Two Shots of Happy

All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Chronicling moments from Punchdrunk's The Burnt City. And now I shall remember you, and another song too.

[twoshotsofhappy]

The woman in the dark red jumpsuit is no longer lost.

When she'd revived her husband she'd given him her ultimatum. Finally, he was happy to comply.

"I want you to show me everything."

And here you are. You've followed her through the stage door and up the stairs, until you were on the balcony, the same place you'd seen Luba perform, right back at the start of your journey. You've looked out over the whole of the city and saw the woman's husband below, gazing up at his wife.

You saw her through the glass, her image mingled with your reflection, and the reflections of the other shades who had joined you. Her movements were slow, trance like, as if in a dream. You heard her speak to her husband below, their voices as clear and sharp as if they were each beside you. The city, his gift to her. Iphegenia below in her bright red dress, a handmaid loyal to them both, collecting Patroclus' tears, her own tribute to her king.

"I only remember one thing: I came here because I love you."

The torment of the city, whose cobbles run with blood.

The woman's own journey:

"In a world, where time seems to stand still, I was lost when I arrived. Just like you. Lost in the labyrinth of the streets.

But hedged by the blue moon in the garden, our garden, filled with lifeless flowers, a fallen horse gave me solace and made me rich.

Rich with wonders. Rich in brain and body.

I am the sunlight. So many of you, wandering in a world filled with cruelty, torture and war.

I heard your city, sighing.

I heard your kingdom, crying.

I heard your city sighing... kingdom crying. I heard..."

As the record began to skip, the woman in the red jumpsuit snapped out of her reverie. She had to run, and so did you.

And so you ran, through room after room, past cabinet after cabinet. You saw the woman stop wonderingly to look. Clay vessels, each depicting scenes of violence. The same violence she'd seen in the city below. Polyxena, hanging by her heels. Polymestor, losing his sight as Hecuba exacted her revenge. The king and queen of the underworld. A record stylus, golden. An urgent beat of drums underneath it all.

Your journey took you somewhere else again. A narrow corridor, dark. Black sand under foot. A single narcissus, growing from barren ground.

She picked up a piece of chalk and started to draw on the wall. That song...it was the key to the puzzle.

"If the sun should lose its light

And we lived in endless night.."

As she spoke, she drew: a symbol to match each line.

"If the sea were sand alone

And all the flowers made of stone

And noone that you hurt could ever heal..."

With each line her urgency had grown, until she made the final marks:

"I REMEMBER."

But the revelation wasn't over. No sooner had she drawn the pictures, written the words, than she discovered more. She switched on her torch, and looked forwards.

Before her was an expanse of wall, the symbols and the words - I REMEMBER - written over and over again. Hundreds of times. Thousands. Each time a marker of pain, of light emerging from darkness. Each time the culmination of another journey, of remembering who she is.

As the music rises to a crescendo, the woman in the red jumpsuit gathers you and your companions around her. She finally understands. Taking your hands, eyes brimming with tears, she tells you:

"My name is Judith Kore - Persephone.

A child of earth and starry sky.

My people are heavenly!

And I grant you safe passage to the land of the shades."

Now, finally, Persephone comes into her kingdom. She bends right back, and places an imaginary crown upon her head, and strides out, stately, into the dark land beyond.

She still has more to do. She has duties to fulfill, and a reunion with her husband, Hades, ahead. Together they will look under the floorboards of his office and see the vials of tears - tears of sorrow, tears of joy - arranged in green lit rows beneath.

They will walk out together to comfort Hecuba, and to witness the torrent of souls cascade before them, just like the painting on the wall of Hades' office. Persephone will glide up the stairs, through the waterfall, serene and terrible, seemingly weightless. She will reunite with Hades and they will promenade down the stone table, hand in hand. They will share a moment of triumph, and a last pomegranate, as the record plays out for them.

But in this moment only one thing matters: Persephone remembers. She knows who she is. She is the sunlight. She is the dread queen. And she's home.

[twoshotsofhappy]

The cafe is quiet. The sirens have stopped, the detritus of war has gone from the square. But the drone remains, an unsettling rumble under everything.

