The Allure of Decadence

Melancholia and Isherwood Musings

New Years Eve Party I, Francis Chapin, American, 1899-1965, via Art Institute of Chicago Website

I first read Goodbye to Berlin last summer, months after my infatuation with the Kander and Ebb musical adaptation Cabaret began. I read the book during the summer where it rained nearly constantly, following the heatwave the year prior where London was so scorching the city almost seemed to be burning for its sins. That summer I’d take long walks to local parks. I’d frequent Golders Hill park then make my way to parts of Hampstead Heath. I had to walk far for a nice park during summer - my local one didn’t match the ambience I craved. It was oddly shaped and had an unwelcoming feel, like a club bouncer ushering you down a basement to the humid, dimly lit unknown. I’d set up camp after arduous journeys walking adjacent highways in North London, armed with my ipad and notebooks, lime infused apples and my water bottle. I’d listen to music and make video diaries. Read, write and smoke while pondering my life. I had so much time but no money. I was an unemployed graduate who harboured unbridled anger, feeling choked by the expansiveness of a city that had placed limitations on me. All my money would go to theatre tickets to give myself something to anticipate. If it wasn’t someone's house or walks to the park, I wasn’t doing much that summer. Yet Isherwood's story inspired me. Dave’s music invigorated me and encouraged me to pick up my pen. That summer rejuvenated me because I was so idle I had no choice but to lean into the time and interrogate what I truly desired for my life.

Cabaret is a musical derived from Isherwood's 1939 novel ‘Goodbye to Berlin’, a collection of interconnected short stories that recall years of his youth spent in Berlin chasing the thrills of a quasi liberated city. Through his vignette, diary esque entries - he details a volatile, transitionary period between 1929 to 1932 where Hitler consolidated power and the Weimar republic crumbled. Weimar in the 20s was the land of the free. It was thrillingly hedonistic and Isherwood had arrived at its denouement. Isherwood presents an eerie narrative of a society unaware of history lurking, yet again in its wings. He recounts the vibrant nightlife and liberal social scene unique to the adolescent Weimar. Our narrator takes a room in Fraulein Schneider's house, a German lady who rents rooms to a host of guests. Through details of his interactions with this ensemble of characters, we see how each individual interacts with the co-optation of every facet of society by the Nazi’s. He encounters aspiring actress Sally Bowles; a 19 year old, slightly jaded Cabaret singer, the Landauers; a wealthy Jewish family, Frauelein Kost; a German woman with questionable morals who resides in Scheider's flat, the Nowak family; who he lives with for a while during his penultimate days in Germany. Through their lens, we see how open condemnation turns to resigned complacency. How the personal transfused with the political, or a lack thereof. Isherwood moved to Berlin to write, and like most artists moved for inspiration, life experiences, romantic rendezvous, perspective. In the musical adaptation, the story is narrated by the EmCee - the master of ceremonies in the Kit Kat club (the cabaret Sally Bowles performs at and where she first meets Isherwood) At first, it seems like the pinnacle of Weimar indulgence, liberation and freedom. It later adapts an eerie form the further into the musical we go. In the Kit Kat club, the EmCee, along with his cabaret girls, constantly breaks the fourth wall with the audience. As the complicity of the ensemble in the production intensifies, the art communicates and we interrogate our own complicity. By its conclusion - our narrator is ready to return to England and the Kit Kat club has been inhabited by Nazi’s. Those who thought they were safe from the persecution occurring outside the club finally realise there’s nowhere else to hide, there’s no middle ground in the face of Fascism. Isherwood doesn’t have to go any further, in fact he doesn’t - returning just before Hitler’s power peaked and everything was consumed. We, the reader, can fill in the gaps.

I was instantly enamoured by Isherwood’s portrayal of a vibrantly melancholic Berlin. He perfectly encapsulated the melancholia that skimmed the surface of Weimar society. A society still recovering from the aftermath of WWI. Heavy reparation clauses, war guilt terms, the hyperinflation of 1923. In the early pages Isherwood asserts one of the most famous lines in the book, ‘I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking” (7) Immediately Isherwood claims objectivity, placing himself as a willful observer of the times rather than an active participant. This detached writing style was common amongst contemporaries of the interwar period. A sobered generation who believed the atrocities of WWI would not be repeated. Unlike those who had fought in the war in their youth - Isherwood’s cohort could be melancholic, they could afford passivity. Almost like we do now…. They could afford to lament and ponder, write, observe and travel, because the great war was over and the party roared on everywhere. It wasn’t until the outbreak of WWII they unwillingly had to engage with an unexpected contemporary reality.

