Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
LA’s #1 avant-garde personal development program. I'm Emerson Dameron. I love you, personally. Levity saves lives.
The home of Ask a Sadist, Bite-Sized Erotic Thrillers, and the First Church of the Satanic Buddha. Levity saves lives.
Regularly scheduled episodes premiere on the first Wednesday of the month on KCHUNG Los Angeles.
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
Adventures of Helena the Brit
Helena Mayfair will absolutely shatter your understanding of authenticity in this dazzling, fever-dream journey through the performative landscapes of modern existence. With razor-sharp wit and devastating insight, she guides us through her encounters with tortured artists, American finance bros, and political figures whose public posturing barely conceals their private contradictions.
At the heart of this episode lies a profound question: Where does performance end and genuine experience begin? When Helena finds herself in "subspace," sinking through layers of carefully constructed personas until she discovers "something that wasn't even wearing Chanel," we're confronted with the possibility that authenticity might exist beneath our social masks—if only we're brave enough to look.
The metamodern breakdown in Berghain perfectly captures our contemporary cultural condition: "To know something is ridiculous and to feel it anyway." Dancing to Aqua's "Barbie Girl" while weeping on ketamine becomes a metaphor for the oscillation between irony and sincerity that characterizes our lives. Helena's adventures—from art heists to ayahuasca retreats, from political liaisons to Los Angeles fever dreams—serve as a funhouse mirror reflecting our own attempts to navigate a world where everything feels simultaneously meaningful and absurd.
What makes this episode truly transformative is how it validates our contradictions. Helena embodies the tension between cynicism and yearning, between knowing performance and desperate authenticity. She reminds us that being "fake" was never the problem—"it was always the loneliness, the echo, the absence, the desperate yearning for someone to see us pretending and believe in us anyway."
Ready to question everything you thought you knew about sincerity, relationships, and self? Let Helena Mayfair be your guide through this labyrinth of glamorous absurdity. Subscribe now and discover why cultivating the "sizzling, sexy confidence that you can only get through relegating it to a persona" might just be the key to navigating our performative world.
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It's OUT! Sophistication Nation: Brief Interviews with Women I Pretend to Understand: https://emersondameron.hearnow.com/sophistication-nation
This is K-Tron Stray out of LA and it's Emerson Dammit's Medicated Minutes today. Personal development, then. This is not a lie. Number one in the city, I will guard till we die. Liberty saves lives. That's a deep impact. Ain't no other good podcast. That's true fact. So kick back, let it hit, let the insight ignite. Kick back. Emerson's on K-Tron, los Angeles tonight.
Speaker 2:I've found that closure doesn't really exist, but human nature does. You're free to choose your own destiny, even if you think that you might not be. The fact that you're thinking about it at all means that you know that you are. You are free. You have no idea how powerful and sexy you are.
Speaker 4:Thank you. Is it a production of Emerson Dameron's medicated minutes?
Speaker 5:The number one avant-garde Persona villain in program On K-Chung Los Angeles, but she saves lives.
Speaker 6:I awoke in Astoria with a hangover so profound it felt like an art installation Something bleak, pretentious and vaguely misogynistic displayed in an abandoned warehouse curated by a man in a turtleneck who had most certainly fingered me poorly once and then critiqued my reading habits the sort of thing that would be reviewed in Artforum as an unflinching interrogation of female suffering, while the Prosecco-drenched corpse of my dignity lay in the corner. My last clear memory involved a bottle of Prosecco always the fucking Prosecco and a Ukrainian bartender with war in his eyes, one of several he'd fought in recently, most of them just for fun and an Adam's apple that jutted out like a monument. The next thing I knew I was in what I presumed to be his apartment. The walls were covered in oil paintings, all depicting the same woman screaming, her face twisted in ecstasy or agony. The distinction, like my own moral compass, had long since dissolved in lie. A gas heater hissed like a snake whose family you wronged in a past life. He sat across from me rolling a cigarette with the precision of a man who had been incarcerated or loved badly or both.
Speaker 6:Fifty-something, with cheekbones sharp enough to open mail eyes, like a wolf that had gleefully devoured a poet and kept his soul. He watched me, not like a man who wanted to fuck me, like a man who wanted to carve me into a series of small statues and enter them in the Venice Biennale. We never spoke of love, we barely spoke at all. His hands delivered his manifesto, bruising, insistent, a dialectic of force and surrender. He made me feel like raw material ready to be sculpted, warm material ready to be sculpted. When he slapped me just once across the face, it was so theatrical, so deliberate, I half expected a gallery opening to break out around us. There she is, he whispered afterward like my face had finally collapsed into its ideal composition. It was exquisite, I felt, chosen, elevated. The pain was transcendence, something Catholic, something primal, humiliation that was for lesser women. I was the patron saint of aesthetic suffering, and every last morsel of it was sustained with my enthusiastic consent, if not pleading desperation.
Speaker 6:He had a theory. Of course they always do. Pain purifies, desire, debases and thus reveals. Art emerges from the collision of shame and pleasure. He believed men should push limits, women should survive them. Not because he hated us, oh no, quite the opposite. He revered us as one reveres nature Beautiful, destructive, amoral. The greatest thing a man could do, he implied in his cigarette silences was witness. A woman survive him.
Speaker 6:Then there was Ricky. Ricky with the chin-strap beard. Ricky with the self-produced mixtapes Astoria slaps, volume three. Ricky who fused throat, singing with rather slipshod trap beats, producing a sound that evoked both a garrotted hippo and a demonic dial-up modem. Trying to connect to the spirit of murmur, he wore track suits in the colours of chemical spills. He spoke exclusively in record scratch aphorisms. He worshipped Gangster Pat with a fervour that suggested he had seen the Virgin Mary in a Memphis strip club or at least found some real ecstasy. His other touchstone was Arrington D Dioniso, an artist he'd discovered while high on airbrush propellant, whom he spoke of with the reverence others reserve for Chekhov or shoot from the hip era. Sophie Ellis Baxter, you deadass Helena, you vibe different, he told me on our third date.
Speaker 7:You got that old money energy like down in Abbey, but you suck dick. Your accent makes me horror. On like a spiritual level. You look like you teach yoga to milFs. But low-key, you a freak. You ever been choked out while listening to Gangsta Pat? It'll change your life.
Speaker 6:Reader, I stayed. I mean, who else was going to convince him? The plural of MILF is MILFs. Yeah, and so my soul became a diptych. Ricky by day recording trap throat fusion in his cousin's basement. The artist by night carving free verse into my collarbone with his teeth, as the screaming women on the walls besottedly bore witness. One dragged me through the sublime while quoting Xenophon, the other dragged me to the Athens Grill and Sports Bar at 3am. I oscillated between these poles of masculinity Ricky, who once rhymed Balenciaga with Guantanamo, and the artist who locked me in his bathroom for three hours because I had to learn patience, eventually offering me a so-called swirly, which I accepted, just to feel something cold, in this case, at any rate.
Speaker 6:Then came the performance. Ricky had a show. A dive bar in Queens, sticky floors, a bouncer who looked like he had been cut from a Bond film for being too emotionally available. The artist agreed to come with the air of a man bearing witness to war crimes. He wore black. As always, he wore black. As always, he barely spoke. As always, he gave me several orgasms purely through eye contact. As always, ricky took the stage. His opening track was called Swallow Pride, throat Goat, slight Return, combining mumble rap and what I can only describe as eldritch chanting from a purgatory for disobedient Intellivision consoles. It sounded like an exorcism performed by a demon with a sound cloud and a deservedly failing line of graphic t-shirt you do.
Speaker 8:Swallow pride, swallow my groove. Sluts love real men. Sluts are right. Open your legs, keep it tight. Dick is king. That's the deal. Take this load. That's real.
Speaker 6:The crowd turned hostile. A man near the pool table shouted turn that shit off. Ricky ignored him, transitioning into an interpolation of gin and juice. I glanced at the artist, expecting disdain. Instead he was laughing, Real full-body laughter. He looked human. I loved him then, Not for his violence, not for his darkness, but because he could see the absurdity. He could see art where others saw madness. After the set, Ricky bound over, drenched in sweat, eyes, wild. Yo, that was historic right.