Eury looks slowly around Ciaccos: the black and white tiles floor, the red walls decorated with hand drawn posters, the shelves full of powdered food, the narcissisi in vases, the calendar behind the polished wooden counter. The small shrine in the corner, green lit. All achingly familiar.

Just before, Zagreus was here, brandishing exit passes. A way out. An escape. But as Eury looks around the cafe, her expression is pained. The suitcase is still here, half packed. Can she bear to leave?

After all, home is home is home, even under the shadow of war.

Eury takes a breath, as she reaches for her coat and cloche hat. She's decided. Eyes brimming with tears, she bends down to the tiled floor, and gives it a kiss.

All there is now to do is to sit on her suitcase and wait for her lover to come for her. She looks around the cafe one last time. Home is home is home, even though she has to leave.

In the city, sorrow and joy mingle like tears.

[twoshotsofhappy]

Zagreus is a desperate man. Parted from Eury as the sirens sound, he plunges through dark and winding alleys of Troy, in search of something. Pausing to leave a box of trinkets in Laocoön's workshop and to direct the ragged man to refuge, he runs on.

I should know, as I follow him, that all is not what it seems. I should know that his hand may not be offered in friendship. But we are all seeking refuge in this moment, in a room, or the touch of skin. And so I trust him.

I trust him as he leads me into a dark room, lays me down on something cold and hard. I didn't see the sign outside the door: Offerings.

I only realised too late, lying in the dark, as I hear his words:

"Apollo!" He prays to the god of the silver bow "Accept this offering!"

And in a blinding flash of light the god himself is above me. He reaches down to caress my cheek, with a smile. He seems pleased with his gift.

In the city, no mortal is safe from sacrifice.

[twoshotsofhappy]

Laocoön is back to fulfill his purpose. Sitting across from the woman in the red jumpsuit outside his tent in the backstreets, showing her the ranks of assembled shades for the first time. A first time of so many first times. The infinity sigil made as real as her chalk outline, pomegranate in hand, on the wall.

The crowd of ghosts is transfixed: watching the woman's reaction as she sees them.

I stand at the back of the crowd, watching the ragged man, the prophet. I'd been his only follower, and I'm keen to see how he responds to the woman's moment of crisis.

For a fraction of a second, his eyes meet mine in a flash of pure conspiracy. As if to say: "Well, you and I knew this all along, didn't we?"

In the city we are always watched, even if we don't realise it.

[twoshotsofhappy]

The woman in the dark red jumpsuit is starting to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and she doesn't like it one bit.

Sitting in the canvas chair by the makeshift tent, she'd listened to her own words, the words from the telephone call an hour before, through the radio. The party, the woman in diamonds. The palm reading, and her life line:

"It's funny. According to this you're already..."

"...dead."

The woman in the red jumpsuit finished her own speech, as the ragged man revealed the ranks of assembled shades with a swirl of his candle.

Knocking back shot after shot in the White Cypress, she grappled with the revelation.

"Circles and cycles.."

Death and rebirth and winter and spring and a neverending loop, as the barman spins a sake cup. Round and round, but every cycle has its end.

With bright eyes and a note of hysteria in her voice, the woman in the red jumpsuit had ushered her ghostly entourage into Peep. For with the cycle comes hope: he was here before. The man in her wedding picture. He'd be here again.

But it turns out that even the loop couldn't bring her comfort. The shiny, sharp and spikey dancer is here. The woman in the red jumpsuit laughs as she catches the falling martini glass in the nick of time. The hosts, knowing smiles behind the makeup, introduce their surprise guest as the band strikes familiar chords:

"A presence, a gift, a friend."

But he isn't here. Under the blinding red and blue lights, the woman in the red jumpsuit has to sing the song alone. Hesitant at first, her voice grows more sure as the final revelation hits here:

"If the sea were sand alone

And all the flowers made of stone

- look at the flowers -"

-she gestures to the pink silk and neon flowers on the bar's tables -

"And noone that you hurt could ever heal"

-she looks out at the audience, eyes filled with tears, voice cracking -

"That's what this is! That's where we are."

