Thursday, February 18, 2010

In order to begin invoking my experience of the Maastricht Carnival, let me bring to mind several images (not the one to the left):

The first is a scene from Bela Tarr's masterpiece, the Werckmeister Harmonies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euXraV8kiO4&feature=related

Second, a vibrant yet solitary crimson feather, lying abandoned and forgotten on the floor of a men's room, not far from the urinal, soaking in the slightly sour odor of stale cabbage and water.

A Strawberry Man, walking down the sidewalk, puffing his cigar...

A young man standing in the street, alone, sobbing, wearing a sodden and dirty bunny costume. Pink.

A darkened alley:
Woman 1: "Gro@#$@!@#%aast je smaakdraggen!@#$#@!"
Woman 2: (sobbing)
Woman 1: (louder) "Je Groote!@#$$#@@%#$^. Blaagahastagaten snellmostrategen!!!!! Bitch!"
Woman 2: (sobbing, louder)
Woman 1: (more violently) "De Maan sslechtokoffenhater !@#@!"
Woman 2: (sobbing, now uncontrollably)
etc.

Yes folks, a good time to be had by all.

On Saturday, before the official party began, they brought out what I will simply call the "Whale Trucks" to sit in the strangely deserted town square. A very palpable quiet had descended on the town. Nothing to be seen except the Whale Trucks which clearly signaled that something, well, different, was about to take place. They sat there, all day, concealing their neatly taxidermed whale carcasses, waiting for the official opening of the Carnival so the passersby could place their Euros and gain access to the monstrous spectacle.

On Sunday, the festival officially began with what, for lack of a better description, I'll simply call "The Lynching of the Old Lady," (No, I'm not making this up) where an enormous effigy of, well, look for yourself, an old Dutch woman is suspended, by the neck, from a crane. This highly suggestive act signals the beginning of the revels, and this is where things pick up. (As if the Whale Trucks weren't enticing enough already. Did I mention that by "Whale," I meant "Beer"?)

So, with the beginning of Carnival, this is basically what happens.

Much like the "Choosing the Carnival Prince" festival (See "Incomprehensible Carnival"), the good townspeople of Maastricht generally break off into teams or factions, with the inevitable and occasional loner and/or rebel (like this guy to the left here, who's, uh, adjusting his "camera" by the looks of things...). Each team picks a theme: Road Warrior, Blue Person with Yellow, Caveman, etc. and dresses accordingly. (And when I say "team," I mean you get together everyone you know, hand them a green speedo and some orange body paint and say, "Hey, we're the oompa loompas this year. Get ready"). 
Now, we're not quite done yet here oopma loompas, get your speedos ready because we still need to construct our cart. Yeah, I said "Cart." We can choose any variety of cart, ranging from "shopping cart with plywood" to "wow I've really gone all out and gotten a real cart, with a handle and everything." Our oompa loompa team is going with "shoppingcart with plywood" because that's, I guess, what an oompa loompa would do... (?) Our cart needs to serve three purposes that are essential for our team having an awesome carnival: 1.) It needs to hold all the beer we're bringing with us as we wander around the town getting down like only an oompa loompa can. 2.) It wouldn't really be an oompa-loompa style party without our favorite music, you know, that song, the oompa loompa one, except remixed to a hot euro-beat. So our cart needs to be outfitted with a speaker system and stereo so we can blast our chocolate-making music out on everybody. 3.) OF COURSE we wouldn't THINK about leaving the little loompas behind, so little Timmy, throw down your crutch and get your orange body paint ready because you're coming with the family (That's right grandpa--you're coming too). Finally, our cart is where we're going to place the little ones after we're all too drunk to stand and they're tired, cranky and, well, want to get in the cart. After all the beer is gone, we just throw them in. (We WON'T be too drunk to stand, by the way, until about 4:00 a.m., in spite of the fact that we've been drinking non-stop since, well, I don't know, 10:00 a.m. AND in spite of the fact that's IT'S BEEN SNOWING ALL DAY. We're oompa loompas, damn it). Did I mention that this whole cart-drinking-dancing enterprise takes place outside and that (yeah, I know it's the Netherlands, I wouldn't be talking about this if I didn't) IT'S FEBRUARY? We still have to decorate our cart to match our theme, so we get some nice plywood and, I don't know, some orange and green paint, maybe some glitter and/or rhinestones (not sequins) and make it look like it matches our costumes. I guess we could put a green speedo on the cart too.

