broken by angles of his sleeves.
Frank was disinformation for five years,
the outlaw expelled from our class
for hanging out in a toilet
beside the grungy docks, his pockets stashed
with money and a piece of blue tulle
he’d sampled for a shirt.
The shock of recognition startled me
into simultaneous alert,
our shared secret coming up seamlessly,
as though we’d met again to find in each
a fugitive identity;
a brief, unspoken way to make things clear
between us—and he’d lost his way—
back home and working in a menswear store
and me just passing through, the light
transparent as a blond Chablis poured
and left for contemplation in a glass.
AGAINST NATURE
A libretto by Jeremy Reed for Marc Almond
Against Nature
Against Nature, a libretto based on the seminally decadent novel À rebours by J.-K. Huysmans, tells the story of Des Esseintes, the last of his line, a disillusioned, solitary and wealthy aesthete, who, having exhausted a deviant vocabulary of sensory pleasures, decides to leave Paris and retire with his elderly servants to a house designed for him at Fontenay.
Disgusted with humanity, acutely refined, phobic and neurotic, and having hosting a farewell dinner party in which all the food served is black, Des Esseintes, a middle-aged sensualist and debauchee, retires to a customised house with an interior built like a ship’s cabin to engage in a life devoted to saturating himself in artificial pleasures.
Our libretto charts the existential crisis leading to Des Esseintes’ decision to withdraw from society, his fundamental boredom with what life offers and his list of obsessive fetishes involving a sensory attachment to old books, the invention of perfumes, an excessive love of flowers and jewels—he has a jeweller create an accessorised gold jewel-studded carapace for his pet tortoise—imaginary travel, a sexual relationship with a schoolboy picked up at random, old pots, musical instruments and expensive liquors poured out of bottles that play musical tunes when uncapped.
Deeply influenced by the writings of Baudelaire and Poe and saturated in their opium-wasted melancholy, Des Esseintes devises imaginary journeys to London, going as far as the docks and eating an English breakfast to substitute for making the physical journey. Eventually, made both nervously and physically ill from his unnatural state of reclusion, and his exhaustive inner burn-out—from feeding on memories, but barely able to take sustenance—he takes medical advice and reluctantly returns to Paris, where the novel and our libretto ends, with Des Esseintes facing an unknown future and the possibility of his death in a city changed out of all recognition where he is now a stranger.
Ennui
I was born with bad blood
from a mad mother’s genes
my moody teens ruined
by contempt and disdain
I took refuge in boredom
old books and the dead
listened out the slow rain
in a red satin bed
Death swallowed the father
I’d rather forget
my mother’s pet toy-boy
used nail varnish on a rat
I visited brothels
a rebel a punk
found no pleasure in women
used junk and got drunk.
A dandy and aesthete
syphilitic neurotic
I kept to myself
and read Poe in the attic
I was born with bad genes
all my teens kept apart
in a big empty chateau
as cold as my heart
In my solitary sex
I played virtuoso
bored with backrooms and bars
brothels and bordellos
I burnt money so fast
my past went up in smoke
and sold off my assets
before I went broke
I moved out to Fontenay
to be with myself
on a blue misty day
and put my looks on the shelf
with rare books and my past
as the last of my line
and reinvented my madness
with a deep ruby shine
I was born with bad blood
from a mad mother’s genes
my moody teens ruined
by contempt and disdain
I built a house like a ship
with a green light and red
and drank absinthe and pastis
in a red satin bed
Indigo and Orange
Indigo and orange, as colours representative of dark and sunny moods, are the dominant colours used by Des Esseintes to theme his ship’s cabin in the house at Fontenay, and so form the basis of his imaginary travels. He even has a burner in the room diffusing the smells of petrol and tar as a stimulus to believing he is voyaging on the high seas. The song brings the room’s interior alive as the refuge for his obsessions, and recounts his sexual attraction to slaves, his love of flowers, and his pet tortoise having a gold carapace.
