“Everyone” is an artist..”

what happens at this stage of the saga is a little fuzzy. my friend and i were going back to our room, smoking a little of what we had just purchased and getting ready to go out.

i know for sure that we did indeed get back to our room where my friend immediately began to roll a joint. i lazily flipped through some trash beauty mags we had. between the two of us there was a cosmo and a glamour to be diving into. at this stage we may have tried on the floaty yellow vintage dresses we had purchased at the vintage shop. at this point we must have started smoking because it became very important to me that we take pictures of ourselves in our yellow dresses in the orange room. and i was attempting to art direct a little by moving things around and out of the way. so yes at this point we were probably kinda stoned. at some point later our dutch friend from hotel desk knocked on our door. the moment was an odd combination of when your parents are about to walk in on you having sex with your  _friend,  and when your parents are about to walk in on you smoking_ in your room.

our dutch friend knocked on the door, i think i might have thrown the joint out the window. the two of us did nothing, then my friend went to the door and i think opened it and then immediately shut it. i rose up and yelled come in. our dutch friend had arranged for us to be guest listed at the club downstairs  and then we could go on to another club called paradiso, which apperently would be crowded and was in quite a cool space ( a converted church). we both smiled in an exaggerated manor and nodded. as soon as he left we collapsed into giggles and then maybe had another joint? all i i know is at this point we spoke for an unknown quantity of time about why our room was the best "art room" in the hotel for all manor of reasons that completely allude me now other than the fact that our room was orange… yeah you really did have to be there… and on our level.

it had to of taken us at least  three hours to finally go downstairs to the club. our dutch friend was in good spirits. he asked me about the art exhibitoin and my mind immediately drew a blank. i think i ended up saying i liked it as i couldn’t think of what else to say. then he asked my friend about our day and it became pretty obvious that he knew exactly what state we were at, didn’t care, and miraculously quite liked us, maybe was even a little bit charmed by us, anyway. those wonderful dutch.

but back to the show we had met him at. there was this mental japanese rock band playing. i haven no idea whether they sang in japanese or english but they were amazing. our dutch friend was not only the desk boy next door, a member of a punk band, he was also some kind of sound engineer for the hotels club. this meant we were introduced to the band, who though lovely were very tricky to speak to. i think they thought they were speaking english but… maybe they thought we were speaking japanese.. i’ll never know.

it got later and one by one, all of the guys in our new found friend ’s band turned up. they were all very friendly and chilled out and looked very much like they were well.. in a band together. but me and my girl were getting antsy to go to this other club, we had exhausted the dancing with the japanese rock band thing, what next. our dutch friend explained we were waiting for one other friend and then me and my friend could right on the back of their bikes ( as in the cyclilng push bike variety)

the experience of riding on the back of a bike across amsterdam at night time, watching my friend on the back of another bike parralell to me was nothing short of f+cking cool. me and my friend did little other than smile as our dutch friends teased eachother in dutch (they were best friends too) i suddenly felt like i was in some kind of black and white art film made in the fifties and definitely by a french or italian director.

the club was kind of crazy. it was in fact a huge converted church. it was rammed with people, tourists and locals alike and the only way to describe the music policy is that there was none. for the londoners it was a bit like popstarz for straight people. and the crowd were intensely friendly and polite, despite the size of the crowd and the setting. so after a while you don’t care that destiny’s  child is followed by nirvana is foowed by the beatles. you just go with it. …

and in the next two episodes i will break down our last day. lots more bizarre stories to follow..

so our fair heroines have made it into the city, despite lack of sleep we rise and shine at 8 am for the hotel breakfast. maybe its just cause we’re hungry but it does seem to hit the spot. today is meant to be an odd mesh of culture, exploration and forays into coffee shops. we make it over to the van gogh museum to see an Egon Schiele exhibit. the space is amazing. far more modern than i imagined and the retrospective of Schiele’s drawings is complimented by multi media works by contemporary artists.

there is a naked Russian performance artist standing on a podium reflection on the post mod adage of

"when all has been explored the artist himself can be the exhibition"

yeah sure but… I’m over it.

there is some beautiful Schiele inspired work by some contemporary dancers though. a dance film on three huge bac k projected panels with a group of excruciating beautiful dancers creating forms on this massive expansive of white sheets. it doesn’t sound nearly as stunning as it actually was trust me. and then in the down stairs space two dancers, a man and woman painted Schiele style performed a piece about intimacy and the tension therein, the guy was very frenetic and the woman super slow and graceful. and the  performers were so close to the audience that we could see their muscles tensing. it worked for me on all levels. S chiele’s work was quite beautiful but i wasn’t nearly as entranced with it as my best friend. art and film is weird like that no? sometimes what you draw from it is really something indescribable that comes within  yourself.