Speaker 6:The artist leaned in his voice low grave, you are the future of sound. Fifteen minutes later, ricky knew all about the nurse with Wound List, the continuing relevance of Mayo Thompson and Harry Parch, and how the artist plans to rebrand the entire concept of outsider art, starting with Ricky himself. As Ricky beamed, I felt something inside me crack Dignity maybe, or the last fragile link to my baseline concept of normalcy. Or perhaps it was just the logical end point of desire, trapped between a sadist and a soundcloud shaman in a borough named for Catherine of Briganda, that I barely tolerated. Later that night, the artist made love to me differently. Tenderly, he traced the bruises he'd given me like a cartographer of my suffering. You don't have to stay, he murmured, but of course I did, because I deserved it all the bitch slaps and the knee slaps, the poetry and the mumble rap, the bruises for which I so enthusiastically cruised, and the mixed tapes I was too embarrassed to chuck in the bin. Was it degrading? Perhaps Deranged? Almost certainly. But was it glamorous? Absolutely. If I could bring glamour to Queens, I could do anything. Besides, I had learned things A power men and Tuvan throat wrap that would absolutely get me arrested in Europe someday, if I'm lucky.
Speaker 6:Oh, darling, let me tell you about Bruno, my tragic, delightful sex idiot. He's as muscled as a frescoed cherub and precisely as intelligent. His every utterance is an aria of incomprehensible power. Talk, some bizarre dialect of testosterone and monosyllables. Grunts, roars, push through the burn, what burn, darling. The man communicates like a protein shake that's just discovered vowels.
Speaker 6:And yet there I was in a dimension that felt like an unfinished painting, somewhere between Magritte's preposterous skies and Kandinsky's spasms of colour and chaos. Reality there was a slippery thing, a smear of shapes that couldn't quite decide what they wanted to be. A staircase spiralled upward into the breast of a cloud, a crescent moon floated, half-submerged in a pool of ink. Bruno stood at the centre of it all. His body a glistening monument of brute force. His head cocked like an empty and forgotten piece of crockery. What's the strategy, eleanor? He barked, his voice reverberating like a gong struck in a hall of mirrors. Strategy, as though I had a battle plan for the likes of him.
Speaker 6:And then he charged at me this living marble slab, this erotic wrecking ball. He collided like tectonic plates and, oh, the landscape quaked. Darling, it was violent, a cubist tango of limbs and impulses. His hands were all at once, anvils and feathers, dismantling me piece by trembling piece. He spun me into shapes I did not know my body could inhabit. At one point I was certain I had become a trapezoid.
Speaker 6:He painted bruises on me with broad, brutish strokes, as though I were his canvas. And agony his art. And when he spoke, oh his words, pure nonsense. Dominate the quadrant, activate the core, activate the core, stack games, games. I've no earthly idea what he meant, but I nodded, moaned and begged for more.
Speaker 6:At one point he lifted me like I was weightless, an origami crane folded into submission. I flailed beautifully, of course, a damsel undone by his geometric cruelty. A flee, of course, a damsel undone by his geometric cruelty. He slammed me against a wall that wasn't there, and yet I felt it, the texture of its impossibility against my skin. I dissolved into angles, reduced to some surreal assemblage of passion and pain, all at the mercy of this absurdly sculpted man. And yet there were moments, brief, flickering moments, when I saw something in his eyes. Not intelligence, mind you, that would be asking far too much, but sincerity, yes, that's it. A pure, almost childlike joy.
Speaker 6:As he shattered me like glass, his grin was that of a boy pulling wings off a butterfly, but somehow endearing, do you know? Once he even called me brilliant. Well, his word was, quote-unquote, tight. Tight meaning brilliant. And oh the aftermath, darling. We lay there, entangled in a mess of broken geometry and perspiration, the air thick, with the smell of paint. Thinner, I think, or perhaps regret.
Speaker 6:Bruno looked at me with something approaching admiration, his chest heaving like an unfinished symphony. You're tight, he said, which I took as a compliment, though I'm certain it was meant as a post-workout assessment, certain it was meant as a post-workout assessment. And I well, I told him he was sublime, because really, what else could he be? A sublime idiot, my idiot, my sex idiot. But you know what's funny, darling? Just before I left, as I slipped back into my dress, smoothing its fabric over the constellation of bruises he'd left behind, I caught him looking at me with an expression I couldn't quite play. Was it pity? No, amusement perhaps. And then it struck me In his eyes I was the idiot, the fool in this surrealist farce, his sex idiot. Me, can you imagine. But of course he's wrong, isn't he? Surely I'm the clever one here.
Speaker 6:After all, I'm the one telling the story, darling, you simply must hear about my latest spiritual awakening, Not the kind I had at that dreadfully authentic ayahuasca retreat in Notting Hill, but that was absolutely transformative too, even if I did ruin my favourite LBD. No, this was something far more how do the French say it? Profound. I've discovered subspace, and no, I don't mean that frightfully pedestrian sci-fi show everyone's watching. I mean something actually transcendent. Of course, I'd read about it in those terribly earnest BDSM handbooks that are always lying around at Jasper's Sex Positive Book Club, most of them written by people who shop at Tesco. If you know what I mean.
Speaker 6:I'd assumed it was all rather plebeian fantasy, like believing Prosecco is real champagne. I'd gone into the whole thing perfectly prepared. Naturally I always am. One doesn't graduate from St Catharines without learning how to maintain an air of aristocratic control in any situation. I plan to do what I always do appear to submit, while actually orchestrating the entire experience, rather like Marina Abramovic. Actually, have you heard of her? She's this absolutely vital performance artist who, oh, never mind. Vital performance artist who, oh, never mind.
Speaker 6:But then he happened, and suddenly all my carefully curated poses, which I'd practiced for hours in my vintage vanity mirror, just dissolved. It wasn't just the public spanking, though. That was exquisitely orchestrated, or the way he called me a vapid little princess in front of everyone at Soho House. It was something deeper, like Virginia Woolf diving into the river, except sexy and with better hair. One moment I was Helena Mayfair, you know the one everyone at Art Basel called refreshingly authentic. And the next I was gone, sinking through layers of myself, like one of those Russian dolls I once saw at Harrods Past the me that only drinks small batch gin Past. The me that quotes Baudelaire in terrible French Past. The me that pretends to understand crypto because that DJ I dated would not shut up about it.
Speaker 6:And at the very bottom, beneath all my carefully curated personas, I found something real, something genuine, something that wasn't even wearing Chanel, horrifying right, but also magnificent, like finding out your great-grandmother was actually a kitchen maid, but in a sexy way. The experience was simply cosmic. I saw colours that haven't even been gentrified yet. I heard music that made Tim Hecker sound like Fred.
Speaker 6:Again, my consciousness expanded beyond my corporeal form, rather like that time I accidentally took too much to Phoebe at Creamfields. Except this felt meaningful, important, like I was finally starring in my own French New Wave film, the truly revolutionary part. I didn't even care how I looked. Can you imagine Me the girl who once refused epidural during a root canal because I was afraid it would make my smile asymmetrical. There I was completely surrendered, probably making faces that would horrify my Botox specialist, and I was free. When I finally surfaced, like Ophelia, but with better lighting, I felt reborn Naturally. I immediately checked my makeup, reapplied my Charlotte Tilbury and pretended nothing transcendent had happened.
Speaker 6:One must maintain standards. But, darling, let me tell you had happened. One must maintain standards. But, darling, let me tell you I've been changed, transformed, elevated. I suppose you could say it was humbling, though I don't really do humble. It clashes with my bone structure. Was it enlightening? Like reading Roland Barthes for the first time, but with nipple clamp. Was it embarrassing? Oh sweetie, nothing is embarrassing when you're as genuinely complex and misunderstood as I am. As it happens, I'm never embarrassed, just utterly gloriously ruined. Now, if you'll excuse me, I simply must call my Dom. He's this absolutely fascinating investment banker who really gets me. He says I'm not like other girls at all, and you know what he's right. I'm literally the only person I know who's experienced something this profound. Well, except for Arabella, but she's clearly just copying me Again.
Speaker 6:So there's these four American chaps I keep company with, let's say, wouldn't call them friends exactly. Certainly not by friends, mind you. That's far too conventional, isn't it? Er more like pieces of a little puzzle, my own four-piece Yankee set, if you will. Each one's got his little charm. Don't ask me what they see in me, but honestly, who's complaining?
