Social Theory & Private Affairs

You may wish to start with part one, and two.

I wake up early. Not early early, but earlier than E— who’d stumbled into the tent around 5 am. It’s 10 o’clock, the church bells are going crazy, and I’m ready for the day to begin. After scarfing down the last donut left over from the road-trip I brush my teeth camping style with a bottle of water and head into town. It’s like a fairytale, or an overnight snowfall, the entire village is transformed. Yesterday we’d noticed lines and numbers painted on the ground at regular intervals. Today people are setting up stalls in their designated spaces. Someone had mentioned that we’d have to share the village today, but no one had given any details. It looks like a giant garage sale. I guess it’s to help the people of Doel move out. But that’s not it. These are professional flea marketers. The whole village is covered in them. Even the festival space has been taken over. All our stuff has been moved to take up just the wall alongside the building with the stage. The raggedy tarps and rope sort of blend in, temporary structure amongst temporary structures. But even here the spontaneously improvised aesthetic of out of place people is out of place. Almost no one is awake yet. I give a wordless nod to someone I vaguely remember from last night and head out into the flea market. I like flea markets. Maybe I’ll find something, a small memento to take back with me. Also, I’m hungry. The pure sugar of the donut has burned its way through my stomach leaving little behind. I don’t even like donuts. I only brought them because that’s the sort of thing you do for a road trip. I wanted to bring bagels but couldn’t find any. They don’t really do bagels here. I think the donuts inadvertently cemented my Americaness to the folks in the car. Hopefully I can find something better for breakfast.

I don’t really have a path in mind. Despite all the wandering about yesterday I still don’t have a mental map of the place. There was no internal logic to follow beyond the single stable point of the festival. Now there’s a multitude of points, all lined up neatly in a row. Most of the stalls are pretty lame. Old junk. Probably overpriced. You’re supposed to dig through the rubble, find that one thing you need, or happen to I don’t need anything and I don’t know much about old junk. Tourists are starting to filter in. The early birds who take the flea market thing seriously. There’s even a dude on a road-bike who raced in from god knows where. They stand out. Actually, we stand out. Once in a while I pass someone from the festival and flash them a smile. I’d like to think there’s an unstated camaraderie, though to be honest their reactions are making me feel like it’s just in my head, that or they haven’t had their morning coffee yet.

The church bells go off again. Maybe it’s mass. I happen to be nearby so I take a small detour to check. The doors are still shut tight like they were yesterday. I’ve never been to a mass today. I don’t know if they even still hold any here. There’s no reason to really. It looks like the church is still being maintained though. Yesterday E—, M—, and I had a look at the graveyard next to it. It was immaculate. I think it might be the best maintained graveyard I’ve ever seen. The headstones shined. A few had fresh flowers. Mostly it looked glossy, on the verge of slick and tacky, but that’s how folks here honor their dead. Very goys, as my mother would say. It’s a small graveyard. I wonder what’s going to happen to it when the town goes. For now it’s clearly in good hands. For now the dead are damn well off in this town.

Taped to the church door is a small notice. No services, except for special occasions, such as weddings and funerals. Dates will be posted on the door. There’s an old notice for a funeral listing which requiem will be sung. Below it is another. I’m in luck. Apparently today is special. It’s the Scheldewijding. Doel sits on the river Scheldt. Wijding means consecration. This I have to attend. 2:00. I’ll be back at 2:00. It’s not even noon so that gives me plenty of time to wander around the flea market and, well I don’t know what the and is yet.

I’m still looking for breakfast. Today is turning into one of those days I hate being a vegetarian. There are a few food stalls interspersed at what I fear are regular intervals. They all sell meat. Bratwurst mostly. Some fish too. I’m on the road out of town. The stalls keep going all the way out to the junction. That’s where folks are parking their cars. A cart selling cheese and bacon sandwiches gets my hopes up. I ask. But the bacon’s already mixed in so I head back into town. The Muziekdoos’ red carpet is still out. One of the vendors parked their van on it. I guess they thought this place was empty just like all the others. I don’t hear any music coming from inside, but it’s still early. The big graffiti raven is mostly hidden, but folks should still be able to find it.

I end up walking all the way back to the water. A churro cart! Churros are part of the landscape back in California. Here they’re out of place. I get some because I’m hungry and nostalgic and don’t care that they’re way too sweet and will leave me still hungry. Instead of handing me one long churro, the lady in the cart hands me a puntzak — a paper cone, like what they sell Belgian fries in. I love syncretic food.