briefly we check out the permanent collection of van gogh’s work and i know its blasphemous to say but i was a little disappointed. maybe its because I’m not huge on still lifes and landscapes and that was mostly what was on offer. but i have to say i have been more moved by singular pieces of  his work in the permanent collections of other galleries.

what is that all about?

what i will say is he did make me experience landscapes and still lifes of flowers in a completely new and almost visceral way.

there is an energy in the painting, the action of it, the texture that is quite staggering.

we walked out of the museum into pouring rain. Londoner that i am i had packed an umbrella but of course had not chosen to bring it out with me that day. we were a stones through from the Cafe’ Americain , a huge original art deco institution that is part of a massive old luxury hotel. the crowd was full of tourists, my Parisian friend was most unimpressed with the flatness of the champagne but there was something very poetic about sitting in this grand art deco interior watching the rain outside through mile high graying windows.

bravely we went back out in the rain with the interest of finding a smart shop. i love smart shops. i love this idea of going into this hippy trippy neon space with stoner skater sales attendants and then having a chemist shop conversation over mind altering substances. yes i would like something that will make me almost as arrogant as a few lines of coke, awake as a small amount of speed and warm and tingly as a choice pill…giggles and danciness would be nice too?

our dutch "chemist" scratched his baseball cap with great concentration and produced three vials of various herbal (but legal in Holland) substances. i had been in Holland for new years years ago and had had a lovely night on herbal ecstasy. i didn’t recognize the packaging of any of the vials presented and frowned. i explained my confusion.

the boy looked around. the shop was empty, the street was empty. when had i last been in Amsterdam he inquired. i wasn’t quite sure but knew it was something like three years? He nodded sagely, reached under the counter and pulled out a large black bin liner, from this he produced another vial. see since the last time i had been in Amsterdam a now widely known over the counter drug called ephedrine had gotten itself a bad name. ephedrine had been in the "herbal ecstasy" i had purchased the last time i was in the ‘dam. it had then gone on to be prescribed as a diet pill. my best friend had even taken it at that time. but it was taken off the market when they discovered that the effects on your heart were dangerously close to cocaine and only slightly less deadly. all i knew is for 10 euros this boy was going to sell me something that would make me feel like i had taken a pill.

we bought two vials..

wandering back into the street, we indulged in some seriously cost effective vintage shopping (had to be done) where we were spoken to in dutch repeatedly as we had finally ventured into a tourist free zone. i then decided it was time to check out some girl bars. the first one we went in was called "Sappho" (not leaving anyone guessing there)  the manager sat on her own behind the bar reading the paper, a large man hung some paintings on the wall as his children played some kind of game over a small bar table. ummm was this all Amsterdam had to offer to the dyke about town???  the manager told us that nothing happened in this city on this scene until Friday, but she did say we should check out another bar around the corner.

the next bar was cute , and filled with a lot of older feminine women. black and white photos of 40S starlets lined the wall. for a couple hours we were satisfied. but what could we do that night?? we decided it was time to check out the coffee shops. but which one?

the first one was full of what looked like rockers, however the PA played only hard trance? too many that were like pubs, too many where you could only drink juice, too many with loud "up for it" tourist lads. just where could two sty-lee girls like ourselves get stoned in style. we finally found one only to face a record scratching moment of a bouncer insisting that everyone who came in had to have id. carded at a coffee shop?!! he insisted it was the same everywhere. my friend wasn’t convinced. so we found the dodgiest dingiest coffee-shop we could find.

moments later thinking about the experience we had the night before on grade a dutch cannabis my friend said "nothing too strong thank you.."

we walked out the door giggling and we hadn’t even started smoking yet..

that’s it for this episode…

so our fair heroines have made it into the city, despite lack of sleep we rise and shine at 8 am for the hotel breakfast. maybe its just cause we’re hungry but it does seem to hit the spot. today is meant to be an odd mesh of culture, exploration and forays into coffee shops. we make it over to the van gogh museum to see an Egon Schiele exhibit. the space is amazing. far more modern than i imagined and the retrospective of Schiele’s drawings is complimented by multi media works by contemporary artists.

there is a naked Russian performance artist standing on a podium reflection on the post mod adage of

"when all has been explored the artist himself can be the exhibition"

yeah sure but… I’m over it.