Speaker 6:No, there's Brad. Brad, the leader. You know he's always giving orders, terribly bossy, but oh, I quite like that, my little Brit. He calls me with that patronising grin. He's forever setting rules, making decisions and expecting me to follow Seven sharp hella, he'll say. Not a touch of humour in his voice and the thrill of it just makes me melt. Like he's some American king or whatever. And I'm his. I don't know. His Dassel, is that the word I mean? Really, who am I to deny a man his little rituals? It's like he knows exactly what I want before I even think it and I get to just float along Effortless, really.
Speaker 6:Then there's Jax. Action, jax, no chit chat, just pure raw energy. Gets right down to business. Barely a kind word in him. But who needs gentle? Oh, no, not me. He calls me his little English rose, and I think that's sweet as far as it goes, but the way he throws me about like I'm just some outlet. He says Outlet. I thought it was adorable when he said it. It's almost like he imagines he's found the core of me, this mysterious little English thing. He's unravelling bit by bit and he's going to plug right in like he's rogering the cosmos Me. I just let him get on with it.
Speaker 6:Less talking, more you know what can I say? Strong and silent has nothing on strong and straightforward in my book. And Trey Trey, the dark, dirty riddler Now he's clever bit of an oddball. He's into all this mind control talk, saying things like I can see your core motivation, helena, my core motivation, can you imagine. But he says it with this piercing gaze like he's imparting some great, profound revelation. And I think, sure, trey, whatever you say, it's quite a show. Really. I barely need to be there.
Speaker 6:He calls me his fascinating specimen and there's something so sweetly deranged about it, don't you think? All I have to do is nod along and he's positively enthralled. He might think he's got me under his spell, but oh, I do know a thing or two about charm. At the end of the day, I'm just floating along quite above it all With legs like these. He wants to work hard.
Speaker 6:And then Eugene, dreamy genius Eugene oh, poet, that one, you're my English muse. He tells me, like he's Goddard and I'm his Brigette Bardot or some such. He's got that soft, idealistic side, always whispering about how I'm the only one for him, I am the only one I know full well. He's got a whole harem he's saying that to, but he's ever so convincing, he's practically hypnotised himself with all those flowery words. And alright, I admit I sort of melt when he says them, don't I? Because really, what girl doesn't love a bit of romance? The moment he gazes at me with that doe-eyed look, I feel just as special. As he says I am Silly, maybe, but I know the game. It's all just a bit of fun wrapped round his finger with that charm of his. Such an excellent fantasy player he is, and he doesn't fancy a bit of that once in a blue moon. But you see, that's the marvellous part of it all, each one of them with his own funny American way of seeing me.
Speaker 6:I suppose one could say I've got the best of all worlds, don't you think? Or at least four of them, like I'm a wayfaring queen with four loyal Well, I wouldn't say subjects or loyal, but it's close enough to rock and roll. Yeah, oh, darling, let me tell you, los Angeles is a fever dream, wrapped in a piece of cauliflower flatbread, sprinkled with bee pollen and served with a side of unsolicited advice. It's a place where every corner hides a guru with a didgeridoo advice. It's a place where every corner hides a guru with a didgeridoo whispering the secrets of the universe while selling you an overpriced jade egg for your inner peace, or wherever you're meant to put it. Now picture this I'm wandering through Venice Beach Well, not wandering, striding with purpose, of course, as one does. And there he is, this bearded Adonis, draped in organic linen, sitting cross-legged on a Himalayan salt block. He beckons me with a finger that Michelangelo himself could have sculpted and he says get this.
Speaker 6:Baby, your aura is starving this Baby, your aura is starving, starving as if my aura has been nibbling on pita crisps and inhaling kombucha fumes instead of a hearty, existential stew. I was riveted. Naturally, he tells me I need to realign my energetic vibrations. And the way he said it with such conviction, I almost felt guilty for not knowing. My vibrations were misaligned to begin with. So naturally, I handed over a small fortune for a handcrafted chakra harmonizer. Yes, it's just a rock, but he called it cosmic quartz. Cosmic quartz? Doesn't that just sound divine? But then, oh the twist.
Speaker 6:As I clutch my cosmic quartz and gaze deep into my starving aura, I'm struck by the most marvellous realisation. Isn't the whole charade a bit of a lark? I mean really. The salt block guru, the jade eggs, the cosmic quartz, it's all one big performance, a self-help pantomime, if you will, where everyone is pretending to be both the damsel in distress and the dashing savior. Los angeles, darling, isn't a city, it's an installation piece about the commodification of enlightenment. And we're all extras, milling about the set in our lululong costumes, awaiting direction. Genius, no.
Speaker 6:At this point I think, helena, you're onto something. Could the very act of seeking self-improvement be the most gloriously self-defeating thing of all? Like trying to mop up a puddle with a sponge that's already sopping wet. So, naturally, I decide to become a commentator on this whole absurdity, a meta-guru if you will, the guru who knows she's a guru, which makes her better than the other gurus, or maybe worse, or perhaps just a bit more self-aware, which is really the same thing in the end. But here's the kicker love.
Speaker 6:As I sit there cradling my cosmic quartz, waxing poetic on the futility of seeking meaning, I realize I've come full circle, because isn't pointing out the absurdity of it all just another way of saying look at me, figured it out. And isn't that the most Los Angeles thing of all? A hall of mirrors where every reflection thinks it's the original? At any rate, I left my cosmic courts on the salt block and walked away, head held high, vibrating with a sort of smug nihilism. But of course I still booked a soundbar for later, because one must keep one's options open, right, right. Was it deliciously ironic? Perhaps Was it simply delicious, absolutely. Did I learn any lessons? Did I experience an epiphany or a personal growth spurt, or even a nice surreptitious orgasm? Was any of this quote unquote, real in the traditional sense? Honestly, I can't tell anymore.
Speaker 9:Oh politics.
Speaker 6:How tiresome. And yet, my love, one must keep abreast of the scene if one wishes to be terribly well-connected. Now, britain, my dear, is an omniscienz Shocking. I know I shan't bore you with manifestos, I'll tell you what matters, which is, of course, who is fun at parties. The Tories, ah, the Conservative Party, old boys club ghastly sorts, always waffling on about tradition and fiscal responsibility, when in truth they're just very keen on ensuring they'll live forever free from any momentary discomfort. But, my god, some of their ministers are quite the enthusiasts in private.
Speaker 6:Once I found myself entangled with a rather high-ranking cabinet member no names, of course who spent the afternoon decrying the decline of the West and the moral decay of society. And who spent the afternoon decrying the decline of the West and the moral decay of society and then spent the evening locked in a vintage Victorian punishment box, weeping and blowing his nose into a Union Jack handkerchief, while I dressed as the ghost of Britain future, complete with LED-studded dominatrix crown and scepter, read anti-Oedipus aloud through a megaphone and methodically stubbed out goals on a map of his constituency. Marked proposed tax haven, character building. He called it, said it helped him focus on more salient matters, such as cutting benefits for orphans. Labour, oh the working man's party. Social justice, economic equality, hand-wringing about the people Sweet, really Bit earnest for my taste, but I do so admire their passion. I had a rather intense affair with a young MP once Completely devoted to workers' rights, always on about solidarity. And yet, after a few Negronis, this proud mastiff of the proletariat was on all fours with a red rose clenched between his teeth, pulling a miniature coal cart filled with my designer shoes across his sustainably sourced bamboo floors, begging to be called a little Tory grass. Who's betrayed the collective had a safe word and everything privatisation claimed it was dialectical role play therapy. I dare say Marx would not approve, but Engels might have dipped a toe in. Yeah, the Lib Dems, oh darlings. I do love the Lib Dems. So idealistic, so full of ideas no one will ever take seriously. They want compromise and nuance and a strong centrist vision, which is to say they want to be invited to think.
Speaker 6:I once had a brief tryst with a very serious Lib Dems spokesperson who insisted we could only proceed after drafting a 27-page agreement with colour-coded appendices and a dispute resolution framework. The sex was fine, I suppose, but the negotiations were exquisite. We made flowcharts and Venn diagrams of erogenous zones, for God's sake. In the bedroom he insisted on wearing yellow surgical gloves and stopping every seven minutes to conduct a proportional representation vote between my left and right butted, and yet in the end he simply couldn't commit, tied up in a polyamorous entanglement with principle and pragmatism, ending up in bed with neither the Greens Now listen. I adore the Greens, not politically, no, but because their men have the longest hair and the most adorably sized carbon footprints.
