Lush: Patron Muse of Lost Revelries
Like her namesake, Lush shamelessly indulged hedonistic appetites within Bohemian Paris of the early 1900s. Though born to an aristocratic family, she found more magic meandering the seedy streets and smoky cellar taverns than attending extravagant balls.
Lush exulted nightly absorbing the city’s chaotic tapestry of wandering poets, vagabond painters, and everyday eccentrics as an equal - not an elitist patron.
By 1912 Lush transformed her sizeable inheritance into an absinthe-soaked Gothic cave of wonders - La Rêverie Rêveur (“The Dreamer’s Reverie”). Her unmarked underground lounge welcomed creative luminaries and everyday dreamers alike to mingle uninhibited under candlelit vaults arched with lustrous copper pipes.
There the famed and infamous immersed nightly in impromptu jazz, heady debate, and vision-sparking libations. Patrons described entering sober only to reemerge at dawn fully transformed by the mystical currents electrifying the smoky air. Some swore shapes emerged in plumes of tobacco witnessing lost souls and future epiphanies beckoning in tandem. Had Picasso met his legendary muse within Rêverie’s embracing shadows, still charming Lush beside the ornate bar each long-lost Paris eve?
But 1923 brought sobering times encroaching. Whispers of coming war drew Americans living la vie de Montparnasse back home, closing creative circles. Mounting politician pressure against “degenerate art” doomed the City of Light’s anything-goes era. Reluctant to abandon her beloved patrons during conflict, Lush remained long after nervous proprietors shuttered similar venues. She vowed providing a welcoming oasis amidst the encroaching scorched earth for struggling luminaires.
So when officers finally came demanding Rêverie’s indefinite closure, opium-thin Lush refused surrendering her rusted key into the night quietly. As authorities prepared necessary force against further resistance, the battered wooden door creaked open...revealing only swirling dust inside. No furnishings nor free spirit could be retrieved from the abandoned interior tunnels as if scarcely inhabited at all. The defiant woman had vanished as suddenly as her legendary lounge originally materialized it seemed. No past affiliates came forth with explanations in troubled times ahead.
In recent years, curious travelers retracing pre-war Paris’ artistic echoes report eerie phenomena around Rêverie Rêveur's boarded up remains near Place Pigalle. Phantom big band music and exuberant laughter permeate the basement chambers still redolent of tobacco, absinthe’s anise, and creative fervor since extinguished by wars, oppression, reason. Could Lush yet linger ensuring her haven still shelters struggling talents between worlds? All who witness the ghostlight within swear an angel bids them enter before fading into afterlife myth and memory.