Soon she will confront the man in the brown suit over checkers, a scream as strong as a siren that sends him onto the floor, covering his ears, in a spiral of pain. She will turn sharp circles in the office, bending low and flinging out her arms as the bitter power of the endless loop courses through her body.

She'll pull back the curtains to confront him with the pain and the blood, letting in the cold blue light on the endless tragedy of his domain. Straddling him on the desk, she'll crouch over him with a pomegranate, and find peace in her power to revive even him.

But in this moment, backlit on the stage, the hosts grinning behind her as the tears come, she is utterly alone.

In the city, catharsis is hard won.

[twoshotsofhappy]

We run through winding alleys and through a wardrobe, tenements blend into corridors. I no longer know if I'm in pursuit or a fellow fugitive. At the top of the stairs she stops, unlocks a door. She looks around, wild eyed, and pulls me in. In the pause that follows I can hear it outside, the steady rising pulse as the heartbeat of the city quickens.

Luba motions to me to remain quiet, and she locks the door. We are hiding together, but am I safe? She unspools a reel of red wool, cuts it (the scissors uncomfortably close to my face) talking as she works.

Her voice is beautiful. Precise and ennunciated, the voice of someone of high birth, or fastidious enough to copy it.

"It's always good to carry a ball of string. You can use it to wrap a parcel, make a pretty bracelet for a loved one." She smiles fondly. She pulls the string back and forth across my outstretched arm, pulling harder. "To moor a ship, so they don't sail away without you next time."

I can feel the weight of the anchor across my wrist. Is that what happened to her? She slowly winds the thread around my hand, criss crossed finger by finger: a bracelet, a cat's cradle. A web.

"Always tie the ends." She secures the string with her customary care.

She takes my hand, holds it up to the light. Her face changes, solemn. She traces a finger down my wrist.

"The veins in your hands are beautiful, like strings with blood in them."

She is close now. Her expression unreadable. A flash of panic: "Who are you?"

She turns me around, hands on my shoulders and pushes me, hard through what I'd thought was the back of the cupboard into nothingness. The shock leaves me reeling but there's something at my back, returning me towards her. She throws me again, spins me round. Her torch settles on the web, a maze of red strings criss crossing the space. She is illuminated against them, hunched, arms outstretched. Inhuman.

She slams me against the door with a hard thud.

"Next time there won't be a web to catch you."

Whatever flash of frenzy or insight had possessed her passes, and her next look is tender, motherly again. She holds a finger to her lips. The raised paw of the lucky cat on the shelf moves back and forth, tick tock. For a moment, she stops it with her hand. "You'll be safe now, I promise."

I let out a breath I didn't even know I was holding, and we return to the world away from the web.

[twoshotsofhappy]

The moment Luba has dreaded has arrived.

She has tried to protect Hecuba, from him and from herself. But now she can see how much she has failed. And it's breaking her.

Luba had been desperate to keep Hecuba safe, hiding the queen behind the pink neon shell shaped headboard, as Polymestor approached. No time for a plan, just an urgent whispered plea to her old friend to trust her.

Polymestor didn't see the tension in the maid's face and hands as he strode in, high on blood and power. He didn't really see her at all. As he got her to hold the queen's jewelry box, while he draped himself in gold, she was a tool. An object. She was no more real to him as he taunted her, or used her to satisfy his desires as he stretched back on the bed. All he saw was his own glory, his own face in the mirror she held up to him.

He didn't notice the stiffness of her body, as she forced herself to comply. He didn't see the frozen look on her face, or the worried glances at something behind him. He didn't notice the queen, watching him, eyes filled with rage and disgust. He didn't even see that it was Hecuba holding the mirror, as he paraded before it one last time. He didn't see Luba desperately grasping the mirror from behind Hecuba's back, stopping her from landing a blow. Until it was too late, and he was forced to confront the queen with a hastily plastered on smile.

And here is when it happens. The moment that Luba breaks. As Hecuba finally confronts Polymestor, the maid shrinks back along the side of the bed, her body stiff with tension, her eyes averted from her tormentor.

"Is he safe? Is my son safe?"

Luba's eyes raise, suddenly alert, darting intent towards Polymestor. What can he possibly say?

