Blimey. Duchamp might be too much.
After we lost the others, The Butter Mouse pulled on my arm like a magnetic force. The Butter Mouse is a puppet. She has been on many adventures with me, but she is a prop. Up to this point, I wasn’t sure if her movements were psychosomatic. Now I need to accept she is changing with this place. Only six months ago this would be unthinkable, but now it is no different to wearing a sun hat in Australia.
We stumbled around, tripping over guy ropes, the air smelling of candy floss and fried onions. Live music bellowed from somewhere nearby, the muddy beats and tinny guitars suggesting a festival set up. For us there were only tents.
One had the flaps wide open. Inside two women played a game of chess where the pieces crawled from square to square like insects. They glanced over, not caring that we peeked into their private space.
‘It makes the game easier,’ one said.
Further up a group in overalls carried bicycle wheels into a sky blue two birther, and never returned back out. One tent sat in a champagne moat, a frosting of ice over the fabric. Another vomited party streamers and confetti. This is the second location in Nadada where we have got covered in confetti if you are keeping count.
There was only one exception to this forest of tents, and The Butter Mouse lead me straight to the front door. Nestled between two circus marquees was a porcelain igloo. The doorway juts out like in a cartoon, revealing nothing of the building’s innards. A man sleeps in the nearby grass, a stick covered in black and white ribbons in one of his hands. I wondered if this might be The Kandinsky.
We headed in, stooping under the low roof. A few feet in the ice white porcelain gave way to the muddy brickwork of a dive bar. The floor was tacky, covered in plastic cups with lipstick stains.
A crowd gathered round a stage. Most were dressed like soldiers in full regalia, medals covering the tops of their shirts They watched a woman in a huge cardboard suit splodged with cheap brown paint. A long wooden pole ticked back and forth on the belly of the suit with the gentle rhythm of a metronome.
She spoke with the hectic beat of frantic property. Her words were maybe European, but the language unidentifiable. Some could even been English backwards. The sounds boomed from amps plugged into actual sockets, even though they don't need electricity.
The Butter Mouse was off again, worse than ever before. We shoved through the crowd, and rather than the usual elbows and catcalls bestowed on a pusher inner, they laughed and applauded. Hands grabbed my trousers and shirt, and lift us towards the stage. They rolled us to the feet of the metronome lady, and she yelled at us at through an SM-58.
Back across the room, the porcelain opening had vanished. Their is only a brick wall reaching up to blinding stage lights, and onto darkness above.
Our view from the back of the room.