. I danced to The Cure's "Killing an Arab", Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" (EBM version) and a whole bunch of other stuff that I can't name; had a death metallist offer me his lap; bumped into various LJ people (even the kind I only know through icons); was offered drugs (which I declined - but won't next time); had boy-on-boy action with dj_alexander in the toilets (with an audience); drank a lot of Red Bull and Vodka served by the very friendly bar staff; was wished a good night by the coatcheck people (who made a point to look for my lost scarf); and didn't take too long to reach home after a solitary wait in the freezing cold and two nightbuses.

I'd been craving a club night in ages, and things got off to a nice start at sor_eye_ah and fross's place, where we drank vodka and cokes, ate nachos and listened to Equinox (a Front Line Assembly side project which I'd never heard of before, and which was quite good). Once the girl was booted, corseted and ready to go, we took the No.43 bus and were deposited a few metres away from the club's entrance (which is just behind Angel tube station.) sor_eye_ah was my side-kick for the night - passing on the job to others the few times she needed to venture into the foul-smelling toilets or grab a drink.

We were one of the first people to arrive (10.30pm) so she gave me a tour of the place. Immediately after the entrance is a little bar and a door to a room that plays trad goth all night (it's actually quite a boring room, with most of the songs being too slow and lacklustre to bring out the people standing in the sidelines to the dancefloor.) I heard my first recognizable song of the night in this room, The Creatures' "Gecko". From there, sor_eye_ah walked me through the cinema (a freezing corridor with chairs, at the bottom of a staircase, facing a screen playing Bugs Bunny), up to the middle floor (where most people spend the whole night, and which plays EBM to a sea of weaving glow sticks.) On the third floor is where they supposedly play more industrial noise and experimental stuff but I actually didn't hear anything of the sort the few times I wandered through - it was pretty much the same type of music as the second floor, with some abstract variations. It was in the girls' third floor toilet that we spotted the night's first casualty - a pair of legs and boots stretched out on the floor, security surrounding him/her.

Back on the second floor, I found bottled_cat, kixie, denalyia, zenithed and Tom-who-turned-out-to-not-be-brasilian, sitting on one of the leather couches facing the bar. You know those American high school films where the nerd shows up to a houseparty thrown by the cool kids? It felt a bit like that when they recognised me underneath my neon dreadlocks, goggles, moon boots and PVC terminator suit. It was really good to see them and for the rest of the night we bumped into each other, discussed the club and its people, gossiped about LJ and so forth. Surreal moment of the night goes to the individual who showed up as a Star Wars stormtrooper, clearly confusing Slimelight with Torture Garden.

I forgot what it was like to be in a club filled with stick thin, pill-popping kids. It was a nice nostalgic trip, on a carriage lane I'm not used to taking. My biggest surprise of the night, however, was that you can bring your own drinks to Slimelight?!? I've never heard of such a thing, especially since the venue also sells alcohol. There was a high rate of good looking girls and not-so good looking boys (but all the girls are mentalists so it's not worth it, according to dj_alexander). I lost track of the amount of girls with their asses hanging out, which certainly shatters my pre-conception of goth girls only wearing big frilly dresses. Some of the people dancing were so thin, they practically had no energy to turn their bodies. I thought about opening a hamburger stand outside, for the early morning survivors, then changed my mind when I remembered how cruel London's winter nights can be. Once in a while, I spotted older folk like myself in the crowd, enjoying some dancing, watching this younger scene they no longer belong to, some lurking in the shadows like sharks, waiting to pounce on the first nubile 18-year-old that wandered by. My heart goes out to the ones, like myself, who still want to go out once in a while for the sheer joy of dancing, drinking and judging other people's outfits - no strings attached. It's the same in every club, every city, actually. Cursed be the day I stop enjoying night life.

Hampton Court's maze

After five years living in London, I've finally managed to drag Kevin to Hampton Court. We arrived just before noon, caught a few rainshowers, visited the formal gardens and took a few audio tours of the palace -- the kitchen & the rooms used by Henry VIII -- before a tea break and a dash home.