Luckily the festival’s tea and coffee stand is up and running by now so I can wash away all that sugar. “Are you a writer? I saw you writing yesterday, what were you writing?” I shake my head. We keep talking anyway. His name is S—. He got in late last night. He’s the first person here who’s struck up a conversation with me. He doesn’t know anyone either, except for the lady he drove down with and they’d only met the day before or something like that. He’d been living on an island up in the north of Holland, but recently moved to Amsterdam. He sounds excited about Amsterdam. “So many people doing cool stuff.” Everyone in Amsterdam is always complaining about how dead it is. How it used to be way better back in the day, back in the 80s. How they’ve heard that Berlin, or maybe Barcelona is where it’s at these days. But then someone who’s been to Barcelona recently inevitably chimes in “No, Barcelona is dead now too.” I’m never really sure what metric people are using, but I gather from S— that compared to small tourist trap islands Amsterdam may as well be Mecca.

Then it’s my turn. He asks after my sweatshirt, the hemp one with patches. “You must be an activist or something.” Isn’t everyone here? — at the festival I mean. I thought I fit in with my sweatshirt. I knew I didn’t exactly fit in. I don’t live the lifestyle. I’m not a creative-type. Academia always lives on the margins. It takes me a moment to think of activism as something that I do that somehow distinguishes me. I tell him about nukes back in the States, and some other stuff. We do the expat thing and compare Britain and the U.S. while listening to a pick-up music session on stage. S— plays the guitar too. He’s written a few songs. He’s also crazy. The cool kind of crazy. The kind of crazy you meet at festivals like this where you can’t exactly tell the relation between their stories and reality and you get lost in the tangents and repetitions but the energy and excitement keeps the conversation going anyway.

We head over to his car to pick up his guitar. He wants to play me a song. He’s also really into Guy Clark and makes structures and sculptures out of willow. He shows me pictures of some of them on his phone. I think he’s forgotten about that song he was going to play me. But then we head out again. He got really excited when I told him I play ukulele. He just bought a cheap uke. He plans on busking with the uke and some “daft” songs he’s put together. We’re looking for a quiet place for he song. The village isn’t empty anymore. Turn out for the flea market is high. This is probably much busier than the village was normally. But the abandoned houses are still abandoned. We end up what used to be a nice little back-terrace. It’s good. His song is good. I didn’t expect that from a crazy Brit with crooked teeth and daft ditties and a penchant for country music. But that’s part of the magic of this place. The folks at this festival are really out to create something, and they bring it.n

His song is about how we’re all fucked up. Humanity is fucked up. Humans are fucking up everything.

A-fucking-men.

And we smile and emerge from what used to be someone’s home back into the throng of tourists pursuing the flea market, occasionally admiring the graffiti, and lamenting the passing of Doel. This place is like instant archeology; you can see the layers of sediment left by successive waves of use, and disuse, and reuse all piled up on top of each other. I point it out to S— and he chuckles and says, “yeah, you’re right.”

You may want to continue to part four (as soon as I write it).

You may want to start with part one.

At the corner of Engelsesteenweg and Hooghuisstraat there’s a sign, a poster really. A great big ad poster in one of those JCDecaux display cases. I really didn’t expect to see JCDecaux “street furniture” out here in Doel. I can just imagine some dude from the city driving in to put it up. It’s really out of place in this out of place village. It’s not falling apart. It looks almost shiny and new. The poster, the ad really, shows a picturesque rendition of a village square with a fountain and a bench. The text urges residents, on behalf of the city government, to keep Doel clean. I guess they forgot to take it down. I have to admit, it’s the cleanest thing I’ve seen all day.

Obiter Dictum: I would have put a picture of the poster here but E— went off to Berlin before sending it to me. All the other photographs in this post were unabashedly stolen from the internet.

On the building next to it there’s a sign “this building protected by police supervision”. I guess it was the school. Or maybe is. It looks well maintained, like a regular school. Next to it there’s a sort of garden park. The gate’s closed but not locked so we check it out. For the first time I feel like we’re trespassing. The lawn’s been mowed, maybe not as regularly, but it stands out around here. We don’t pick any of the blackberries and politely close the gate behind us.

