‘That sounds about right.’
‘But you do know you’re not in love, don’t you?’
Petra, who’d been primping the stock on the countertop, froze as if caught in the act of something. ‘What?’
Suki glanced through the front window to make sure Freddie was well away. ‘It’s all mind tricks. The Troxler effect. Stare into someone’s eyes for ten minutes and you’ll start to see monsters, angels. The man you want to marry and spend the rest of your life with and have a litter of babies with.’
Petra sighed. ‘I didn’t say I was in love.’
Rose-Tinted Reviews with Rose Devriendt #138
A New Show Gets Under the Skin
Idiopathy, Metamuse, rue Clauzel, SoPi,
Paris, 5–12 May
Dozens of adverts and invitations trumpeting the newest, hottest shit in theatre clog my inbox daily. Always on the lookout for the newest, hottest shit to tell you about, I dutifully trek out to cover the most interesting-sounding shows, and most of the time they’re disappointing – poorly conceived, badly written, and barely designed.
It’s no wonder they find no investors and have the production values of a bored and uninspired child’s rainy-day puppet show. I come out of the dusty loft feeling like I’ve just watched some egotistical art student’s sloppy wank, and most of the time I don’t even bother filing a review. Instead, I go home and drink and wonder what the fuck I’m doing in this moribund industry.
That was the first difference about Metamuse. They didn’t approach me. They didn’t advertise. And from what I know, they didn’t send out the usual scattershot PR mailer to anyone. They seemed to want to stay below the radar. I heard about Metamuse on the street – remember, where guerrilla art used to live and breathe before we all took up residence behind our screens?
I can’t even remember where I first heard about them – not Instagram, Art Forum, Deviant, but in conversations: the bookshop guy, the chick talking to her girlfriend at the grocery, fellow underemployed hacks gathered in the tabac – and since then, there was a little background hum growing that I didn’t even recognise at first.
But I remember the look of the couple coming into the Coupe de Miel on place Gustave Toudouze the night I happened to be finding my solace there. They looked like they were floating a few inches above the floor, haunted, connected. They looked like they were ready to pull each other’s clothes off and perhaps eat each other in a Cronenbergy way, but that they didn’t need to because they were already inside each other, if you know what I mean.
They sat down at the table next to me and I turned my attention to them. ‘Where have you been?’ their friends teased, recognising the same enviable otherworldliness I had seen. They cleared their throats, glanced at each other, and I heard the words they looked at each other. Do we tell them, or do we keep this our dirty little secret? Do we share the love or do we hold it to ourselves, keep it burning between us forever? That’s what they said in that glance, I fucking promise you.