Speaker 6:I had a lover who was terribly into sustainability, always cycling everywhere and lamenting deforestation, very devoted to natural living, until, of course, I caught him on my luxe core sheets, fully encased in single-use plastic wrap, like a human leftover sandwich, begging me to drizzle him with palm oil while he clutched a stuffed blue butterfly and moaned about rising sea level. He wept after muttering about eco-hypocrisy, but I consoled him. We all make sacrifices for pleasure, darling. Some of us simply don't make them. At Bretton Manger, reform UK, ah, please, you want me to seriously discuss the nutters, the farragists, the bring-back-the-empire-brigade right-wing bravado, anti-immigration, pro-sovereignty, all of that, but really just a collection of bald men who wear flags like capes and think the NHS should be run like a pub quiz. I'm Morrithy, although I'm not ready for that conversation. I did let one of them handcuff me once, purely for research, attempting to stank me with a blue passport and penetrate my left nostril with a tiny Churchill bust. He must have got from some horrible Brit Nat Gumball machine, all while his Union Jackboxes were bunched pathetically round his ankle. I thought this is quite enough. Albion for one evening.
Speaker 6:The SNP, scottish Nationalists I love the Scots so passionate about independence. I had a wonderful night with a chap who told me Scotland must be free of Westminster's tyranny and I said, darling, I understand. I hate it when rookie doms can't tell their crops from their floggers. Yeah, magnificent stamina, those Scots. He tied me up in authentic clan tartan rope, insisted I call him Rob Roy, while he interpreted Robert Burns through a bagpipe mouthpiece and then demanded I sign a mock independence referendum before he allowed me to climax every time for three centuries of English oppression, and the rope burns on my priceless legs symbolised the Battle of Culloden.
Speaker 6:I swoon, oh, but truly, what does it all matter? It's all just posturing until the lights go down and the true nature of a man is revealed. And that, my dear, is where I thrive, darling. If there's one thing I detest, it's a combination of vulgarity and ignorance, like imagine actually paying for your vices, that's, for hedge fund managers, neglected middle children, tourists in Ibiza. Real sophistication lies in accepting the absurd abundance of life and the mundane miracles it throws your way. Yeah, so it was that.
Speaker 6:I found myself at a gallery opening in Shoreditch. You know the sort Half performance art, half excuse for trust fund muppets to wear things they don't understand. One installation was literally a pile of rubble with a placard reading entropy. A pile of rubble with a placard reading entropy. Very Proustian, I'm sure. The real piece de resistance, though, wasn't the act. It was Calvin Klein, not the man darling, nor his knickers, though I do have a few where I keep those sorts of souvenirs.
Speaker 6:No, this was something even more intoxicating. A delightful concoction of cocaine and ketamine whispered about in certain circles. Alternatively, I suppose you could call it Louis CK, although that would be a bit grim for some tastes, including mine. At any rate, when someone sidled up to me with a silver-tipped vial and murmured Calvin Klein, I naturally assumed it was an invitation to a private after-party at the groucho. But no, this was far more exclusive. I leaned in, letting the suggestion hang in the air in all its lushness, then simply said naturally, you see, I'm not some party girl snorting lines off a nightclub toilet. I've been to Berlin, darling. I've read Walter Benjamin. I understand that a truly sublime experience requires the right setting. And this flat was divine, mid-century modern with just a whisper of bohaus. And the host, some ludicrously young financier, had impeccable taste in wine, if not necessarily in companionship. Now, the Calvin Klein, itself an experience.
Speaker 6:The initial rush was like an overture by list Sweeping, grandiose, utterly transformative and ever so romantic. My thoughts were electric, crystalline, like I'd been plugged into the cosmos. I turned to the man beside me, an intense, brooding sort with cheekbones that could slice up your soul like a ham, and declared you, my dear, are the raison d'etre of this soiree. He blinked at me, clearly overwhelmed, and then, oh then, the ketamine arrived. Everything slowed to a dreamlike waltz. It felt like stepping into a Magritte painting Surreal, seductive, with a faint air of menace. At one point I'm certain I held a Socratic debate with a rhododendron. Its arguments were surprisingly compelling. At any rate, I found myself in the host's private library, and I used the terms found myself and library quite loosely. There, amidst the literary detritus, was Stefan Tall, wiry, wearing black turtleneck chic. He looked like he'd been plucked straight out of a Goddard film, one of the lesser one, you, he said, with this delightfully absurd gravitas.
Speaker 2:You, exquisite indigo child sent from the land beyond good and evil, you, my dear, are precisely as prophesied.
Speaker 6:Now, I don't usually humour that sort of hyperbolic folderol, but I thought why not indulge him? It's what Cleopatra would do, so allowed myself to be adorned in a leather collar. He read poetry, something about constellations and submission. It might have been something he wrote himself. Stefan had the air of someone who's deeply proud of his unpublished manuscripts and convinced the world doesn't deserve them, except for me, course. And then, darling, it happened. Stefan, with his brooding cheekbones and new volvag intensity, transformed this outlandish chamber into a set piece worthy of bunion. The room was bathed in violet light, the walls adorned with shimmering tapestries depicting constellations and celestial body. It was all too strange to be tacky, helena. He intoned, as though invoking an ancient spell. The great circle can now be completed.
Speaker 6:With that, he affixed a leash to the leather collar around my neck and gave it a slight pull, which I found both grounding and exhilarating. Tonight, you surrender your light to me, he said, as he tried to tie my wrists together with a silk scarf that smelled faintly of sandalwood and ego. It was also absurdly theatrical that I half expected a Greek chorus to materialise and scold us for our hubris. But let me tell you, darling, for those fleeting moments, I was lost in it, truly ecstatically lost. The Calvin Klein swirling in my veins, the light spinning like Van Gogh's stars, stefan whispering what I can only describe as metaphysical nonsense about my energy.
Speaker 2:Fuelling the cosmic balance.
Speaker 6:It's a horribly thoughtless thing to mix metaphors around someone with synesthesia who is also on ketamine, which perhaps should have been a red flag At any rate. Ensconced as I was in that moment, I let go completely. I surrendered body and mind to the sheer decadence of it. I was no longer Helena, the icon, the muse, the intellectual, the woman who never pays for her drugs. I was a celestial body orbiting Stefan's gravitational pull, I thought. Finally, someone who gets it, someone who understands how to truly dominate the sun and moon of my ego and bring it all together at last. Oh, I can feel it now, so close, just about to happen. But then, like all great tragedies, it fell apart. Stefan paused mid-ritual hand on my collar eyes, wild and whispered.
Speaker 2:Do you feel it? Eternity is rejecting us?
Speaker 6:Rejecting us, darling. He said this as though we were physicists conducting a doomed experiment and not having a shag in the back alleys of his neighborhood of make-believe. I blinked, trying to decipher if this was part of his dom act or an actual psychotic break. Sometimes it's hard to know where the line is. Yeah, not in this case. It was the latter. He collapsed onto the floor clutching his chest, like some melodramatic protagonist in a Chekhov play.
Speaker 2:I can't contain it. The orgone energy it's too much the orgone energy.
Speaker 6:It's too much. And just like that, stefan, the great new age goth dom of Shoreditch, had an emotional breakdown at my feet, muttering solipsistic nonsense about cosmic imbalance and the futility of human connection. He looked up at me, tears streaming down his face, and whimpered.
Speaker 2:I failed you.
Speaker 6:I peered down at him utterly dumbfounded. My ecstasy evaporated, replaced by the crushing disappointment of a performance cut short. Stefan, I said suddenly, cool and dry as a martini If you're going to claim to be a vector for a cosmic prophecy, the least you can do is keep it together for five minutes. He babbled some excuse, disguised as an explanation, but I was already undoing the silk scarf. The collar was harder to figure out, but he readily handed me the other end of the leash. The violet light suddenly felt garish, the constellations on the walls more juvenile than surreal. My only solace was that no one else had witnessed this debacle. I left him there, crumpled in his cosmic celestial despair, and returned to the party like nothing had happened. The DJ had switched to station-to-station era Bowie and someone was passing around glasses of champagne so we could toast to something or other. So was it transcendent Almost? Was it disappointing? Absolutely, but embarrassing? Oh no, darling, I'm never embarrassed. Stefan, on the other hand, is probably still weeping into his velvet drapes, expecting some other bright young thing to reassemble him. I suppose some people just can't handle the seductive pull of my presence. What a burden it must be to require that much attention. But isn't it marvellous, the things that gravitate to us when we're willing to take the odd interpersonal risk now and again. Oh darling, you simply must.