Back on the street we hear music. An accordion and a guitar wailing drunk and folksy. Pirates. Half a block further, on the opposite side of the street, there’s a house with a giant raven painted on its side. Down the side runs a makeshift red-carpet flanked by tea lights. Pirate soirée. When you’re out and about and hear some music accidentally spilling from a window you might slow down, even linger, but you walk past. We walked past. Habitus. But our heads turned to keep listening. The pain in our necks snapped us out of it and reminded us we were in Doel. “Welcome to the Music-box” on a big red piece of cardboard. We sort of went in to get a drink but it’s not exactly a bar. There’s some beer in tubs of ice and a box for donations. Fliers advertising old shows cover the walls. I’m surprised by how far back they go. We just popped in for the festival, but there are folks out here making the best of the place. It’s half open mike, half friends just fooling around. A man waltzes by and starts dancing with M— as the woman with the accordion shouts out chords to the three guitar players and sings. I sing along when I know the words. It’s mostly Americana. The lady on the accordion switches to guitar — she’s quite good — and the proprietor of the establishment, a Belgian lady decked out in a cowboy hat and leather boots, takes a break from strumming to rustle up a few chairs for us and admonish the fellow by the window for using her sacred sage holder as an ashtray.

The music is good, but we want to press on. We want to press on, but it’s raining. Pouring. Wet wet wet. So we stay, hoping the rain will let up, hoping we can see some more of Doel, hoping we can enjoy the festival, and especially hoping that camping won’t be too miserable. Every few minutes E— gets up and checks to see if it’s stopped; even though we can see the rain perfectly well through the window, and hear it leaking in some distant part of the house. We’re losing faith. The rainclouds hanging over the festival put everything in jeopardy. A new band trudges in, tracking mud. We make a break for it. It’s still raining, but less. We complain, mostly in jest, it’s really not that bad. E— even stops to take another picture. “I’d like to explore this area too,” she says, “when it’s dry, of course.” If.

Not much is happening at the festival space. Everyone is waiting to see what the rain will do. We end up back at the tea and coffee stand. Tea — 50¢. Coffee — 1€, add a euro and you’ll get a splash of whiskey. Luckily M— has some change. I only have large bills and E— brought nothing. We chit and we chat and we huddle under the parasol till the rainclouds take a break. I go to the bathroom. Yes, I go to the bathroom, or ‘toilet’ as E— insists on calling it, but I’m still American so I still call it the bathroom, even though this really is just a toilet. Three pieces of pink plywood — with a bathroom mirror on the outside —, a corrugated plastic roof, and a yellow sheet with a big “W.C” painted on it surrounding a regular toilet bowl, like in your house, hooked up directly to the sewer system underneath through a manhole. I’m not sure if they did it to be awesome, or to be practical.

This picture is from Sunday, not Saturday. You’ll understand why that matters later.

Because of the rain a bunch of us end up sitting underneath the orange tarp on what was the main stage. They have another tarp set up next to it. The speakers and electronics have been moved to the back of a van. A tall skinny Dutchman with cropped hair and a short ponytail is reciting poetry, slam style. It’s damn good. Political. At times too preachy, but that’s part of the style I guess. The language and rhymes are tight and clever. Too bad E— doesn’t speak dutch. It’s still raining and water keeps collecting in the sags of the tarp. Luckily our friend G—, who’s joined us, is tall and can push it over with his umbrella from time to time. The conversation is pretty silly. It’s hard to tell with G— when he’s being serious and when he’s just putting you on. “But as a society you need something like a police force to maintain order”. I think he’s serious. I think he hasn’t even thought about it that much. These aren’t anarchists. They don’t want to fight the state. All they want is a bit of space to themselves, away from the mundane pressures Calvinist Holland exerts on its bourgeois youth. Politics is secondary to “radical (artsy) culture” and the privilege of autonomy. I don’t bother responding. None of us care about politics right now; we’re all just wondering when dinner’s going to be ready and whether the rain will stop. The poetry is good, but we want music and dancing, and all we’re getting is hungry and irritable.

The rain is slowing to drizzle when they announce dinner. The soup is too spicy but we don’t care. By the time the rest of dinner is ready the rain has stopped. Everyone’s slowly waking up as they realize the rain has stopped and this thing is really going to happen. While we eat a few folks roll out two large ramshackle tin drums, scavenge firewood from the derelict buildings, and start campfires. Dusk is coming. Energy is returning. Anticipation is building. I have another cup of coffee. E— has a beer. M— sips her tea. I didn’t even notice it get dark.