Indigo and Orange
My fetish was black hashish
my walls bound in morocco,
a rococo interior
I themed marine colours
I had tiger-skin rugs
an anchor and oil burner
dispensing petrol and tar
to smell like a harbour
Indigo and orange
I chose for my décor
a sad tone and a sunny
to light my interior
I lived mostly by night
a samovar on a coffin
and the bright purple waters
of my inky aquarium
Sometimes a black slave
arrived with the price
carved into his skin
of an exotic vice
Indigo and orange
strange contrasting two;
one made me feel sunny
the other sad and blue
My starbursts of rare flowers
hot showers of pink lilies
and leopard-spot orchids
sharpened my memories
of sleek harems and boys
served like toys with Chateau Petrus
dark red as the blood
of my god Heliogabalus
Indigo and orange
the two colours grew
into my needs
that were sunny and blue
I kept a pet tortoise
with a jewel-studded gold shell
a cold sun on the carpet
a lapidary fireball
and grew sensually bored
with all natural things
and studied my image
in a fistful of rings
Indigo and orange
I chose for my décor
a sad tone and a sunny
to light my interior
Flowers and Cannibals
The song narrates Des Esseintes’ obsession with rare tropical flowers such as caladiums, orchids, bearded iris and fly-catchers and in particular a flesh-eating plant, quite literally a botanical carnivore. Flowers also remind Des Esseintes of human sexual diseases and skin blemishes, as well as being a source of human comfort and indoors beauty.
Flowers and Cannibals
I wanted black flowers
that glowered like a sewer
and red lilies with spots
like the ones on my liver
and fleshy caladiums
raw eruptive sorts
that arrived looking sleazy
like lowlife escorts
Des Esseintes Des Esseintes
bored by it all
had a flesh-eating plant
a tropical cannibal
I wanted throaty artichokes
orchids like volcanoes
white bear
ded iris
with mauve painted toes
I pampered fly-catchers
carnivorous flowers
that fed on red meat
not on hot hissy showers
Des Esseintes Des Esseintes
bored by it all
had a flesh-eating plant
a tropical cannibal
I liked perverse species
sexless as a gamine
mean things from China
like an opium dream
some looked syphilitic
or hexed by voodoo
or sexed up by the colour
of a violent tattoo
Des Esseintes Des Esseintes
bored by it all
had a flesh-eating plant
a tropical cannibal
I wanted flowers to express
everything that I’d lost
my removal from life
at such a punitive cost
their luxurious excess
of exuberant scent
taught me that in sadness
there’s also content
I needed rogue flowers
to compensate for my state
most things in life always
come too early or late
I had it all big and small
and it all slipped away
like these flowers that I nurture
that slowly decay
Uranian Blues
The androgynous figure of Miss Urania, who Des Esseintes suspects is a male circus artist in drag, but who turns out to be a cheap whore of indeterminate sexuality, is linked in this song to the fictional character Mother Fist, the subject of Marc Almond’s anthemic song of that name. The disappointment engendered by the encounter deepens Des Esseintes’ realisation that he has reached a state in which only extreme forms of artificially induced pleasures can satisfy his senses.
Uranian Blues
I’m awake half the night
with my pills and delusions
illusions like stage fright
night sweats and confusion
at a quarter to three
Miss Urania’s in my head
I think she’s a he
in my red satin bed
She’s a cheap circus artist
Miss Urania with a twist
in a rhinestone tiara
like my old friend Mother Fist
At a quarter to four
I pour absinthe and gin
there’s a knock at the door
and my man lets him in
Miss Urania’s androgynous
both a he and a she
a sexually ambiguous
debauchee’s fantasy
She’s a cheap circus artist
Miss Urania with a twist
her lipstick and slap
like my old friend Mother Fist
At a quarter past four
I still don’t know her name
if she’s same-sex attracted
or a whore on the game
she’s a shape-shifting clown
on the town and the make
and her sexual credentials
are either way fake
She’s a cheap circus artist
Miss Urania with a twist
like a lemon slice in gin
and my old friend Mother Fist
With my dandified taste
I wasted my life
no lovers or friends
no boyfriends or wife
I had dinner with panthers
in a violet cravat
now Urania’s my poison
I turn her down flat
She’s a cheap trapeze artist
a jackal on the make
and her sexual credentials
are either way fake
At seven I sleep
in a deep druggy trance
in which sailors and demons
and red tigers dance
When I wake up I’m dazed
deluded and bored
with nothing resolved
and nothing restored
A Delinquent Treat
In ‘A Delinquent Treat’, Des Esseintes picks up at random a delinquent schoolboy on the Avenue de Latour-Maubourg. This scene in Huysmans’ novel is one of the first openly described gay sexual encounters in modern fiction. Lonely and looking for sexual stimulus, Des Esseintes forms a brief relationship with the boy in which social inequality, age difference and a mutually shared mistrust lead to its eventual dissolution. In the song, Des Esseintes reflects on the sadness of being forced into a predatory role, because of age, when emotionally he has so much to offer.
