LOCAL NIGHTLIFE PHILOSOPHER

Texte en Français en-dessous

It’s a pity you don’t read or understand French. Not only because you’re missing many occasions to make friends among the “true Bruxellois” (actually, there’s no real Bruxellois, this label stands for any French or Dutch speaker, native or not, but Expats and Tourists tend to believe there’s some of us who are “real ones”).

Your real deep misfortune is that you can’t understand the weekly column “Sortie de Route” by Serge Coosemans.

Each week, Serge is suppose to give us an overview about the last week-end.

I’m saying “is suppose” as sometimes, the article is more about a much wider analysis on Nightlife in general, and in Brussels in particular: while doing this he gives us his thoughts on economy, sociology, politic. Litterature and philosophy are not too far neither. Not to forget to mention his knowledge about music and some other obscure subjects known only by some happy few.

If I’m talking to you about it now, is not only to motivate you to finally take those french class, but to give you a short description on one of his recent paper: the subject fits perfectly many things behind “I’m not on the guest list” modo.

The article is called “L’art d’en faire bouger une sans toucher l’autre“.

He starts with a list of books (The Great Gatsby, among others)  where you can read a description of a certain nightlife. The common denominator of all those parties in all those books is the tendency to “name dropping”.

A long story make short, Coosemans says that those parties full of so called VIP are just bullshit.  He found it very “cliché” and “has been”.

He has nothing against the books in question; they are pretty much well written and describe a certain reality… from the past! What he found very unfortunate is the fact that the media who are talking about those (more recent) books today are never stretching out the fact that this vision of the night is over. Done. Dead.

I would add… and so is that kind of newspaper…

Anyway, Serge Coosemans give us some light as it seems that you find valuable information on the Net: full of very well documented papers. One example beeing this paper on Vice Magazine.

So learn some French, read some Serge: it won’t help you getting your name in any guest list, but it will give you endless possibilities…

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Parmi les écrits de la nuit  bruxelloise, il me semble nécessaire de citer l’excellente chronique de Serge Coosemans pour le Focus Vif : “Sortie de Route“.

C’est souvent drôle, piquant, vif… Si j’en parle maintenant plutôt qu’à tout autre moment, c’est que l’un de ses derniers articles est particulièrement dans la lignée de ce site.

Dans “L’art d’en faire bouger une sans toucher l’autre“, Serge nous parle de cette fâcheuse tendance au “name dropping” dans certains milieux de la nuit, encore tout pétris de carrés VIP.

Je n’en dis pas plus : un article à lire, une chronique à suivre !