I reflect on the last two decades. The time I’ve spent on this earth. All my life, I’ve known of atrocities, televised for all the world to see and consume. As a child, my eye gates have been privy to all the wars being fought, both in the West and on my doorstep in Nigeria. Once I began studying Politics A levels, I learnt about the US and UK sending troops to Iraq in detail. I learnt about New Labour and a UK enamoured by Tony Blair. I learnt about a UK that despised Tony Blair and heralded the end of New Labour. An end that cemented the decade plus Tory rule. I became cognisant of the sickening pattern Britain had to follow the US down morally dubious paths. Dare I say since the End of Empire, since the end of the UK’s global relevance as a superpower. They follow puppeteers of democracy to ignore genocide. I learnt about the League of Nations then the United Nations. I learnt about ‘checks and balances’, a multipolar world and globalisation. I got older and lost faith in the United Nations. I learnt about climate change and the consequences of climate change. Came to terms with ersatz democracy and unipolarity. I’m witnessing Donald Trump's second presidency and the rise of Fascism in North America whilst observing the worrying stronghold the Reform party has garnered in the UK. I’m notified of far right marches right here in London. By the time I casted my first vote, the same summer I read Goodbye to Berlin, I was done. I was disillusioned not only from learning about the horrors and hypocrisies of this world, but from witnessing it. Throughout secondary school, reports of kidnappings were so regular all anyone did anymore was sigh and hiss. Murmur what a shame it was under their breaths. I believe Lagosians feel a subconscious immunisation when it comes to these threats, yet a visceral awareness of its possibility. A nation that likes to forget. Underplaying the legacies of the Biafran War. The way life went on as normal in Lagos when girls were being raped by enemy forces in the East, generations of Biafrans completely wiped out. Universities, histories and legacies burnt as Life continued as normal in Lagos. Even then, Lagos felt like a safe hub, and I think that's what frightens me the most. One day, I suspect things will come to a head. As seen by history, it always does. A conflict that almost tore the country apart, revealed the deep rot of tribalism in a society not set up for sustainable success. Weimar was once seen as the safest haven for the queer community, look how it ended.

Isherwood’s generation couldn't help but live in the moment, you couldn’t know what happened in London all the way from Berlin in a matter of minutes. We live in a reality where you can't help but think of death everyday. We live in a generation, like many a generation - where you can’t help but succumb to vices to cope. Similarly to Isherwood's character, even in the midst of the madness, there’s an allure of decadence. An allure to the rotten fruit with the spotless, scintillating skin. Surely we all have a poison ?

In Isherwood's novels, Berlin is represented as a sick town, haunted by images of persecution, neurosis, hysteria and hallucination that made fascism in itself possible. While these themes are apparent, Isherwood's concerns lie in the possibility to formulate a valid statement about a dying culture. There was no way he would have been able to capture the true essence of what Weimar was at its peak, all he knew was the dying culture. I myself am a camera, not silent but observing the decadence of a people, nation and culture. I find myself unsure of what statement I can formulate about the nation I reside in. A nation where fascists can march all the way down to the capital, yet senior citizens protesting against their taxes funding a genocidal state are arrested. A city that once used to be a land of freedom. As Dave laments in Survivors Guilt; the Windrush generation, Eastern Europeans all flocked to the UK to accept the fruits of the values they espoused, the reward they offered in exchange for help building up a war torn nation. Chasing better opportunities, they were met instead by an iron rod they couldn’t comprehend, I still can’t comprehend. London is a sick town, in the midst of a sick world. Unlike Berlin in the 30s, London is not an anomaly in the midst of states contradicting the very values they espouse. Unlike Cliff Bradshaw, (Isherwood in the musical) leaving London doesn’t feel like escaping to a better society. I’m not so sure Paris would be much different from London. Or Berlin from Paris. They may be better, they might be worse but the fear is poignant as ever. It might just be the writer's urge in me, but I find it imperative to document my life as it’s happening now. Keep a written transcript of my insights into the times. Because although we never know exactly what comes next, I could be detailing a society on the brink of collapse, I feel like I already am.

