Le Flâneur

Last night Le Flâneur had a traumatic experience.

We had been given some free tickets for a ‘classical music extravaganza’ at the Albert Hall. Like total fools, we thought this would merely mean three or four performances of classical favourites, popular and crowd-pleasing no doubt, but a good opportunity see world-class musicians in a world-class venue none the less. I couldn’t find the program anywhere on the internet prior to the performance (though as it turned out that was more or less irrelevant anyway)

We should have seen the warning signs, but we were swept forward on wave of good feeling that we were getting out doing something cultural for once.

It was as though we’d walked into a dystopian future, or an idiocracy style world way out there beyond the realm of kitsch. Unbelievably, the music was amplified (presumably for the hard of hearing), and badly done. In combination with the light show it amounted to a full on assault of the senses. You’d find more subtlety at a metallica gig. Only the genuinely mentally handicapped, or people old enough to have their critical faculties completely desert them, would have found any enjoyment from last night’s performance. The people that didn’t fit into these two brackets were merely shells of human beings, hysterical flag waving philistines, for whom the music only provided wall-paper to their frantic collective nationalist jerk-off. Never have I seen so many Union flags. Never before have I experienced such a strong sense of the terrible and dangerous power of music.

During the interval we made a be-line for the door; our one thought to escape this weird shared nightmare. Suddenly all the people around us seemed like unthinking automatons. It was a harrowing insight into the dim right wing. The venue will be forever tarnished for us all. The horror.

Joe says:

I was separated from the others and found myself trapped in a small room with four Australians one of whom passed me a union jack. I reluctantly accepted the cheap plastic artefact and discreetly dropped it as soon as the lights dimmed. This was when the real trauma began. The chorus from Carmina Burana began and a bright green laser was shone directly into my eyes. After the orchestra had been playing for about two minutes, the ‘conductor’, in the style of smug radio four stalwart Nicholas Parsons, spoke for about five minutes about the Royal wedding anniversary. At this point the woman who’d kindly given me the flag turned around to make sure I was waving it. I wasn’t. The only ray of light came from a text from Matt (pictured). We left at the interval, shocked, traumatized, slightly hysterical, and sadly aware that the world was an even more terrifying place than any of us had previously imagined.

Matt says:

We tried to warn others. No one listened.

This entry was posted by Chris on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Music.