Speaker 6:Let me tell you about poor James. Well, that's what he went by when I knew him, though he later insisted everyone call him Jay. Apparently, james wasn't edgy enough for his artistic vision. He was this absolutely fascinating creature I sort of adopted last summer you know how I have such a weakness for helping lost souls find themselves. I found him spinning at this frightfully underground warehouse party in Hackney, the kind of place where the bar doesn't even serve proper cocktails, just warm gin in plastic cups. But there was something so raw about him, unpolished like a diamond, that just needed the right person to shape him. He was wearing this absolutely tragic faux vintage leather jacket that was clearly from Topshop, but I saw potential. I let him take me home that night to show him what real culture feels like. You understand, his flat was this dreary little space above a kebab shop, but I found it sort of anthropologically fascinating. He had all these vinyl records displayed on his walls and I didn't have the heart to tell him that half of them were rather obvious choices. I mean, who doesn't own unknown pleasures? Just in the last week in Camden Town alone I've seen the T-shirt in at least five different languages. But I did manage to ease him in a bit, started bringing him to all the right parties, introducing him to actually important people, even convinced Daddy's friend Sebastian to let him DJ at Annabelle's, though that was a bit of a disaster. Apparently, experimental noise artists don't understand the concept of reading the room.
Speaker 6:He did have this charming way of making everything seem terribly urgent and passionate, always calling at 3am about some absolutely vital party we simply had to attend or some mind-expanding substance we had to try immediately. And, yes, fine, I may have helped him out with rent once or twice, but only because he was on the verge of this enormous breakthrough. He had all these connections in Berlin, you see, very underground, very next wave. The sex was well, it was rather like performance art Lots of brilliant ideas, somewhat slipshod execution. He had this thing about filming everything for his video collage about loneliness or whatever. I'm sure it will be terribly avant-garde when it comes out, if it comes out. He took his laptop with all the footage when he left for Berlin or was it Barthelona? His note was confusing. I assume pump and dump refers to one of his crypto-scans, right.
Speaker 6:Oh, and he borrowed my grandmother's vintage Cartier watch For good luck, apparently. I'm sure he'll return it once he's established himself. I did make it here. I needed it back. I do hope he figures himself out.
Speaker 6:Poor thing, he had such potential, even if he didn't quite know what to do with it. I mean, yes, he might have borrowed quite a bit of money and, yes, perhaps he did sleep with Arabella the very night after I introduced them at my gallery opening, and fine, maybe he did use my contacts to book several gigs he never actually showed up for. But that's just how these artistic types are, isn't it? They need someone sophisticated to guide them, even if they don't always appreciate it. I should probably unblock him on Instagram, actually, just to check if he's posted anything about the watch or about me. Not that I care, obviously. I just think it's important to maintain connections in the industry. One never knows when someone might become relevant, though he could have at least tagged me in those photos with Sophie Dale's niece. I mean, that party was literally at my flat Right.
Speaker 6:So there was this bloke. Let's call him Sebastian, shall we? He was oh, how do I put it? Intensely magnetic, like he had that look. You know that posh, tortured artist slumming at vibe, always in leather jackets, brooding around with his tousled hair and mysterious stubble Absolute godsend. I thought we met in this art gallery. Naturally he was holding a cigarette even though they're totally verboten indoors now Just standing there all suave with his smoke, smirking at a sculpture, like he knew some deep secret about it that the rest of us couldn't possibly understand. So I'm thinking that's the man I need to be with.
Speaker 6:I should have known then that he was well a bit different, but I thought it was just all part of his allure. So when he invited me back to his place that night, obviously I said yes, this flat was one of those dimly lit, moody little setups with no proper lighting and only like black curtains. Everything was dark, wood and leather. He was into aesthetic minimalism or whatever he called it. I was in awe, you know the way. He just didn't care about brightness or joy or anything remotely uplifting. He was like beyond all that. Anyway, things progressed. Obviously, we got close Well, physically close, if you catch my drift, but I mean the way he'd speak to me. He had this way of making everything feel so intense, like he'd grab my chin and say things like You're mine now, aren't you, Helena?
Speaker 6:And it was thrilling, I'll admit. Nobody'd ever looked at me like I was something they owned, something precious they could just, you know, hold on to and use. I thought, oh, isn't that romantic, like who doesn't want a bit of possession. But he had these little quirks right. He liked to push me not just emotionally but physically. I remember one night he had me pinned against the wall and he stage whispered If you ever leave me, you will regret it.
Speaker 6:And I'm standing there totally starry--eyed thinking he's just being passionate. I mean, in the moment it was so intense, like something out of a Bronte novel. But thinking back it was suppose you'd call it unsettling. He'd always go a bit too far with his words, his touch. There were moments he'd have this gleam in his eye like he could just snap, and I'd just laugh it off, thought it was all part of his charm. Of course, if I left I would regret it. He's a dream come true. Oh, and so territorial the way he'd isolate me.
Speaker 7:He'd say things like no one understands you, helena, not the way I do.
Speaker 6:And he'd make it sound so romantic. He had this way of making me feel like I was some lost soul and he was the only one who could find me. He even insisted I stop seeing my friends, said they didn't get us, didn't appreciate our connection, told me they were all just jealous. And I believed him, thought yeah, they're probably just envious of our passion. How see, right, girlish. And then there were the darker things. Like he had these little rituals, he'd bring out this red scarf, sometimes tie it round my wrists, saying it symbolised our unity or some other poetic nonsense. But I remember one night he just kept pulling it tighter and tighter and I was sitting there thinking this is all so deep, so intense, like some sort of performance art, right here in my living area. But at some point I could barely feel my hands and he just looked at me with that smirk of his and said You'll do anything for me, won't you baby?
Speaker 6:It felt like more of a statement than a question and oh, I just nodded, because what else does one do in that sort of situation? I probably would have done anything for him, wouldn't have even thought about it, had he not been so tragically tactless as to rub my face in it like that. One time I even sat outside his door for what an hour just waiting for him to let me in in the cold, because he said he needed to see my devotion. I thought it was a test of love, thought it was all very grand, very tragic heroine. Anyway, when it was over we got it on like feral rodents.
Speaker 6:Looking back, I suppose it was um well strange, maybe even a bit much. My friends would try to tell me he was controlling or manipulative. They'd say things like Helena, he's so clearly dangerous. But I just thought they didn't understand. I mean, what did they know about romance? They weren't out there in the rain proving their devotion, were they? He ended things abruptly. One day he said he was done and that I'd served my purpose. Said it so calmly too, like he was finishing a cup of tea. I was devastated. But he told me One day baby. You will thank me.
Speaker 6:He told me One day baby you will thank me and just walked out of my life and I cried for weeks thinking I've lost the love of my life, but I never really stopped to think about what sort of love it was, did I? Anyway, sometimes I still think about him late at night. I wonder if I was just too naive, too gullible maybe. But then I tell myself it was all terribly romantic, a dark and twisted sort of romance, and besides, isn't so. There I was darling in this oh so decadent american city. Well, they call it a city, but really it's all just bright lights and endless nonsense. But I suppose if one's going to experience the culture, one must dive straight in here. Not that I wasn't the absolute epicentre of sophistication all night, though, if I'm honest, I do think some of these locals find my European elegance a touch intimidating. Is that the word I'm looking for?
Speaker 6:At any rate, it all began at this club. Now, they'd have you believe it's a super exclusive lounge sort of affair, but if I'm honest, it was all just neon lights, flashing shapes and absolutely no charm. I was surrounded by what I can only describe as American blokes in ill-fitting suits, each trying to updo the other in sheer bravado. Really a pity. I mean, none of them even knew how to wear their cologne properly. Smelled like they'd bathed in it. Poor dears, if someone lit a cigarette we'd all have been incinerated, which is fine if you're into that sort of thing. Of course I attracted the most delicious attention. Naturally, this one chap, tall, dark, terribly American jawline, comes over, tries to tell me he's an investor. Now, I didn't exactly catch what he was invested in, but he did keep buying me drinks. I imagine he thought it was some kind of seduction ritual. Fascinating really how they try to impress you over here. It's all a bit primitive, don't you think? Tarzan chic, I call it Anyway, as he's prattling on about his boats or was it his motorbikes my mind does wander, if I'm honest.
