These Dark Roads - A Muse Circus Fanmix
1. Camille Saint Saens - Carnival Les Animaux: Aquarium
2. Karen Elson - 100 Years From Now
3. Koop ft. Yukimi Nagano - Come To Me
4. Regina Spektor - Lady
5. IAMX - Bernadette
6. Vashti Bunyan - Train Song
7. Tom Waits - Dead and Lovely
8. Soléy - Kill The Clown
9. Abney Park - Herr Drosselmyers Doll
10. Yann Tiersen - Qu’en Reste-T-Il?
[HERE]
They appeared on the darkest night of the year, erecting the coloured canopy deep within the woods beneath a moonless sky. The very terrain of the Earth seemed to shift, tilted trees and shivering pines inched away to accommodate their numbers; the grass grew thick and green, feeding animals not meant for the climate, tearing moss and yew asunder. Magic followed them and flowed through them, they built wonder with their bare hands and sent the wobbling chords of an out of tune calliope into the air. They were a lure, a trap, sweeping unused trails clean of brush and twig for the footsteps of overzealous children.
And when I saw them, I desired them immediately. They were pure and beautiful and innocent, their grotesque angles euphoric and unburdened by social expectation and discontent. Each more disfigured than the last, each painted smile and dead eyed animal fed their gluttony on shock, and awe, and fear. They luxuriated in aberrant whim, living within the realms of temptation and vice, with the blinding shade of joy to mask the ugliness of their inherent human distrust.
But how were we meant to return to the mundane, to the dull grey of monotony, once we had seen, and touched, and groped the misshapen forms of the genetic spectrum? How was I, so yellow in my queer youth, meant admire the plain-faced men of the city after he had presented himself to me in such distorted glory.
‘Pick your poison, my dear. Drink the night like quicksand and absinthe!’
‘Our lives are strange, we chase dreams and virtue over scorched lands and exotic seas.’
He ruled them with a colourful rod of iron, his tightly bound red waistcoat and trousers bent the shape of my will, his eyes forced me to drown and forget my age and my name. He loved me at a distance, an arms length away from horror and bloodshed, enough to keep the magic alive and offer me a taste that made my tongue burn. I was the patronized lion in front of which he held an disinterested stance, and he kept the bite of my appetite at bay with the crack of a whip. Though I was uncaged, the sheets of his bed kept me bound and chained, the tip of his tongue tamed the fury of my blood.
And when they left, when the laughter disappeared and the only thing that remained was the stench of burnt popcorn and disused helium, my soul had been stirred and I ached in his absence. I somehow had aged too many years, donning the bones of an untrained and mangled trapeze artist.