A Delinquent Treat
I picked up on the street
as a treat a delinquent
a caprice of the moment
a naive criminal teen
with a mean look and a book
in his hand, a black suit
so tight that it hurt
and a mouth that was cute
In the Avenue de Latour-Maubourg
I met a dark-haired reprobate
he was ruin I knew it
but my sort of date
pernicious malicious
incurably vain
the sort who thinks tenderness
means inflicting pain
He had blue liquid eyes
and a schoolboy’s appeal
acting younger and older
than I knew he could feel
he was ruin I knew it
capricious and vicious
but my sort of date
when you’re lonely and curious
And it’s sad when you’re old
and there’s gold in your heart
to be forced to act out
a predatory part
If I’m always the loser
there’s no winner at all
in this unequal exchange
like a stain on a wall
In the Avenue de Latour-Maubourg
I met a friend and was scared
it would end as it started
and it’s sad when you’re old
and there’s gold in your heart
to be forced to act out
a predatory part
We exchanged what we did
in a brief fling, an affair
he was insolent, diffident,
kept correcting his hair
and then it was over
like a flower that dies
leaving residual petals
in a room full of lies
Frangipani
In keeping with his cultivation of sensual pleasures, Des Esseintes, an expert on scent and the ingredients in perfumes, experiments by making his own, and in particular has a love of frangipani, a scent that pervades his house and ultimately reminds him by sensory associations of what he has really lost and what remains irretrievably elusive—youth.
Frangipani
The scent was invasive
pervasive as frangipani
on a rainy afternoon
listening to castrati
and for my amusement
I mixed up ingredients
to capture the rapture
of an elusive scent
I love frangipani
it’s like hara-kiri
cutting through the senses
with brutal intimacy
cool frangipani
I add iris and cassia
to my black China tea
tweak amber and musk
jasmine and patchouli
making scent an event
in my blue solitude
that brims like a jewel
with a bittersweet mood
I love frangipani
it’s like hara-kiri
cutting through the senses
with brutal intimacy
cool frangipani
The scent that I mix
smells of sex and sweet-pea
orange
and lavender
and the black China sea
sandalwood and cedar
piss and poetry
jonquil and lilac
and bits of memory
I love frangipani
it’s like hara-kiri
cutting through the senses
with brutal intimacy
cool frangipani
The scent that I need
resists every tincture
no matter the strains
I add to the mixture
It’s youth I want back
the smell of a beach
tangy with pine
and sticky ripe peach
I love frangipani
it’s like hara-kiri
cutting through the senses
with brutal intimacy
cool frangipani
It’s youth I want back
the hormonal chutzpah
I lack in mid-life
smoking a carved hookah
It’s the smell I relive
by the river in rain
elusive as pleasure
and bitter as pain
I love frangipani
it’s like hara-kiri
cutting the senses
with brutal intimacy
cool frangipani
Foggy Harbour Days
Encouraged by his reading of Dickens’ novels and his familiarity with the city through guides and street maps, Des Esseintes makes preparations to visit London. Arriving at a dockside restaurant, the Bodega, with a huge quantity of trunks and eating an English breakfast, together with sampling a variety of British drinks, he decides that tasting the food and imagining Dickens’ London is sufficient compensation for not making the journey and returns home.
Foggy Harbour Days
Neurotically phobic
wearing purple silk socks,
I dosed up on Dickens
and went down to the docks
a guide book in my hand
on London at its best
prepared in my head