"Yes. He's safe."

With a broad smile, Polymestor lies to Hecuba, unaware that the queen and her maid have already seen her son's body dumped on the cobbles.

Luba's head moves ever so slightly, in a barely concealed double take, and her eyes widen, incredulous. In an instant the shock leaves them, and is replaced by something harder. For a moment, as the drone rises to a rumbling crescendo, her face is a mask of anger.

While Polymestor stays in the room, threatening his plaything one last time, Luba doesn't betray what has happened to her. Her eyes remain downcast. Her body remains frozen in fear even after Polymestor has touched her for the last time.

But with the traitor gone, something happens. As the beats rise from the adjoining room and green light filters through the doorway, Luba stands tall. She shakes of her turban and removes her work jacket.

As the pink nylon clings to her face and moves up over her head, it looks like she is emerging from a cocoon.

And what emerges is something quite different to the diffident, anxious Luba of a moment before. The Luba that is here now, dipping their head in the cleansing water, moves with clean assurance, eyes burning with purpose. The shudder of an outstretched arm and clenching fingers provide a clue to what that purpose may be. Luba has finally broken, and what has come out of the wreckage is set on revenge.

In the city, you never know what might lead to a deadly metamorphosis.

[twoshotsofhappy]

The Watchman kneels in the square of the foreign city, keeping vigil. Around her, alien neon flashes. She cleans the site of the sacrifice, the dead young woman now laid out in a nearby room, a black cloth over her face. The Watchman carries out her duties diligently, her face unreadable.

The door to the square opens, and a figure rushes in. A maid, in a pink nylon work jacket, a green plastic apron and bronze turban. Garish, unlike the Watchman in her dusty grey uniform trousers and plain white vest. But the urgent, worried look on the maid's face - that is something all too familiar.

The maid stops at the edge of the circle. She bends down hesitantly to pick up the dead young woman's clothes. For a moment, Watchman and maid are motionless. One crouched, one kneeling, they occupy the same plane, keep the same tension in their bodies. They hold each others' anxious gaze for an endless moment, backlit in the blue-white light of the square.

They are from different worlds, but in this moment they are connected by more than either of them can express.

[twoshotsofhappy]

Cassandra is all at sea. For a while, she knew what she was meant to do. As she walked across the square, backlit by a blinding brightness, she knew she would have Agamemnon in her power. His face - transfixed, attention drawn away from the grisly spectacle behind him - showed her how great that power was.

She knew, as she waited in the office, glittering skull mask covering her face, that she could seduce him. His dance - martial, worshipful, eager to impress - showed her he was right. Even as he went to leave, and she tossed him his coat, his grin - the warlord turned innocent, the first hint of pure joy he'd shown since he'd carried out his first terrible duty - a reminder that he was awestruck.

She knew more than he did. As Agamemnon danced for her, she saw Laocoön through the window. The ragged man was a ghost shadowing Agamemnon's dance, mirroring it exactly. The images of the two men floated over each other and melded together in the glass. It was hard to see where Agamemnon ended and the ragged man began.

As Agamemnon sank down onto a seat Cassandra nearly took her opportunity - but the ragged man stopped her bringing the hairpin down on her enemy. Instead he led her through a vision, Agamemnon's skull cracked, blood smeared in the shape of an eye, on the glass that separated them.

But now, as they spin, hands joined, across the wide distance back to Mycenae, Cassandra is less sure. Her dance is less that of the brittle seductress, there is something more hesitant to it, more real. The king takes her hand, and in the light of his torch the twin shadows join and flutter, a butterfly.

As they approach Mycenae, they lean, hands and foreheads together. They rock back and forth, motion fluid and giving. A ship at sea, lovers in union. Before they reach the gates, a kiss.

As Agamemnon ascends the stairs, robed in purple, he will turn his jewelled face to Cassandra, leaning back to brush her cheek with his hand. She will accept the caress, leaning back in ecstasy. But his journey will go on.

Cassandra has had a change of heart. But she knows that it won't change what's to come.

[twoshotsofhappy]

The woman in the dark red jumpsuit moves warily, as she approaches the greenhouse. Things have been happening, strange things.

