It has been six months since the last time a crowd of feet stepped on that dance floor until the last beat of some avant-garde tune echoed in a long night turning into early morning. Six long, silent, voided months since the last sunrise has been seen from the balcony on the first floor, less yet from the rooftop couches overlooking the river with its cruise ships provoking mixed feelings to the observers about the vignette – between monstrous floating cities covering the beauty of the opposite riverbank and enchanting floating sources of a million lights illuminating love stories in the night, the dynamic equilibrium is changing at each sip of each emptied glass, one after the other.
It has been six months since the doors were closed for an undetermined period (that everyone strongly believed would be short) right after the last eccentric regular costumer wobbled his way out, striking a pose at each uncertain step they managed to give on the Portuguese pavement that covers those streets by the train station of Santa Apolónia. Six months since the last updates on Instagram of drunken girls whose eyes purposefully avoided the camera in a studied and rehearsed laidback attitude. Eyes being betrayed by smiles, dressed in matte red lipstick, that eagerly faced the center of the lens. All this over a black and white background, sitting on red metal chairs displayed as if those same drunken girls had moved them during their night of heavy drinking. Except that, just like the overall pose, this apparent chair movement is an illusion, as in reality they are fused with the floor.
It has been six months since the disco ball spread its glow over the heads of deep thinkers, lost souls, futile trend-setters, hipster individuals, broken-hearts and believers, all immersed in a single, very particular, and totally irreplaceable atmosphere.
After six months, that magical place, in a tenacious attempt of reinventing itself in times of pandemic, reopened its doors for some chill out music events on the rooftop in the afternoons, and I simply could not not-be there. Although I was excited, I was definitely not ready to face the current reality. An empty dance floor. The disco ball never stopped spinning, but its glow doesn’t find any souls on its way to the floor and walls of a room that once felt so full of life and is now empty.
An empty dance floor. At Lux Frágil.
Cae
The world through myopic eyes 