I don’t know when it happened, or why - but I’ve been melancholic for a long time. I've always thought about it with the passivity I think about anything really. Aren’t we all a little melancholic, depressed and anxious ? When I was 17, my friends and I would sneak a bottle of vodka to get drunk every Friday night. It was the year everyone turned 18, and we were socially deprived after years of lockdown. To this day I can’t drink Raspberry Vodka. I remember when I was given the rest of a bottle one of those nights and I decided to keep its content in a sports water bottle that stayed nestled above my bed. For a good week before it finished, I’d take a shot during the day just because I could. Before heading off for Badminton or at night while listening to Lil Peep and Pierce the Veil with the lights off, headphones on at the highest volume. That must have been a form of decadence. By my first year of uni I was done drinking, I couldn’t stand it. But can one ever stay viceless for long ? I'm not afraid to admit I’ve had moments of strong inclination to excess. Thank God for internal checks and balances. The link that binds all the primary characters together in Goodbye to Berlin, is that in some way, they’re conscious of the mental, economic and ideological bankruptcy of the world in which they reside. Isherwood recognised the end of liberal Berlin, yet, in his attempt to conserve it into a set of objectified fragments, couldn’t help but quicken its deterioration. I wonder if this is already so apparent, we don’t even notice. The vacuous need to capture everything, know everything. The trend cycles discarded at alarming rates. Our need to ponder everything, theorise everything, consume everything. We satirise reality by jokingly commenting constantly on the decadent descent o society. We wonder how we got here in the first place. We obsess over what it all means. Through the constant stripping of the idiosyncrasies of our nations, we ‘re surely hastening its descent.

Let me end on this note. History repeats itself, a lot. It’s why it’s such an important subject - there's nothing new under the sun. I learnt about Nazism and Weimar for most of my historical academic life. It baffles me how these are the very questions they made us debate. ‘Could the rise of Nazism be avoided ?’ “How did Hitler consolidate power ?’ A favourite - some variation of ‘Was the Weimar Republic destined to fail?’ I know it’s not that simple, the future will always stay unprecedented in some way. Yet we’re so rooted in Western knowledge of power that when they hypocriticise against their own world systems, we panic when we’re looking for answers in incomplete knowledge production. The Western canon certainly doesn’t have all the answers, and despite its value in modern political thought, no holistic world view is going to be limited to perspectives derived primarily from straight, white, wealthy men. For all their history, they can’t even answer half the questions they posit. There’s value to be found in African political thought. Look into African art to feel differently, think differently. Read South Asian stories and take yourself out of your POV for a second, you just might find the missing answers. Western knowledge production won’t save us. We’re not going to find comfort in parochial theories hypocriticised by Western leaders. You can see why Goodbye to Berlin will always be a timeless tale. No matter the subjectivity of our narrator's ‘camera like’ lens, the story he’s chronicling has happened before. We’ve seen an account of a generation so tired and fatigued by cataclysmic world events and impending unknowns. Isherwood's stories are filled with melancholia, yet they were all written before WWII started. There were more unprecedented things to come.

‘In here, life is beautiful’

I think about these words a lot. The words the Emcee utters near the denouement of the show, sweat dissecting the creases of his ghoulish makeup, an unnerving smile plastered on his face. One would think these words would immunise him from life outside the Kitkat club, as if the looming Nazi threat wouldn’t engulf every layer of society eventually, including all who found refuge and respite within its walls. As if ultimately, they wouldn’t all pay for their complicity. We all pay for our complicity in the end.

The allure of decadence will always be intriguing. It's the urge that makes me stare longingly at the dozen of Londoners smoking cigarettes daily, knowing fully well I’ll spend days after clearing phlegm from my throat. It's the urge that makes me want to gravitate towards a blunt rotation when I'm out, because I'm suddenly overcome by the urge to take things further, see how far I can go. I watched Cabaret on the West End a few weeks ago and I was speechless. It’s a loud piece of theatre that doesn’t say too much. I think about decadence a lot, when thinking about the upper echelons of society. It comes to mind when thinking about the sad, white girl protagonist that has flooded literary publishing spaces. Stories of girls in their 20s who chain smoke Marlboro lights, and think all women over the age of 40 can’t bear the fact that they’re ‘young and hot and pretty.’ Oh yeah and they’re having an affair with their boss. Stories of women able to wholly exist in underappreciated bubbles of privilege. It comes to mind when I think of all those that drink their sorrows away, or party till they physically can’t - just like they did in the Kit kat club. It comes to mind when I think of all those that dance through the world burning because they believe there’s nothing that can be done. It comes to mind when I think of all the self destructiveness in this world. It comes to mind when I think of myself. While there remain flickers of hope in the world (shout out New York), decadence will always be alluring in societies catapulting towards the unknown.

“There was a cabaret,

and there was a master of ceremonies,

and there was a city called Berlin,

In a country called Germany,

And it was the end of the world.

I was dancing with Sally Bowles,

and we were both fast asleep’

These are the words our narrator monologues in the final scene as he departs Berlin. We can indulge in life and find our own joy, but let’s also wake up. This is no time to be sleeping. Remember that this - for better or worse, is a tale as old as time.

With love,

Tiwa S

Tiwa is a London based writer/actor. She loves diverse literary novels and autofiction, writing and all things performing arts. She’s currently training as a dancer. Tiwa works in a publishing house and is working on her first novel.