Café Shabu

De heren John Cale en Bob Neuwirth maakten in 1994 alweer een “blueprint for theater” met de titel The Last Day On Earth. Ze geven zelf een samenvatting:

A ‘tourist’ is guided by Opportunity to a Great Café. Inside he is introduced to the habitués whose tales, thoughts and experiences become an interior/exterior travelogue as told in song and interlude. Eventually the ‘tourist’ discovers that while topographic mappings are subject to sudden re­arrangement, interior shifts remain predictable and timeless.

Bij mijn weten is het nooit opgevoerd, maar in de bak met winkeldochters bij de Free Record Shop vond ik een cd met muziek en tekst van dit stuk voor de weggeefprijs van € 5,95.

Dit gedeelte eruit spreekt me wel aan. Ik zie er een nachtclub à la Casablanca bij en de man die het woord voert heeft een flitsend pak zoals in jaren ’50 gangsterfilms en een penseelsnorretje en een vleierig stemgeluid.

En natuurlijk is deze introductie met de bezoekers van Café Shabu een metafoor voor de mensheid.

Café Shabu

Welcome to the Café Shabu. Permit me to introduce you to some of our regulars.

Starting on my immediate left, ladies and gentlemen, here in Café Shabu, you’ll note a poet, a man of words by trade.

And yes, that’s a refugee from an unnamed political philosophy, come here to spread his message of joy and peace amongst us. Thank you very much sir.

Over here, next to him we see a lady who has traded in a lifestyle of the rich and famous for work with underprivileged and exceptional children which I am sure makes her very pleased with herself, ladies and gentlemen.

Sitting next to her a man of letters and words and moods. A man who spent most of his life deceiving himself and now finds himself facing six years in rehabilitation prison and a death sentence on the outside.

Sitting next to him on a banquette, a ballerina. She’s had two grapes, a raisin, and a chicklet, and she’s full. In fact, she’s been stuffed for years.

Next to her are two spinsters knitting their way in and out of various predicaments colored by the excesses of their ancestors.

And close by them, some surreal painter’s brooding over the very over-emphasis of color-violence. Violence on the blue end of the scale.

Next to them, two off-duty detectives checking each other out.

Next door to the sugarholics, see them shivering, see them staring into the distance, see them growing, oh, see them go comatose. Insulin please, Maitre D’!

On my immediate right several politicians smiling lizard-like, see them assure themselves that their status is indeed quo.

Rip up the cheques said the Maitre D’. See if I care. I do this for the company. I’ve got no-one to trust any secrets to but myself. In the basement, in the vault, in the attic on the walls are the pictures I take in part-payment for my time. And the waitress reminds you that in the backroom bathed in red, glowing with the speed of light that reflects the demands of the living for the dead, are our angels, a host at your service to meet your every need. So order up, the waitress said. Our great café serves everything.