Improvisation
Improvisation
I dropped the cards. Someone from stage left, the young man I spoke with about that Tom Wolfe novel earlier I think, made a motion to rush toward me but he was jerked back by a long arm grabbing his jacket from behind the curtain. There are no recovered fumbles here; he must have forgotten that for a second.
The cards don't matter. They are props, a necessary but pointless accessory.
Sometime I should confess to my penchant for improvisation. But not now. I am in no mood to sit in the little box with a voyeur stranger [holy or not] holding up his neutrality with a forefinger alongside his cheek while I admit to my fetish for the immediate, the unplanned, the delicious spontaneity of the moment. What would he care? He who listens day after day without a hint of a smirk to the bawlings of repentant sinners hoping for redemption. To how many times you lied to your mother or to the reasons why you stole your neighbour's Iron Butterfly collection? He is but the vessel, existing to deal out the dollop of penance to match your dirty deed and thereafter to absolve you of the burden of it.
No, I will not confess today. Not until I can accept the consequences of my forthrightness. The echoes of voices past bellow to me in self_righteous indignation at even the whispered hint of the bohemian live for today! For now, it's best if I hold my dirty little secret.
Most times I stand before the podium, a neat stack of three by five cards clutched in my hand. The cards are green, yellow, orange, and blue. A few are white with the top right hand corner nipped off for effect. I order and re_order the cards while I stand there in silence. Shuffle shuffle shuffle. Now and then I linger on one, to the onlooker appearing to study its content in preparation for my performance. I pluck a few out, place them on top, then tap the stack lightly against the edge of the podium, signalling my readiness and on cue the single hazy blue spotlight illuminates. I inhale slowly, deliberately prolonging the moment. Then, looking out at the occupied blackness, part my lips to begin.
I speak slowly, searching for the rhythm in the words. I glance down at the cards from time to time as though to find my place of reference, my roadmap. I draw on the breath and other emissions of those who listen intently with interest or with the sweaty anticipation of bearing witness to a pitiful flop.
The words and images spill from me in fragments of rhyme and in lengthy, complicated passages that wind down endless country lanes awash with succulent sunlight or soar out past Jupiter to high five Orion then sweep down a river's whitewater current to limp like an airless tire through an unswept alleyway finally to land at the shadowy entrance of a roadhouse joint where loose_hipped jangoes shake the night away in distracted bliss.
When it's over, I look out, imagining the collective gaze of those who came. I nod my thanks and close my eyes as the spotlight gradually extinguishes.
I bend to quickly collect the fallen cards, blank except for the remnant of my practising to write backwards with my left hand. It is a skill I want to acquire.
I back away and slip behind the curtain, engulfed by the acrid smell of it.
I don't need the cards. I always have something to say when it's time.
This is my gift.
I dropped the cards. Someone from stage left, the young man I spoke with about that Tom Wolfe novel earlier I think, made a motion to rush toward me but he was jerked back by a long arm grabbing his jacket from behind the curtain. There are no recovered fumbles here; he must have forgotten that for a second.
The cards don't matter. They are props, a necessary but pointless accessory.
Sometime I should confess to my penchant for improvisation. But not now. I am in no mood to sit in the little box with a voyeur stranger [holy or not] holding up his neutrality with a forefinger alongside his cheek while I admit to my fetish for the immediate, the unplanned, the delicious spontaneity of the moment. What would he care? He who listens day after day without a hint of a smirk to the bawlings of repentant sinners hoping for redemption. To how many times you lied to your mother or to the reasons why you stole your neighbour's Iron Butterfly collection? He is but the vessel, existing to deal out the dollop of penance to match your dirty deed and thereafter to absolve you of the burden of it.
No, I will not confess today. Not until I can accept the consequences of my forthrightness. The echoes of voices past bellow to me in self_righteous indignation at even the whispered hint of the bohemian live for today! For now, it's best if I hold my dirty little secret.
Most times I stand before the podium, a neat stack of three by five cards clutched in my hand. The cards are green, yellow, orange, and blue. A few are white with the top right hand corner nipped off for effect. I order and re_order the cards while I stand there in silence. Shuffle shuffle shuffle. Now and then I linger on one, to the onlooker appearing to study its content in preparation for my performance. I pluck a few out, place them on top, then tap the stack lightly against the edge of the podium, signalling my readiness and on cue the single hazy blue spotlight illuminates. I inhale slowly, deliberately prolonging the moment. Then, looking out at the occupied blackness, part my lips to begin.
I speak slowly, searching for the rhythm in the words. I glance down at the cards from time to time as though to find my place of reference, my roadmap. I draw on the breath and other emissions of those who listen intently with interest or with the sweaty anticipation of bearing witness to a pitiful flop.
The words and images spill from me in fragments of rhyme and in lengthy, complicated passages that wind down endless country lanes awash with succulent sunlight or soar out past Jupiter to high five Orion then sweep down a river's whitewater current to limp like an airless tire through an unswept alleyway finally to land at the shadowy entrance of a roadhouse joint where loose_hipped jangoes shake the night away in distracted bliss.
When it's over, I look out, imagining the collective gaze of those who came. I nod my thanks and close my eyes as the spotlight gradually extinguishes.
I bend to quickly collect the fallen cards, blank except for the remnant of my practising to write backwards with my left hand. It is a skill I want to acquire.
I back away and slip behind the curtain, engulfed by the acrid smell of it.
I don't need the cards. I always have something to say when it's time.
This is my gift.
posted by ella funt at
8:46 pm
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