there is some beautiful Schiele inspired work by some contemporary dancers though. a dance film on three huge bac k projected panels with a group of excruciating beautiful dancers creating forms on this massive expansive of white sheets. it doesn’t sound nearly as stunning as it actually was trust me. and then in the down stairs space two dancers, a man and woman painted Schiele style performed a piece about intimacy and the tension therein, the guy was very frenetic and the woman super slow and graceful. and the  performers were so close to the audience that we could see their muscles tensing. it worked for me on all levels. S chiele’s work was quite beautiful but i wasn’t nearly as entranced with it as my best friend. art and film is weird like that no? sometimes what you draw from it is really something indescribable that comes within  yourself.

briefly we check out the permanent collection of van gogh’s work and i know its blasphemous to say but i was a little disappointed. maybe its because I’m not huge on still lifes and landscapes and that was mostly what was on offer. but i have to say i have been more moved by singular pieces of  his work in the permanent collections of other galleries.

what is that all about?

what i will say is he did make me experience landscapes and still lifes of flowers in a completely new and almost visceral way.

there is an energy in the painting, the action of it, the texture that is quite staggering.

we walked out of the museum into pouring rain. Londoner that i am i had packed an umbrella but of course had not chosen to bring it out with me that day. we were a stones through from the Cafe’ Americain , a huge original art deco institution that is part of a massive old luxury hotel. the crowd was full of tourists, my Parisian friend was most unimpressed with the flatness of the champagne but there was something very poetic about sitting in this grand art deco interior watching the rain outside through mile high graying windows.

bravely we went back out in the rain with the interest of finding a smart shop. i love smart shops. i love this idea of going into this hippy trippy neon space with stoner skater sales attendants and then having a chemist shop conversation over mind altering substances. yes i would like something that will make me almost as arrogant as a few lines of coke, awake as a small amount of speed and warm and tingly as a choice pill…giggles and danciness would be nice too?

our dutch "chemist" scratched his baseball cap with great concentration and produced three vials of various herbal (but legal in Holland) substances. i had been in Holland for new years years ago and had had a lovely night on herbal ecstasy. i didn’t recognize the packaging of any of the vials presented and frowned. i explained my confusion.

the boy looked around. the shop was empty, the street was empty. when had i last been in Amsterdam he inquired. i wasn’t quite sure but knew it was something like three years? He nodded sagely, reached under the counter and pulled out a large black bin liner, from this he produced another vial. see since the last time i had been in Amsterdam a now widely known over the counter drug called ephedrine had gotten itself a bad name. ephedrine had been in the "herbal ecstasy" i had purchased the last time i was in the ‘dam. it had then gone on to be prescribed as a diet pill. my best friend had even taken it at that time. but it was taken off the market when they discovered that the effects on your heart were dangerously close to cocaine and only slightly less deadly. all i knew is for 10 euros this boy was going to sell me something that would make me feel like i had taken a pill.

we bought two vials..

wandering back into the street, we indulged in some seriously cost effective vintage shopping (had to be done) where we were spoken to in dutch repeatedly as we had finally ventured into a tourist free zone. i then decided it was time to check out some girl bars. the first one we went in was called "Sappho" (not leaving anyone guessing there)  the manager sat on her own behind the bar reading the paper, a large man hung some paintings on the wall as his children played some kind of game over a small bar table. ummm was this all Amsterdam had to offer to the dyke about town???  the manager told us that nothing happened in this city on this scene until Friday, but she did say we should check out another bar around the corner.

the next bar was cute , and filled with a lot of older feminine women. black and white photos of 40S starlets lined the wall. for a couple hours we were satisfied. but what could we do that night?? we decided it was time to check out the coffee shops. but which one?

the first one was full of what looked like rockers, however the PA played only hard trance? too many that were like pubs, too many where you could only drink juice, too many with loud "up for it" tourist lads. just where could two sty-lee girls like ourselves get stoned in style. we finally found one only to face a record scratching moment of a bouncer insisting that everyone who came in had to have id. carded at a coffee shop?!! he insisted it was the same everywhere. my friend wasn’t convinced. so we found the dodgiest dingiest coffee-shop we could find.

moments later thinking about the experience we had the night before on grade a dutch cannabis my friend said "nothing too strong thank you.."

we walked out the door giggling and we hadn’t even started smoking yet..

that’s it for this episode…

previously i had deluded myself into thinking that i, the girl who began flying transatlantic flights in her diapers (no exaggeration), was a tried and true traveller. the kind of girl you could deposit in any airport, any major city and despite language and directional issues, would find the nearest tobacco shop and lounge bar ANYWHERE and soon enough be kicking back and downing a Cosmo cosmopolitan style.

on arriving at Amsterdam shipol airport after working my way round buying phone cards, locating trains into town, mystification over what seemed like an exceedingly complicated ticket machine,being hassled by beggars in every possible European language, stressing over not being able to see station signs as the train pulled from one stop to the other, i arrived at Centraal station exhausted, and askeda bus driver for directions to the neighborhood of my hotel. He told me the time…maybe he couldn’t discern the difference between "walk" and "clock". (I’m guessing his english was not as good as his dutch) .

