My friend attending circus school invited me and a new girl friend , will call her Risa to his circus schools' cabaret show the night we had returned from a week in Murcia. While waiting for it to begin there was a bum lady or addict, I wasn't really sure what was wrong but she was begging for money with one missing shoe. She came over to me while I was, for the moment distracted with thoughts, she interrupted me to ask for one euro for the taxi because someone stole her shoe and all her money. I didn't see her as a bum at first I saw a normal person and didn't quite hear what she said. I asked if she could repeat herself and then looked at her shoe and didn't know what to think but it didn't quite make sense to me, so I asked her if she needed help and touched her hand. I was serious but she looked away from my eyes and walked towards someone else. Now I watched this lady beg others for money and tell her victim story of being robbed and proving it with her missing shoe. Sometimes she stood there starring at the wall sometimes smoking a cigarette and sometimes begging. I watched people waiting for the cabaret who made fun of her, while some ignored her and others gave her money but with a bit of disgust. I thought in my mind this women could be an addict, but I didn't quite see an addict or a crazy I saw a mentally sick women from society and possibly deprived of love, but not crazy. In this moment she begs a gypsy women who then looks at her in the eyes and gives her a kiss and a hug, this for me was amazing and I was so happy to see that someone else understands she just needs love. Then she begs off one of the clowns from the circus who hands her a flower and invites her in to the cabaret. I was so happy they invited her and truly felt in this moment hope and that there is still loving good people everywhere after watching others laugh and judge her.
Meanwhile my friend Risa was not doing ok watching her and she was very much in her head bothered by something. It was almost like she could not handle watching the lady beg and I saw guilt in my friend Risas eyes and I understood a little why, but continued to only observed. Well... the cabaret began and we went inside to find our seats. When everyone sat down the bum lady walked in and out loud affirmed to the audience that she was invited ...everyone was aware of her presence and the show began.
The cabaret was about human addiction and it began with barbarians discovering fire and the pleasure they got obsessing over watching the fire start. They would turn the fire out just to watch it turn on again just for the pleasure it made them feel. The next act was about times in old Rome and the men beginning to gamble off gladiators or what ever and the drunk getting too drunk enjoying his new found obsession for the pleasure that the wine or fermented grapes made him feel. The third act was about a person today who has absolutely no addictions and no vice of substance but instead resulting in a person with odd uncontrollable nervous reactions.... This was very interesting to me, to realize that they were interpreting human addiction as a way to feel pleasure to express or release energy caused from the nervous system..to feel and if you did not release this in one form or another it would come out and maybe into uncontrollable fucking weird habits. There were other acts like weird sexual fetishes mixed with feeling a pineapple while smelling feet. The last was a man in a crazy hospital trying to write poetry but being distracted by a fly. He became so obsessed with trying to kill the fly until this obsession causes the result of his own death.
The cabaret left me in awe and completely stimulated in my mind when the violins started playing the bum lady starts to make a ridicule and be such a distraction to the entire audience that they kick her out, but in the most humiliating manner... None of the audience stood up for her, I finally realized it was an act and my friend from the cabaret confirmed it to me a bit before they kicked her out. The bum lady was an actor and only a character part of the cabaret. In the end some people in the audience felt ashamed and apologized to her, she came up to me and told me thank you and said that I would be surprised how many people are disgusted before trying to be helpful! It was all profound this whole cabaret experience for me especially what I realized about my friend Risa who was having her own realizations, but that is a whole other story and if you would like to find out ...you can read my article on Risa's story that I call
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" Granada, brujas and sphytzophrenia" coming soon
Se la vi- enjoly mar