A pomegranate, made real. Did I...do that? A man's sight restored. A plant, small fragile green shoots, hidden behind a golden idol. A puzzle. Flashes of light and life in the dark.

Askalaphos is waiting, perhaps they will have the answer. Inside the greenhouse now, they unlock their hidden treasure: a miracle. A gift. A plant, like the woman's. But this one is bigger. It's had a year to grow.

The woman looks around her, at the racks of dry soil and seed, and at these two living things, and something strange starts to happen. A jolt of power runs through her, coursing through her fingers, making the lights flash and the glass walls shake.

She convulses in the surge, bending all the way back, her eyes flashing in ecstacy. Askalaphos kneels, head bowed. She's home.

In the city, there is a light at the heart of the labyrinth. She just doesn't know it yet.

[twoshotsofhappy]

Patroclus is dead. Neoptolemus crawls on his hands and knees, towards the light that cuts warm yellow-orange tracks across the dead ground. Soon he will follow that light to its source, and, wracked with despair, will scramble up to the highest point he can and throw himself down. His lover is dead, and for Neoptolemus there is no coming back.

Behind him you see something move. Patroclus, the other side of the chain link fence. His gait is calm, at peace. His face is still, only a touch of longing left in his eyes. He belongs to another place now. He pauses, illuminated in the light that Neoptolemus is crawling towards, gazing out at his lover. They are so close they could touch. But Neoptolemus doesn't see him: a wider gulf than physical space separates them now.

In the city, there are other things that can keep us apart.

[twoshotsofhappy]

Clytemnestra's grief is a thunderstorm.

The crisis has passed, but the pain remains. At its sharpest point, after she bore terrible witness from the balcony, she'd rolled and shuddered along the table, absorbed in her own pain.

Then, as if from out of nowhere, Aegisthus had appeared at her side. He'd let her use him as the foil to her rage, in control as they twisted and writhed together. Resting his chin in her hand, or catching her when she fell, threatening to slam face first into the stone, he was the model of a supportive partner. The partner her husband should have been.

Aegisthus had been no less willing, as Clytemnestra's grief flipped into desire, fuelled by rage. Until, delirious with lust, and hunger for so, so many things, the queen and the interloper called for dinner.

Their servant, failing to mask the disgust on her face, carefully rolled out the plastic sheeting, dressed them in plastic aprons, butchers' clothes, and set out their bloody banquet. A sheep's skull, eyes still in place, to be popped into the mouth like a lychee. A pile of entrails in a wet red heap.

And here, drunk on blood and each other, the thunderstorm rolls the couple back and forth through their own personal visions. Aegisthus reads in the entrails a portent of a longed for future. With a red smeared face and bloody hands, he cracks them like a whip, and Clytemnestra, face blank, deferential, piles them high on his head: a crown, all his.

But for Clytemnestra, the portent is something else, a bloody reminder of her loss, dragging her back through time. As the makeshift crown slips from Aegisthus' head, she catches the red bundle and cradles it in her arms, whispering and cooing to it. But the rockabye doesn't last, the mass slips from her grip and spills down from her lap onto the table. She is birthing her grief, all over again.

While her lover laughs, still standing regal, Clytemnestra falls on her knees, throws back her head and wails.

In the city, every portent comes with a price.

[twoshotsofhappy]

The Watchman is hard to read. She bears the burdens of her duties with a hard faced stoicism, as she works the beacon, measures the wind, takes her part in moving the apparatus of war. She has kept to her duty, even as the horrors of war unfold before her. Only the occasional swig, a little too long, from a bottle of hard liquor betrays that she may be feeling the toll.

Until now when, as she stands guard, she sees the young man and the girl in the red dress on the girder.

At first it seems like a seduction. But look more closely and you'll see that it's something altogether different. The young man leans back, bewildered. The girl - though right now she looks anything but human - kneels over him, breathless, with shining eyes and a gleeful smile of triumph and pure malice. That smile never leaves her face, even as the blood covers her hands and runs down his chest.

In that moment, I turn away from to see the Watchman. Her gaze meets mine, eyes wide in shock, disgust and terror. The first plea for help she's ever made in her life of service.

