Pretty Lights: Inside Club Land

Nathan Kirk is a fish out of water drowning in the dark. A memoir of nightclub life under a glittering mirror ball sky, with every cliché dialled up to eleven. Nathan is a voyeur to the sex, drugs and violence. It’s hedonism chaperoned by danger, in an absurdist play where nothing good happens after midnight.

It’s gallows humour with a great soundtrack; Caramello Koalas, Cobain and Camus, pet sharks, abortions and baseball bats. Press play for soccer hooligans and gangsters queuing up to take a swing; drop the needle on pierced genitals, guns and doof doof till dawn. His partners are a comedy cavalcade; the vaudeville of the Mastermind, the slick moves of the Player, the vile misogyny of the Lizard and the brutal proclivities of the Hustler. Nathan’s mental demons play a starring role in this cabaret, anxiety his toxic companion, hissing insults in his ear. But Nathan sails on, a ship in the night, with an undertaker’s smile and a devil may care quip.

Beyond the booze and blow it’s a journey from wide-eyed ambition to world weary cynicism. Self-loathing his reward. A tale of compromise, lost innocence, and principles sold for fool’s gold. The lonely love the pretty lights so no-one wants the night to end. Nathan must maintain the illusion of glamour to keep the money tumbling in. There’s little redemption, just the getting of wisdom, getting hit and sometimes getting laid.

‘Pretty Lights’ turns the spotlight on a shadowy world that is shrouded in mystique and exposes the grime behind the glitz. It ain’t pretty.