Sitting on detesteble couch at the entrance of Fleda in Brno after an
ill-advised decision to hop a Student Agency bus to try to do
everything at once - work on the bus, go see a friend's exhibit, go see
another friend's collaborative art project. Hot as hell day in second
city, the kids are in the fountain and the loud talking girls on the
bench next to me are nails in my skull. I wandered with my too heavy
laptop through the dumb torn up streets near old town wondering why
corrupt Czech Republic had to decide this was the year to dump all the
money in construction struction struction. "Just like in the '80s, the
streets were always torn up," a friend says as we walk over tram tracks
and tar and barrels and wooden planks where there should be paving
stones. Same shit, different regime.
It's Tuesday, the taxi
driver had the tv on in his super-future-tv-mp3-player thing, "economic
crisis," people rioting in the streets in Greece, something about the
Minister of Culture complaining that all the despair will drive away the
tourists, he drops me off at the museum. Closed on Tuesdays now. Ha ha
ha, hot summer sun and a bench - a bench. Public Display of Affection. I
ask where's Fleda at the Hilton next door and get a weird look like I
asked for a ladder to the moon. They give me a map and point off the top
of it - somewhere around...there. Soon enough I am on the tram and to
the club, no longer unfamiliar but only now seen for the first time in
day. Last time I was here was 2am and it involved a failed attempt at
vegetarian food: the punk rock map of CZ just got a daylight check
point.
Fleda. Wooden windows with curtains masking utility rooms,
folk symbols stenciled oversized on cigarette stain green walks. Gum
stains on the floor like every square inch of the NYC public transport
system, and a guy with a tip top of head pony tail DJing progressive
house, or something, a vaguely tangible feeling of long done ecstacy in every corner. What is going on? The disco ball is on even when no
one is here, I know it. Admission 50 kc but there's a free CD. The star
of the night and her friend argue if this is embarrassing. "It seems
wrong to do it." "But if you give away 500 and 10 people come to your
show because of it, that's something." "That's not the solution."
"Ecch." We stumble into the back room, there is a sad balloon covered in
rhinestones spinning slowly and a work table covered in glass
tindersticks.The project has been sponsored by the EU - playing in five cities, a sound and video document of the end of glassmaking in the Czech Republic.
Brno is known for "experimental" music, or as Craig
would say "more art than sound." He means it in a bad way, although I
am all for a concept. The opening band involves a guy squatting at a
laptop and a woman in a long polyester dress declaiming fairies in a
helium voice with ballet posture while animated nightmare cartoons float
by on the screen. I am finding something good to say about this -- she
never backs down no matter what. He occassionally catches her phrase to
turn the thing into magic, even when its an accident, or maybe it only
works that way and anything else would be cynical. People cheer wildly,
more like "hoooooooo" than clapping, a loud sound like something I heard
the other night up by the castle in Prague, something like a continuous
rolling thunder that moved across the whole landscape for some five
seconds, too big to be ominous.The duo slink off and it is time for my
friend. I sit in the front row and am conciously trying not to hold my
legs like everyone else in the room is holding there's - cross, bouncing
slightly, expectant. There are maybe 15 people in the room. The mix is weird, the rhinestone disco ball was made to droop and looks perfectly wretched. Tuesday night in Brno. Hoooooo.