In the city, everyone's mask will eventually crack.

[twoshotsofhappy]

The queen is wild with grief. She clambers onto the bed and paces in circles. Luba looks on, helpless.

Only a moment before, Hecuba saw him. From a high up tenement, still clutching a rose for her boy, the child who still lived, she saw Polymestor. She saw him dump her son's body without ceremony on a length of white plastic sheeting. She saw him prostrate himself before the figure silhouetted in blue-white light of the open door, the caretaker, ready to drag away his offering.

And now, in this rented room, Hecuba has given herself up to her loss. She leans and almost falls, her body dragged in circle after circle, pain etched into her face. Pain and terror: she can see the crowd of ghosts looking on.

When she clambers up the shell shaped headboard, Luba comes to Hecuba's aid.

Luba sits Hecuba on the bed, her face shadowed in the pink neon light, and cradles her queen like a child. Luba's arm is around her, but her fingertips graze Hecuba's shoulder hesitantly, before plucking back, uncertain.

The moment breaks at the sound of approaching footsteps. Luba urgently gestures Hecuba behind the bed, her eyes pleading, her voice a hoarse whisper:

"Do you trust me?"

She gestures again, more urgently. Her eyes are wide, desperate.

"Please?"

The queen nods, and does as her old friend asks.

In the city, it's only a matter of time before everything is lost.

[twoshotsofhappy]

He's out of luck. The ragged man hunches on a crate in the square, hood over his eyes and an outstretched hand. He tries to catch the attention of passing shades, but the masked figures have no change for him.

Who is he, really, this beggar who deals with spirits?

Time passes. Too much time. The ragged man sits perfectly still. Until...

A metallic clang on the cobbles, as a large silver coin is dropped. The ragged man reaches out, in perfect time to catch it. As if he knew.

The woman in red looks awkward as she asks for it back. She doesn't want any trouble. But it's hers. The only clue she has right now. The ragged man holds it out, grinning. He dodges away from her lunge, twirling and ducking around the square, a new energy to his step.

The dance leads them to a doorway, and the ragged man finally relents. Giving her the coin, he gestures her through, a wolfish smile on his face.

"Briiiiiiing! Brrrrriiiiiiiing!"

As she steps through to the small reception room - soft chairs, a low table, a telephone - the ragged man steps lightly away.

He's done what he needs to do. And he'll be seeing her later.

[twoshotsofhappy]

She wants it so badly. The desire lies dormant as he sits and reads, but as she arranges the shrine and begins to pray you can see it begin to rise to the surface. The longing.

And then, the light changes, flushing blue-green as the radio plays.

"Strangers' arms reach out to me..."

And the god is here, behind her. Apollo caresses Askalaphos so gently. The florist stretches out her arms, tilts her head back, eyes closed, in ecstasy.

The moment passes, the god disappears but for a moment, the high remains. Askalaphos stretches up and up and up, and for a moment you could swear her feet have left the ground.

For a fleeting second a look of discomfort crosses her face, as she touches a hand to her shoulder. The moment passes with a shrug, and she prepares for her next customer. She'll discover the price she has just paid later.

In the city, you should be careful what you wish for.

[twoshotsofhappy]

Early evening, and Aegisthus seems light of heart. He may not be entirely welcome in Troy or Mycenae, but he moves with an easy stride and a click of his fingers. As he passes he makes Eury giggle, and he whistles as he walks. Only the occasional glance over his shoulder - wary and alert - betrays the tension behind his swagger.

"When the evening sun goes down, you won't find me hanging round."

Hesperides is empty. He puts his head around the door. The coast is clear.

"The night life ain't the good life, but it's my life."

As he enters the rose scented shop, the wariness that had hung over Aegisthus seems to dissipate. Unobserved by anyone apart from the crowd of ghosts, he spins through the shop with gleeful abandon.

He climbs up onto a counter and swings, his spirits lifted. He finds a posy hanging from the ceiling - a stolen gift.

As you leave, you see him, smiling, as a shower of rose petals falls around him.

In the city, you snatch such moments of joy as you can.