Speaker 6:I see this little kiffuffle, a fracas over in one corner, two women, absolutely feral, scratching and shrieking over some ridiculous man who barely seemed aware of his surroundings. I simply stood there watching, thinking what a commentary on the sad state of modern relationships. Quite absurdist, really. Then, out of nowhere, someone's champagne glass flies through the air. I don't remember who threw it Precisely hard to keep track given the calibre of people around, but, darling, it landed right in my vicinity. I was mortified. Truly, it could have ruined my handbag, at least theoretically, so I moved a few feet back, as one does had to make room for these people to sort out their drama. One should never get involved in American altercations. I think At this point the bloke from before did I mention his jawline? He leans in, probably expecting I'd be swept off my feet by his presence. He was all.
Speaker 2:I could protect you from that, you know and I thought from what precisely?
Speaker 6:flying champagne, other errant projectiles. But, bless his heart, he seemed very pleased with himself. So I leaned into, gave him a coy little smile and said oh, I bet you could. Because well, I bet you could, because well, I find it best to let these men think they're powerful. They need it. Poor things, oh, but this part you'll love. After that delightful bit of male gallantry, we left the club to find well, I suppose you could call it a street brawl absolute chaos, grown men flinging their fists, yelling, sweating. I mean, I thought for a second I'd wandered onto the set of some absurd American action film. My gentleman friend, the one with the jawline, says Baby stay back.
Speaker 6:I'll handle this, which is really quite darling of him but also a bit confusing, since he immediately starts hiding behind me as if I, with my delicate british sensibilities, could somehow hold back the encroaching barbarian tie. Really, I just stood there like a bewildered duchess at a rodeo. Quite surreal by then, wouldn't you know it, a police car pulled up, a truly heavy handed approach. I thought I remember trying to reason with one of the officers explaining how terribly uncivilized it was really beneath a city with so much potential, but he seemed to think I was, shall we say, part of the problem. At one point he said Go home.
Speaker 6:Which was so quintessentially American of him, wasn't it? I mean, who tells a woman like me to go home? But back to the evenings escalations. The investor bloke with the jawline, such a dear, truly, after his own ham-fisted fashion, suggests. We go back to his place to, in his words avoid the riffraff.
Speaker 6:So I agree, thinking it'll be the ideal place to observe more of the culture up close. Of course we head back to his place, which was well grand in theory but in reality a bit tasteless. Base, which was well grand in theory but in reality a bit tasteless. All grey and minimalist, no character, no warmth. I couldn't help but think does this man even own a single painting? At this point he tries to impress me with his collection of bourbons, which he explained in excruciating detail. Couldn't quite follow. It was all something to do with aging and barrels, and you'll laugh.
Speaker 6:But I actually dozed off just a touch, just for a second. He didn't notice, of course, as he was too busy showing off his prized whiskey. I must have conked out momentarily to spare myself the convulsive giggle fits. Yeah, not unpleasant, that fleeting hypnagogic sleep state. I woke up to him practically droning on about it, I don't even know. So, in the spirit of politeness, I divided to, shall we say, change the energy and he looked utterly shocked, like he'd never encountered a woman who takes charge. But here's the kicker I didn't actually do anything at all, I just sat there with that look, you know the one. And suddenly he was very much at my service, if you will. They're so eager, aren't they Very sweet, actually, in a misguided way, then, would you believe, his roommate walks in looking quite flustered like he'd walked in on something scandalous which, darling, he hadn't, because, again, I was doing Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing, just existing. But the tension, oh it was palpable. You could see his poor little American brain trying to process the situation. Bless him, bless him. They just can't bear it, can they? So I simply got up, left the boys to discuss things amongst themselves and as I left I thought to myself ah, what an evening I have truly experienced the American nightlife. It's all quite tragic, really, how easily they fall to pieces over here, but I suppose that's what one gets, being me absolutely adored by the masses and yet simultaneously quite above it all.
Speaker 6:Oh darling, my glorious whirlwind, descent into high stakes, passion deep in the maw of madness, began, as many such things do, with a man who existed in the rarefied air of the truly untouchable. With a man who existed in the rarefied air of the truly untouchable. He was cruel, cold and oh so devastatingly chic, a sort of metamodern Heathcliff with expensive tastes and excellent sartorial instincts to match the pain blurred into pleasure. His disinterest only intensified his mystique. For the first time, I visited oh, what's it called? Darling Subspace. I promptly purchased a timeshare.
Speaker 6:I became insatiable, a woman of omnivorous appetites, a connoisseur of exquisite suffering, always demanding more. I want to feel everything. I want life-altering humiliation to understand all this shame business. Finally, once and for all, at any rate, I wanted to impress him and to that end, I invented new sex acts, ingenious, avant-garde expressions of desire. These were feats of creativity, atrocity exhibitions, veritable performance art spectacles of the flesh.
Speaker 6:One night I executed a move I dubbed the Devil's Spiral, a balletic contortion of elegance and daring. He shoved me off with a sneer. An artistic critique surely gripped me by the throat and elevated our rendezvous into something truly magnificent. I gasped in exhilaration. He was my muse, my cruel Pygmalion sculpting me in the language of the sublime. Next time I get such a sterling idea, I resolved, I'll make him think it was his.
Speaker 6:But one man could never be enough for a woman. With my expansive erotic portfolio of peak experiences. My hunger was a thing of legend, of stage, song and screen. My thirst of tale whispered in late-night salons over opium and wormwood, and so, in want of an outlet, I graciously accepted a proposition for the most cultured and intellectually daring arrangement a threesome with my dear companions ben and dimon, devoted admirers whose ardor gave me a certain sense of security. If you follow, we secured an atmospheric hotel suite, so decadently disheveled it it could only be deliberate.
Speaker 6:Smuggled in an excellent whiskey all the way from Kentucky and engaged in the most deliciously charged railing, represented in microcosm by my left areola, retreated to a chair, murmuring something about wanting to observe how utterly French of him Dylan, overwhelmed by the gravity of the moment, indulged too heartily in the whiskey and drifted into a catatonic slumber. Ah, the tragedy of excess, practiced in excess, flaming out too soon to bear any truly transcendent narrative fruit. Undeterred, I found myself alone amidst the wreckage of our grand design, a creature of desire still yearning for completion. My lover's phantom touch lingered on my skin. The brutal poetry of his impact play still fresh in my mind, although the bruises were beginning to heal.
Speaker 6:Thankfully, this was not failure. It was narrative tension, the unpredictable plot twist that turns a good story into legend, a Jezebel's journey worthy of the finest union pornographers. And so, undaunted, I made one final inspired move. I made one final inspired move, shocking even myself, with a bid for ecstasy that would surely go down in the annals of my glamorous misadventures. The night, the city and the universe itself had other plans, but I walked out onto the neon-lit boulevard, draped in starlight and mystery, my hunger unbent, the world pulsed beneath my heels and I was, splendid and insatiable, walked on. Thank you well darling.
Speaker 6:I suppose everyone has a moment in their life when they're utterly swept away by the intoxicating thrust of passion. No, that's too. Common Adventure, a bit pedestrian, let's say artistry. Yes, that's the one, and in my case it came in the form of a man, a thief to be precise, a proper rogue, with eyes like smudged charcoal and voice like aged velvet. He told me his name was Raphael. Of course, I didn't believe him. Two on the nose, don't you think? But oh how I adored the audacity of it all. Art isn't so much what you're capable of as what you can get away with. Raphael said that he had these marvellous aphorisms, but I'm getting off point.
Speaker 6:It began at a soiree, naturally the kind of gathering where everyone's pretending to admire the host's ghastly modernist sculptures but really just pilfering the canapes. I, of course, was holding court by the champagne fountain when Raphael appeared, all smirk and mystery. He told me he was planning a heist yes, a heist to liberate, as he put it, a scandalous masterpiece from the oppressive confines of bureaucracy. Now, I've always had a deep appreciation for subversion. Subversion is art, and vice versa, wouldn't you agree? So when he invited me to join his team which turned out to be just him and well, now me I thought why not, helena? You've been waiting your whole life to be part of an iconic duo, the muse and the mastermind.
Speaker 6:The target was an erotic art exhibit, a rather controversial one at that, brimming with all the delicate filth that makes the bourgeoisie clutch their pearls. One piece in particular had stirred such opprobrium Venus, uncloaked a disturbingly captivating sculpture of a goddess in its striptease. Raphael insisted it was a misunderstood masterpiece. A symbol of liberation, he called it. I simply had to see it.