E— and I take a walk. We walk along the dike, away from the windmill this time. It’s quiet. The lights on the huge harbor cranes look sort of like stars. At the edge of the village some cows sit in a pasture. A goat brays at me, so I bray back. Then Johnny Cash walks the line. Right on the water there’s a club house for the local yacht club. It’s full. We’re not sure how all these regular Belgians even get to this surreal house of mirth. As we pass the music switches over to the Beatles. We look back across the village and can faintly hear the sounds of the festival. When we get to an official looking fence we turn around and head back. Heyyy Jude follows us for a bit and then fades away.

The campfires are going strong now. We migrate towards them, not because we’re cold but because, actually I don’t know why. I look up and see the moon, and then another, and then another, and then realize they’re hazard lights on the electric power line running high above us. Next to us a man and a lady decked out in an amazing tree nymph costume are setting up some microphones and a metal table. Without warning they begin. The man scratches and rubs a long metal pipe on the table unleashing ghostly metallic screeches and cries. Without warning they stop. “That was just a sound test” says the lady. Everyone is gathered around. I love the smell of campfires. They begin again. She sings; the mix of operatic wails and melodic shrieking is too intense for some and they move back or to the sides. I stay by the fire, fascinated by the physicality of the music.

When E— gets back there will be a picture of me with the lights in the background.

When they finish everything scatters. One band is going to play inside, there’s a movie somewhere else, something else is going to happen in a third place, and I quickly lose track of what’s going on. There’s a bit of a lull while things get set up and I end up sitting outside sketching and writing while E— and M— go for a walk, socialize, and see what’s what. Bit by bit it all gets started and a party atmosphere sets in — with crazy good music and people willing to take a risk — that doesn’t let go till early next morning. I actually duck out early. I’m tired and crowds, even small friendly ones, are not my thing. Plus, I hardly know anyone. Everyone knows everyone. Earlier one of the poets joked that there aren’t any Belgians here. They’re all from Holland, either from ADM or Schijnhelilig. I overheard someone call it a festival of friends. It’s more of a temporarily transplanted community than something indigenous and organic, but it is a real community.

Back at the tent I get ready for bed. The quiet of the city often drives me mad with its emptiness and imperceptible electronic hums. The quiet of the still country night, however, is peaceful with its faint rustles and cows settling down to sleep. Never mind that this isn’t actually the county but an industrial zone replete with flashing warning lights on cranes and transmission towers. I wonder if Doel was this quiet when it was inhabited. The church tower still chimes the time, even at two am.

I wish I could close with a picture of the singer in the tree  nymph costume.

You may want to continue to part three.

It’s only about a two hour drive, like from St. Barbie to L.A. Not much traffic. Not much of a road trip. A big commute, a carpool really. The others hardly bothered introducing themselves, and seem to take little notice of my presence. E— arranged everything and knows all of them. Without fanfare we exit the freeway and turn toward the port. In the front seat J— remarks that all these harbor areas looked pretty much the same. “We may as well be back in Amsterdam”. A—, who is driving, replies that he likes the atmosphere of these industrial terrains. We pass a lot filled with stacked shipping containers, mostly labeled hanjin, others simply say china. “At the roundabout, take the second exit” says the GPS. “Doel” says the sign. Behind it we catch our first glimpse of the the twin cooling towers. We’re in the right place, though the lawn strip – – – fence – – – industry that stretches out next to us as we drive — punctuated only by a satellite parking lot — gave away nothing of what was to come. One last turn to the right and we enter the village.

E— remarks that without a car it would have been exceedingly impractical to get here at all. It’s a middle of nowhere only a few miles from Antwerp. We pass a few boarded up buildings and then turn right at the large hand painted sign shaped like an arrow. “Fiasco Fest!” Our minds accepted the transition from aimless, numbered, industrial byways to the orderly street plan of a small Belgian village without question. You notice the graffiti first. It’s not the hurried tags of street gangs, but the elaborate murals of artists who took time and pride in their work. Then you notice it’s all falling apart. It’s impossible to realize how much effort it takes to maintain the facade of daily life until you have seen the pervasive decay of abandoned buildings.

