We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Invitation to a murder

by Dean Kyte

/

about

In this brief poetic essay, Melbourne writer Dean Kyte explores film scholar Vivian Sobchack’s concept of ‘lounge time’, the chronotope of film noir, comparing the experience of the typical noir protagonist picking up the femme fatale in a cocktail lounge to his own experiences of playing ‘bar game’.

Watch the video on Vimeo:
vimeo.com/636918736

lyrics

Lounge time is a ‘liminal social space’, a limbo where the secular acquires, via the gloss of the sexual, a patina of the sacred. In the chapel of the cocktail lounge, with its soft lighting (softened further still by the fog of cigarette smoke and dulled edges of drink), the social rituals of pickup transform an ordinary bar into a site like Walker Percy’s ‘wonder’, a place the noir man and woman were not in before they met, nor any place they will be in après cette rencontre—c’est-à-dire, la scène du crime.

I’ve felt it myself more than once, this quality of lounge time, at bars and pubs when sex seems imminent (and immanent) enough to touch. It’s an eerie ambiance where the extension of space becomes consubstantial with the temporal dimension, and ordinary, slightly tawdry surroundings are transformed, made exotic by the rare encounter with the erotic. Ennui makes the noir man a ripe rube for this brief encounter with the exotic erotic, and the familiar tools at the ritual of chasing away ennui, the chalice of glass and the censer of cigarette, are eager assistants at the epiphany of transsubstantiation, casting an aureole of precoital mystery around the noir woman, who condescends, in her own ennui, to allow herself to be seduced.

Lounge time is such a ‘peak experience’ for the men of noir, the place they recur so often to in their flashbacks and confessions, because it was the one moment when it seemed as if their bad luck had broken and they had found in this place—le bar—which had delivered them no good luck before, the shining penny, the sure thing, in the prospect of this étrangère they had not yet slept with.

credits

released October 20, 2021
15F_Panska_Paril_Silvetr: “15FParilS - Fire » ambiece_cigarette_smoking.wav”
freesound.org/people/15F_Panska_Paril_Silvestr/sounds/460572/
(CC 0)

Dean Kyte: “Closing card case”

gaby7129: “Cigarette Cracklings Lighter smoke.wav”
freesound.org/people/gaby7129/sounds/218082/
(CC 0)

HabloFame: “Wind.wav”
freesound.org/people/HabloFame/sounds/207443/
(CC 0)

Inspector J: “Wind, Realistic, A.wav”
freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/405561/
(CC BY 3.0, changes made)

Kulanen: “Tic Tok wrist watch.wav”
freesound.org/people/Kulanen/sounds/331443/
(CC 0)

Sound Jay: “Crowd Talking 10”
www.soundjay.com/crowd-talking-1.html
(CC 0)

SpliceSound: “Female Wilds » Woman, female, inhale, exhale, sigh, breathing.wav”
freesound.org/people/SpliceSound/sounds/218311/
(CC 0)

thedogryan420: “Zippo Lighter”
freesound.org/people/thedogryan420/sounds/146064/
(CC 0)

yosarrian: “underwater”
freesound.org/people/yosarrian/sounds/179927/
(CC 0)

Yuval: “foley » fabric movement suit”
freesound.org/people/Yuval/sounds/188222/
(CC 0)

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Dean Kyte image

Dean Kyte Melbourne, Australia

Dean Kyte is a writer, filmmaker and flâneur.

His CD of prose poetry and literary crime fiction, “The Spleen of Melbourne”, is available on BC.

contact / help

Contact Dean Kyte

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Report this track or account

Dean Kyte recommends:

If you like Dean Kyte, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Saxophonist Isaiah Collier chats about his new LP and the influence of Pharoah Sanders.
listen now