The garden's maze was the highlight. Just as the sun came out, we entered the corridors made of hedges and searched for the maze's centre. Little speakers placed in strategic locations broadcast birds chirping, gongs, chimes and sultry voices saying random things like "please take my hand" or "you must get down". Lost families happily shouted at each other how they couldn't find their way out, or that they should split up into teams. In the maze's centre, a spanish-looking male couple kissed while I bored talked to Kevin of medieval europe's fascination with the labyrinth as a way to meditate (the only "useful" thing I learned from Kate Mosse's trashy novel Labyrinth.)

I have always loved labyrinths and this is one of the reasons I wanted to visit Hampton Court. To be honest, I'm not even sure what's the difference between a maze and a labyrinth -- is a maze man-made and a labyrinth a mythological creation? According to Wikipedia's page, mazes and labyrinths are quite different: mazes are riddles challenging you to reach its centre, while labyrinths are not necessarily hard to navigate. However, wasn't the Minotaur's labyrinth as difficult to navigate as a maze? Maybe mazes are meant to be aesthetic puzzles for the average person while labyrinths are truly terrifying creations nobody knows who created, or what's inside.

One of the main attractions of Brasilian amusement parks are their mazes made of glass. These are quite easy to navigate as an adult but are terrible traps for children. I can still remember my brother, 7 or 8 years old, stuck in one of them, crying his eyes out and bumping into glass walls as he desperately tried to find the exit. Oh, how we laughed outside. I've never seen them anywhere else apart from Brasil, and I suppose other countries like England don't need them if their castles house mazes in their gardens.

There was something very calming about walking through Hampton Court's maze. It looked deceptively simple and small from the outside. I could imagine zen monks walking through something similar, emptying their minds as they tried to follow the different paths and reach the centre.

* Once in a while, the usual rumour ran the school's cafeteria: a new ship was in town. Sometimes you outstripped the rumour by seeing the sailors wander down the city's packed streets before anyone else, their "plain" clothes making them look so alike: tight jeans, buzz cuts, fitted shirts or T-shirts tucked in, pristine sneakers. At night, they descended upon Wan Chai, looking for Cantonese hookers and alcohol. To their surprise they would find themselves sharing clubs and bars with us, teenage gweilos who also liked a bit of cheap booze and a good time wherever ecstasy tabs were easily found.

* She called my phone to tell me she wasn't waiting by the bookshop but by the longbar. When I saw her, she was sitting beside a mother and her child, waving at the baby. In the crowded supermarket, I confessed that I was reading a trashy novel called "Labyrinth". Kevin and I made her watch Twin Peaks' pilot episode that night because she'd never seen it. I wanted to take her to Elbow's Cafe, just on the other side of Victoria Park, but the weekend was far too fast for us.

* We spent the turn of the millenium pushing a car up Saint Domingo's mountain, our feet caked with cow shit, cold rain running down our backs, the night so dark that the only thing we could see were the pine trees caught by the headlights. Then, once we had reached the top, we crammed inside the car and opened the bottle of champagne. we smoked some pot and laughed at our miserable new year's as the rain showed no sign of abating.

* Friday night and everyone from school has plans. Even my brother has gone out with his skateboard friends. I sit in my bedroom, surrounded by cheap paperbacks, computer games and a good-for-nothing TV. I have a million hours to kill and the worst company of all: myself. I haven't discovered The Smiths yet. My parents sit in the living room with my brother Nicholas and his nurse, watching television. I don't wish to join them, but I give breaks to my solitude by walking past them on my way to the kitchen.

* It's my birthday and all my friends have been asked to dress as superheroes. I am Superman and my brother is Spiderman. Another Superman arrives, taller and stronger than me, then a couple of Spideys too -- costumes from the same supermarket I'm sure. When Bianca arrives, wearing a red polka dot dress, I rush to explain away her embarrassment at having forgotten the theme, how she didn't fuck up, how there is a heroine out there, printed on a comic page, wearing the same dress and saving the world.

* The first apartment I lived on my own. A semi-basement beneath Mechtilde, the landlady with a large collection of books on Hitler. When the ice storm hit Montreal, the stairs leading to my door became a slide. I broke one of my suitcase's wheels sliding to my door after arriving from the airport. The city had been in darkness for weeks, with people sharing apartments in order to generate heat (the year of Montreal's baby boom). Mechtilde gave me boxes of chocolate in exchange for shoveling the snow off her entrance. And I, in turn, got Holly once to help me do the job. I told her it would be fun and she believed it. Then it was too late to back out when the shovel was already in her hands.

- inspired by rag_and_bone.