Nearly no one lives in Doel anymore. A planned harbor expansion put the whole town on the demolition block and led to mass evictions. A few artists, hippies, and other freaks moved in to fill the void. We had come to see what was left and celebrate the attempt at a cultural oasis. The weather had been toying with us all day, but as we pull up to the festival site it looks like the rain will hold off, at least for the time being. We get out, stretch our legs, and have some tea from a make shift stand — really just a card table and a parasol with a small gas stove behind it. We chat for a bit; E— and the others know a few of the Amsterdam folks who are already here. E— keeps saying she wants to stroll around the place — we all do, it is begging to be explored — but we decide to set up our tents first, while there’s still daylight and we’re still fresh. Past the church, off at the edge of the village, a small field has been designated the camp ground. It’s a short walk. The streets are empty. We notice a few “normal” people and wonder what they’re doing here. One or two of the houses have “still occupied” signs. The rest just have “keep out — enter at your own risk” plastered on tightly shut windows and doors. There’s even a shop, though the only sign of life are three cats sleeping in the window and a telephone number to call if you need anything.

We swing past the festival again before heading out to explore. On the small stage, under an orange tarp propped up with string, poles, and spit, a band is playing a dystopian lament of dying technology. We climb the dike and find ourselves momentarily disoriented. The small harbor looks normal, bright even, or at least untouched by the localized apocalypse. Holding that image tightly in your mind it’s possible to imagine Doel actually having an existence as a village, despite the bizarre desolation behind us. There are even tourists! Presumably they’ve just arrived on the now idling ferry. They seem to be headed towards the windmill cum café down a ways to our left on the dike. “Iconic picture” E— says as she snaps a photograph. She’s right. Picturesque windmill – – – giant nuclear power plant. An Eisenstein montage couldn’t have done a better job. And the tourists march right through it.

I’ve seen empty houses before. My parents keep trying to buy a house even though they can’t quite afford one. Sometimes on the weekend we’d go to those open houses, where the realtor stands smiling at the door trying to guess if you’re a serious prospect, and you wander around trying to imagine what it would be like to live there, which was especially difficult when the previous owners had already moved out and the house was empty except for perfectly vacuumed beige-brown wall-to-wall carpeting. These houses are nothing like that. M— stays outside but E— is not to be deterred, and I follow. I’m immediately reminded of abandoned houses I’d seen in the States that had foreclosed after the mortgage crisis. It had been a nice house once. Now it smells of cat piss. The floor is littered with broken glass and household items that weren’t worth taking. Old VHS cassettes. A broken chair. Some toys and books. That sort of thing. An old hard-drive props open an upstairs window that used to look out over the terraced back garden, but now just sees overgrown weeds. E— takes another “iconic picture”. I imagine this is what a house gutted by fire must look like.

E— keeps taking pictures, like one of the goddamn tourist, of all the gorgeous graffiti. I can’t help but think of how they were painted with the knowledge that they would soon be demolished. Photographing them seems both vital, and sacrosanct. This place probably wasn’t nearly as beautiful before. It probably wasn’t as usable before. It definitely wasn’t the kind of town I would chose to live in before. “This is perfect,” E— says as we enter the next house through the garage — the kind of garage you bring your car to to get fixed. It’s a big empty space with a metal loft in the corner. “I would love to have a place like this.” I would too. Vines are growing in through the roof; it’s the kind of effect you might work hard to create, here it’s a natural accident of decay. On the ground is a box made up to look like a radio with glitter for speakers. “Rock Your Radio” it tells us. A cargo-cult artifact calling forth a more lively age? The attached house is huge, and probably old too. There’s a fireplace in nearly every room. It’s a little bit cleaner than the last one, but only a little bit. The wallpaper is peeling, revealing a history of bad taste. Drug-reference-laden graffiti attests to the latest inhabitants. One window still has its lace curtains, untouched. We talk about how awesome it would be to fill this place with awesome people doing awesome things. It’s that kind of house, especially now that it’s been abandoned, now that there’s room. Of course, even if we could move in it would just be demolished a little bit later. The stairs, instead of leading to a third floor, mysteriously run up into the ceiling. From the outside we can see that the top story off the building was swept off, whether intentionally or from the elements we can’t tell. Things just fall apart around here, I guess.

You may want to continue to part two.