and so i walked with a  heavy bag and heavier eyelids through the red light district only to be accosted by every dirty john and grim looking drug dealer. miraculously i made it to my hotel in once piece.

on walking into my lush orange and red "art room"

art room at the winston "you"

i gratefully hugged my best friend and moments later we set out for that all time cliche Amsterdam tourist destination: the coffee shop. we did not take into account however that despite what our guide books told us, the "24 hour" city is decidedly not very 24 hours at midnight on a Tuesday…

walking down the street with visions of the visuals we would have after inhaling that dangerous dutch "smoke" we walked head first into a boy i used to work with in a night club in London. 

cue the "its a small world" track here. boy was completely unfazed by running into me and clearly thought he had caught me out in some type of sordid affair as he stared suspiciously at my friend and spoke of my girlfriend continuously.

we ignored his insinuation and followed him to a rock club where his English entourage were waiting. you see being the gay boy in the bunch he had been sent out on his own to a gay club (charmingly titled "the cock ring") with hopes that with his style and charm drugs would rain down on him from his queer brethren. he had no such luck as it happened (much to our disappointment as well) and when we walked in with him to meet his friends they were a little disappointed that instead of pharmaceuticals he had picked up two girls (you’d think with a gay boy such things would not happen)

i think two of his guy friends were excited nonetheless as they thought their mate had brought them fresh bait in the form of up for it foreign girls. which i think they continued to believe as we didn’t bother to tell them that i was gay and my mate  though hetero was very much spoken for. guns and roses was played on the PA, the lights whacked on and suddenly we were left to our own devices again, our new English friends back to their hotel to smoke.

never ready to give up too quickly we looked for somewhere else to go. but even the pole dancing joint near the hotel was closing by the time we got to it. luckily our hotel had a club next door that actually had a really decent live r and b night on and the crowd were and interesting cross section of Amsterdam’s "black music" scene. but it was a little too chill for us so we gave up and went next door. the guy on the door of the hotel was the same who had seen my melodramatic entrance. our faces were a little low, he inquired why.

embarrassed we admitted that even in Amsterdam we had failed at scoring a smoke. and thus he invited us to share his massive blunt in the 24 hour hotel bar on next door and i have to say after a few drags i barely had a toe on this planet. i think our conversation started out fairly straight but it soon grew very surreal regardless of how level our new dutch host remained.

when my friend and i finally got back to our room all she could do is tease me over how i strained to remain cool even after the blunt was seriously obliterating my mind. yes ladies and gentleman even when my mind is altered i am still a control freak..

more to come, tune in next blog….

o.k  because my head is fairly scrambled from this trip i will have to recall it in episodes and in reverse chronological order. so i will start with my return and in posts to come will get into what transpired before i came back here.  utter craziness …that’s all i can say.  once again i confirm my belief that everyone is  an artist.

Friday midday I returned and traveled across town to my flat. Within minutes I was out the door to pick up my girlfriend, as it was her birthday and I had an appointment for her at a nearby spa.

While the girl was getting "body scrubbed" I took my film to be developed and then was generally quite lost. Afterwards I pick up the girl who is now most zen and almost as drowsy as me. Her masseur was a big blonde Frenchman called Sebastian. As we walk to my flat I mentally tennis play over whether it would bother me more or less if the masseur was a woman. Then the brazilian mafia (all my girlfriends friends) start to call and suddenly I find myself in a bar til closing time. The next day ends up pretty much the same except in house party format and a little more on the chemical side.

I end up talking for hours to a guitarist who wants to go back to being a photographer. I am then accosted by a pair of exceedingly girly girls in heels in pencil skirts

who are ecstatic that elaine and I are together as we are both very feminine and stylish and so are the girly couple who attempt to talk to me. Hours and hours and hours later when the host of the party was literally snoring on the sofa I was a little shocked that I was the only of the three left who thought maybe it was time to go home. Someone was talking about calling a dealer at which point I suggested that maybe since it was five am, the host was sleeping, and there were only three of us it was time to call it a night. Everyone guiltily agreed and cabs were called.

I can safely say that these have been the only 5 days off work that have made me fairly relaxed about being back at work. My Amsterdam trip matched with myLondon weekend made me cling to the bed this morning in a way that suggested I feared falling off. …meanwhile i wonder about this whole "body scrub" thing.

Odd no?

paying someone to give my girlfriend a body scrub?

Apparently its good for her pores but I can’t help feeling its not so far off from the whole red light thing….