Speaker 6:The plan, my loves, was to slip in after hours dressed as inconspicuously as possible. I opted for a sleek black number, which turned out to be slightly draftier than I anticipated. But what is art without a little sacrifice, without the glamour, it's hard to see the allure of international art thievery, at least from my perspective. Well, admittedly, it is quite erotic, isn't it? I certainly felt it.
Speaker 6:Raphael was all business at first, muttering about security cameras and laser grids, but I couldn't help but marvel at our raudacity. There I was, helena, harbinger of the avant-garde, about to commit an actual crime. By now we were running far enough ahead of schedule to allow for a proper shag among the exhibits. But then, oh the tragedy, with farcical elements certainly. The alarms went off. Apparently, raphael's so-called ingenious bypass device was nothing more than a glorified universal remote control like Nano.
Speaker 6:He dashed off, promising to circle back, and left me, me Alone, clutching Venus, uncloaked in nothing but my heels and a trembling sense of indignation. And so I did what any self-respecting woman of my intellect and poise would do I improvised. I wedged myself behind the nearest installation a ghastly assemblage of phantom limbs and glitter, if you must know and waited. Security guards swarmed the place, shouting things like Identify yourself and drop the statue. Drop the statue. Imagine suggesting such barbarity, I'll have you know. I protected Venus uncloaked with my very life. There I was, half draped over a metal sculpture titled Consumer Apocalypse, attempting to look both invisible and profoundly artistic. It's no small feat, let me assure you this hiding in plain sight business.
Speaker 6:Eventually, I realised Raphael was not coming back. The guards grew tired of searching dreadfully unimaginative lot and I made my escape barefoot and clutching Venus like a lover. I left her in the garden of a local monastery poetic, don't you think the monks deserve a little spice? A half dozen terrorist organisations claimed responsibility, which put me mostly in the care, I believe. As for Raphael, I never saw him again, probably fled to Paris or prison. But you know what I have? No regrets.
Speaker 6:Art isn't meant to be safe or predictable. It's chaos, darlings, it's passion. It's hiding behind a sculpture in your knickers while an American goomba named Barry shouts who's there? As if it's any of his business. So, yes, I helped liberate Venus. Was it foolish? Perhaps Was it illegal, absolutely, but was it artistic, without question. And isn't that the whole essence of the thing? Really? Los Angeles is a mirage, a city constructed from the slurred speech of studio execs who've convinced themselves they understand myth because they've cut deals over four-quadrant reboots. It's an Ouroboros of sun-kissed self-erasure, a fever dream, so hot it softens your bones until you forget what it was like to stand upright.
Speaker 6:I arrived on a Tuesday, met a man named Clive, who wasn't named Clive at all, but whose real name was some unpronounceable jawbreaker of letters, consonants thrown together like a script option, then stranded in turnaround. He said he had a house in the hills, which turned out to be a minimalist compound in Cahuenga Pass, filled with furniture that makes you wonder whether sitting is even allowed. He offered me cocaine so pure I thought I'd transcended linear time. Then came the ketamine, a chemical wrecking ball that left my body behind and let my soul do fractal ballet across a holographic soundstage where every scene was shot with soft lighting and the laughter track had been Beckmasked. By Thursday I'd been cast in three different music videos for bands I'd never heard of.
Speaker 6:All named something aggressively, one word sheath or grief, or something that sounds like a fragrance by Tom Ford. The directors all wore sunglasses indoors, all spoke as if narrating their own biopics. I want it raw but polished, think 70s porn, but make it existential. I nodded and swayed like a girl who'd been mainlining glamour and had just realised it was cut with formaldehyde, and not very good formaldehyde. Then there was the party in a high-rise downtown, a penthouse with floor-to-ceiling windows that made the city look like the burning ant farm it so desperately wanted to become the host. Some libertine capital C creative with the handshake of a strangler, fed me oysters, slipped his hand around my waist and murmured You're trouble, aren't you?
Speaker 6:I laughed, which in this town means yes. The girl beside me, a model who said I identify as light, giggled and whispered You're so totally his type, girl. Polyamory. While I performed fellatio careful to suck it well enough that he'd finish quickly, but not so well that he would embarrass me on Instagram. I woke up somewhere in Malibu not in a house, but in a guest house behind a house, a place that felt less like a home and more like a purgatory designed for a specific stand-up comedian. The furniture was too white, the air too curated. There was a note on the nightstand that just said keep it big babe.
Speaker 6:X. I had no idea what it meant, but I felt I had already complied Somewhere along the way. I lost a beautiful pair of shoes, gained a leather jacket that wasn't mine but is now, and collected three different life stories from each of two men with stubborn, chemically induced erections who swore they could make me famous. They spoke in a hypnotic patois of self-importance, as if their souls had been smuggled out of their bodies and replaced with a podcast about peak performance mindset or some such nonsense, which sadly does little to alleviate performance anxiety, or so I'm told.
Speaker 6:By the time I left, I felt Los Angeles had done something to me bent me over, rearranged my insides down to the molecules, taken me in the way men in this city take women, not with hunger, but with a bored sense of inevitability. I had been used, degraded. A bored sense of inevitability. I had been used, degraded, spun out and spat back, but none of it stuck, none of it could. The trick of LA, darling, is that nothing feels real enough to wound you, not properly, not deeply. It just glances off the surface like a skipping stone, leaving ripples never sinking.
Speaker 6:On the flight home, I marveled at the desert below a sprawling wasteland that looked more honest than the city built on top of it. I thought about the man who whispered in my ear as he pressed my face into something expensive, telling me I was beautiful, so beautiful, so beautiful, and the way I had smiled, not because I believed him but because I knew he believed himself. Los Angeles is a mirage, a place where nothing happens and yet everything does simultaneously. A city of hungry ghosts who don't know they're dead and haven't really read Ernest Becker and I'll be back, of course, because I always am Darling. Have you ever cried, berghain, to be continued in much the same manner as our fathers did? No, I mean, really cried. Cried in the main room, on the dance floor, in full PVC, bathed in strobes and a swirl of psychosexual spiritual confusion.
Speaker 4:I have.
Speaker 6:I do, it's basically my cardio now. But I must explain, or rather I must perform an explanation that both reveals and conceals, like a see-through Vivienne Westwood Blouse. We're here to talk about metamodernism. Everyone knows that, darling, at least everyone who's ever climaxed during a Keir Kegard quote and then posted about it on close friends. You see, once upon a time we had modernism earnest, architectural, furrowed brows and manly despair. Then came post-modernism irony, pastiche sequins over trauma, everything in quotation marks, including the quotation marks themselves. Unwilling or unable to even try to feign sincerity, vain sincerity. That was my childhood, incidentally raised by emotionally constipated academics who called love a problematic narrative of dependency and refused to hug me without footnotes, thereby leaving me with a raging oral fixation and a permanent crush on David Foster Wallace, who's not around to let me down gently after shellacking me in singles tennis. But metamodernism, oh darling, that's where the party is, unless it isn't. It's the oscillation, the fluid state, neither monism nor nihilism the movement between knowing and feeling, between mocking and mourning. It's when you dance to Aqua's Barbie Girl at 4am in Berlin and somewhere between Life in Plastic and Kiss Me here, you find yourself believing Not in Aqua, in everything. Let me set the scene, darling. It was a Tuesday. Already a bad idea.
Speaker 6:I was in Berlin with an American film studies dropout named Nico, who claimed to be building a decentralised cinema experience for the emotionally neglected. He had cheekbones that could cut a wedding cake before moving on to your attachment to self-pity. He called me Aesthetic Praxis, a name he suggested I use for something he called Roller Derby. Naturally, I fell in love. We queued for Berghain in matching coats, like a couple of anarchist operatives. I whispered something about Baudrillard to the bouncer and he rolled his eyes, which is the Berlin equivalent of rolling out a red carpet decorated with orange and yellow interobanks. Inside it was the usual kaleidoscopic nihilism half-naked ravers grinding to techno that sounded like Zeno having a migraine. Sweat smoke, the heavy scent of conceptual failure. I felt alive, or at least relevant. And then the ketamine kicked in and things got so deliciously melty. Time folded, the lights became language. Nico vanished into a writhing pile of limbs that may or may not have been performing a site-specific reimagining of Beckett's quad.
Speaker 6:I was alone, and that's when it happened. The DJ, some sallow genius from Helsinki or Newark who looked like he'd been raised on a diet of absinthe and ennui, delivered intravenously, cut the beat, silence. Then the crowd paused, confused, and then again the ironic dancing Arms flailed in deliberate awkwardness, hip thrusts performed with performative disdain, people mocking joy. And there I was, smack in the middle of it, ready to mime along with appropriate Scandinavian detachment. But then something cracked.
