April 11th, 2020

The first time I felt blood red infatuation jolt through me was at the hands of Baz Luhrmann’s Red Curtain Trilogy masterpiece. A re-watch today of Moulin Rouge! (2001) took me back in time to happier and hungrier days, and reopens the visions of what I discovered desperation to feast upon the rest of my life.

I recently had more time than ever (understandably) to devour films I’ve yet to enjoy and reignite my relationships with those I can always rely on. I’ve hesitated writing so much now, with life upturned and perceptions of normalcy entirely skewed. As much as I’ve been able, I’ve opted to defy stillness and the thoughts that brew when you permit reflection to settle upon you. This has meant I watch Beverly Hills Cop and City Slickers with my dad long after we should’ve gone to bed – because I get the sweet deal of the smiles I’m after and very little afterthought that stirs me after I try to go to sleep. And then in the morning, he makes me laugh with a horrific Eddie Murphy impression.

Moulin Rouge! was why I called myself a bohemian in my instagram bio when I was 14. It’s why I traded all the pink decor in my room for red. It’s why I fell down the rabbit hole of the power of music arrangement and orchestration that drew me deeply and irreversibly into the music industry. It’s why I attempted to draw my eyebrows to look hideously longer than they were, just a couple of times.

Right now it’s easy to be sad, and it’s easy to defibrillate lifelessness with another coddling binge of The Office or The Vicar of Dibley or Seinfeld. Indulging in the grandiose that would normally set me afire feels akin to the sting of checking up on an ex lover, with a wish to see them thriving fighting with your anger at feeling worlds apart.

Hearing already perfect songs imbued with a style beyond what the original artists ever imagined for them, watching this wound around choreography of superlative intent, and feeling physically impaled by the rawness of idealised prosaic pathos finds the heat at my hearth yet again. The cleverness of these collaborators fool me and floor me every goddamn time. I see the sets and I wish I could tread those boards. I hear the dialogue and I wish it were at me. I hear the choruses wail and I bite my tongue so as to not sing along. It soars to either end of the spectrum, amplifying the absurdity with more ridiculousness, which in turn brings weightier gravitas to the drama. I swing with the dancers, singers, actors, poets, drinkers and celebrators on this pendulum that crashes itself through the brittleness of a surface level sentiment and excavates what lies at the very hearth. It’s decidedly chaotic, unapologetically poetic and explosively rich with passion.

And, this blood red infatuation finds veins yet again worth pulsing through – I feel joy. No matter my nihilism – neither born within me nor enforced upon me – I know I will always believe in freedom, beauty, truth and love.