So we've spent the whole day and night drinking, dancing to our awesome dance mix that we probably made ourselves. We've probably gotten into a few scuffles with the Emperor Penguins next door or the people dressed up in their living room curtains. We've certainly smashed our fair share of beer glasses, beer glasses we purchased from one of the innumerable Whale Truck stands that have cropped up everywhere. We enjoyed it, too, smashing those beer glasses, so we smashed some more. We've also heckled a group of young men dressed as the zoo (yeah, those guys) and tried, through our exuberance and friendliness, to bring those two people dressed in regular clothes (probably the only two people), scowling, giving us weird looks, into the fold, but alas, without success. We're tired. The kids have either fallen asleep or passed out (they started drinking too at some point). It's 4:00 a.m. Time to go home. So we take our cart, blasting our loompa tunes, and head through the streets where some people are probably trying to sleep (but we don't care; we LOVE our oompa loompa music and everyone else will too, God verdomme) back to the Chocolate Factory.

So loompas. It's now Monday morning, 10 a.m. What do you mean you're too "hung over," "sleepy," or "still drunk from yesterday?" It's 10 a.m. and you know what that means: grab your green speedo, it's time to start drinking. So we all go through what I can only assume is the somewhat painstaking process of covering ourselves in our orange body paint again (meticulously), fill up the ole' beer cart with a fresh batch for the day, grab the kids and off we go. Work? What work? School? There's no school. It's Carnival... And what else is there to do, anyway? All the storefronts are boarded up (where do you think we got our plywood?) and nothing's open. Off we go. Today, however, we're switching it up a bit. We're going to dedicate some more space in the cart to beer and, instead of the stereo, we're forming a loompa marching band, or "swagger band," as the case may be. It doesn't matter that you don't really know how to play an instrument, anybody can bang a bass drum!

By Tuesday, you would think that maybe the fun would be wearing off. After all, we've more or less been drinking non-stop since Saturday. We're all starting to get a little dizzy, a little sick to our stomachs because, well, we got the lead-based orange body paint. You would think that by now we just wouldn't care. Well, we do care, sort of. We grab our instruments and head off to drink. We drink and march and play and dance, etc. and, by 4:00 a.m., we're tired and our marching and playing has become, well, half-assed. We start up a tune, get about a block, decide that it's too much effort and stop. Eventually, as we march, everything decays into a drunk, bawling, orange-body paint smeared, smelly, vomiting mess. (Yeah, and who saw that coming?) Drunk and crying, now hating each other, we crawl home, alone, in the cold, stopping to urinate and sleep in the gutter.

The next day, Wednesday, Ash Wednesday to be precise, we get up. Hung over. Headache. Sick. Smelly. Disgusted with ourselves and ashamed of what we've done. But it's OK.

Lent has begun.

3 comments:

  1. ok, i haven't read all of this yet, but i wanted to say "woo hoo!" for the werckmeister harmonies reference!

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  2. love it! and i think i took photos of you in a similar hat in BROOKLYN.

    did you actually see oompa loompas, or are you making a plan for next year? because, if so, count me in!

    i'm going to start practicing playing the tuba, just in case. this is an acceptable part of nyc apartment living, right? listening to my tuba playing through the walls/floor/window? i hope so!

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  3. My original idea for a costume was to organize approximately 50-100 people into opposing zombie armies. The armies, unbeknownst to the carnival organizers, meet at a designated time and place (probably one of the town squares) for a zombie musket battle. Maybe we could get zombie cannons, too.

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