Speaker 6:I thought of my mother, drunk on sherry in the breakfast nook, lip-syncing to the early formative work of Girls Aloud or Atomic Kitten, calling it her little moment of agency. I thought of Nico's furrowed brow when I asked if he believed in love and he said only his resistance, preferably with a side of solidarity, while raising his very skinny, clenched fist. A thought of being eleven and desperately wanting to be pretty, not smart, not clever, not subversive, just pretty like the girls in the adverts, the ones with no backstories. And I cried, I sobbed. There I was having it both ways, like a good little postmodern theory slut. And yet the tears poured, as if the spectre of romantic sincerity had stormed the barricades of my aesthetic sensibilities and declared a war. It immediately won. I meant it and I didn't. And I was on ketamine, which is frankly both illustrative and definitive of the gestalt of the contemporary zeitgeist. No, I will not use the word vibes. This was a real human moment of a sort At any rate, that darling, is metamodernism.
Speaker 6:To know something is ridiculous and to feel it anyway. To mock love while writing tragically self-revelatory sonnets on the backs of symphony programs. To scream capitalism is killing us while rolling on 30 euros worth of artisanal ecstasy from a man named Lars, who once had a solo show called the Exploding Spleen of Influence, dedicated to Edward Bernays and Jason Russell. Metamodernism is beefy sincerity wrapped in a farcical tortilla of satire, served with a twist of collapse and a garnish of practical self-delusion. It's the girl who wears cat ears and knows they're ridiculous and still wants to be held and kissed on the top of her head.
Speaker 6:It's me sobbing to Aqua, because being plastic, being quote-unquote, fake, was never the problem. It was always the loneliness, the echo, the absence, the desperate yearning for someone to see us pretending and believe in us anyway. So, yes, I wept to Barbie Girl at Bergen and I expect I will again, because, my darling, nothing says authenticity, quite like knowing precisely why the French call it the little death and still choosing to dance like you're trying to frighten off the big one. Now, if you'll allow me to powder my nose and refresh my glass love, I've got big adolescent feelings and I've not yet begun to take the piss.
Speaker 9:Yeah, Darling, you simply must hear about my latest spiritual awakening. Not the kind I had at that dreadfully authentic ayahuasca retreat in Notting Hill, though that was absolutely transformative too, even if I did ruin my favorite LBD. No, this was something far more how do the French say it? Profound I've discovered subspace. No, I don't mean that frightfully pedestrian sci-fi show everyone's watching. I mean something actually transcendent. Of course I'd read about it in those terribly earnest BDSM handbooks that are always lying around at Jasper's sex-positive book club, most of them written by people who shop at Tesco, if you know what I mean. I'd assumed it was all rather plebeian fantasy, like believing Prosecco is real champagne. I'd gone into the whole thing perfectly prepared, naturally I always am.
Speaker 9:One doesn't graduate from St Catharines Without learning how to maintain In an air of aristocratic control In any situation. I plan to do what I always do Appear to submit, while actually orchestrating the entire experience, rather like Marina Abramovic. Actually, have you heard of her? She's this absolutely vital performance artist who, oh, never mind, but then it happened. A performance artist who, oh, never mind, but then it happened.
Speaker 9:And suddenly all my carefully curated poses, which I'd practiced for hours in my vintage vanity mirror, just dissolved. It wasn't just a public spanking, though that was exquisitely orchestrated. Or the way he called me a vapid little princess in front of everyone at Soho House. It was something deeper, like Virginia Woolf diving into the river, except sexy and with better hair. One moment I was Helena Mayfair, you know the one everyone at Art Battle called refreshingly authentic. And the next I was gone, sinking through layers of myself, like one of those Russian dolls I once saw at Harrods. Passed the me that only drinks small batch gin. Passed the me that quotes Baudelaire in terrible French. Passed the me that quotes Baudelaire in terrible French. Past the me that pretends to understand crypto, because that DJ I dated would not shut up about it.
Speaker 9:And at the very bottom, beneath all my carefully curated personas, I found something real, something genuine, something that wasn't even wearing Chanel, horrifying right, but also magnificent, like finding out your great-grandmother was actually a kitchen maid, but in a sexy way. The experience was simply cosmic. I saw colors that haven't even been gentrified yet. I had music that made Tim Hecker sound like Fred A Ken. My consciousness expanded beyond my corporeal form.
Speaker 9:Rather like that time I accidentally took too much To see me at Creamfields, except this felt meaningful, important, like I was finally starring in my own French new wave film. The truly revolutionary part. I didn't even care how I looked. Can you imagine Me, the girl who once refused Origo during a root canal because I was afraid it would make my smile asymmetrical? There I was completely surrendered, probably making faces that would horrify my Botox specialist, and I was free. When I finally surfaced, like Ophelia, but with better lightning, I felt reborn Naturally. I immediately checked my makeup, reapplied my Charlotte Tilbury and pretended nothing.
Speaker 9:Try and tell you, I've been changed, transformed, elevated. I suppose you could say it was humbling, though I don't really do humble it clashes with my bone structure. Was it enlightening? Like reading Roland Barthes for the first time, but with nipple clamps? Was it embarrassing? Oh sweetie, nothing is embarrassing when you're as genuinely complex and misunderstood as I am. As it happens, I am never embarrassed, just utterly gloriously ruined. Now, if you'll excuse me, I simply must call my dom. He's this absolutely fascinating investment banker who really gets me. He says I'm not like other girls at all, and you know what? He's right. I'm literally the only person I know who's experienced something this profound Well, except for Arabella, but she's clearly just copying me. We'll be right back. I'm going to go ahead and do that.
Speaker 3:Thank you, oh, the lights are twinkling the years winding down.
Speaker 5:I'm strutting through the city in my sequined gown. The gifts are forgotten, the family's away. It's my time to glitter, to sway and to play. It's the week of sparkles and sin, where the champagne flows and the parties begin, from mistletoe kisses to midnight cheers. It's the most glamorous time of the year. The tree in the corner is far past its prime, but who cares when the press echoes as endless as time.
Speaker 5:I'm making resolutions. I'll never keep While flirting with strangers who think I'm deep. Oh, the clock's ticking closer to a fresh new start. But I'm here for the chaos, not the matters of the heart. Tinsel in my hair, glitter on my face, darling this week's a fantasy. My perfect space between Christmas and New Year's is that special time. My dears, don't let a blue Christmas keep you depressed. Of all weeks for partying, this one's the best. It's the week of sparkles and sin, where the champagne flows and the parties begin, from mistletoe kisses to midnight cheers. It's the most glamorous time of the year. So raise a glass to the lost, the loud and the bold. This week's for the reckless, the daring, the sold. Forget the carols, the calm, the quiet tears.
Speaker 4:Let's toast to the best week of the year, to be continued Fun and reminiscing threads of joy and tears, bittersweet things, searching for a glimpse of wonder, holiday, she and she. Each step in the snow echoes long past and near. It's the magic of the night. Stars are twinkling, oh so bright In this England winter's home. Dreams are drifting tales retold, skiing on the ice. Laughter fills the square, chasing sources relifting dreams in the air. Under this alto ice, we now on thick lines In this wonderland, perfect, wrapped up so tight. With a sigh, I hold my wishing heart In hoping for the simple choice. No worries, no fear, it's the magic of the night. The simple choice, no worries, no fear, it's the magic of the night. Stars are twinkling, oh so bright In this England winter's home. Dreams are drifting tales, we told. In these cathedrals of light, whispers hold the promised right. Memories dance in the snow. Through these streets of dreams we go. It's the magic of the night. Stars are twinkling, oh so bright In this England winter's hall. Dreams are drifting tales retold.
Speaker 2:Proof. What you need is the intelligence of someone smart enough to be here and smart enough to take my advice, and the confidence of an absolute moron that interferes with radio signals and brings planes out of the sky, completely self-destructive, sizzling, sexy confidence that you can only get through cultivating it over time and relegating it to a persona which you want to keep separate. Do not let this persona run for president, absolutely do not let it run for treasurer. Keep an eye on it, because everything else is just going to happen as soon as you stop caring. What you want to remember about this confidence is that it is first, last and always fake. It is based on butt kiss and the reason for that is that nobody can take that away from you. Talk some nonsense into yourself. It has been making too much sense. Stop doing that.
