Sunday, April 10, 2005

Death of a Dancer

Death of a Dancer

carla.ornelas@gmail.com

I recall the nights on which the music dictated the movement of my body. On these specific nights, it felt as if I’d lost control of my body which in turn had been taken over by rhythm. Never taking dance lessons in my life, my every move has come from a place that only rhythm has access to… a secret place in my soul that only music has the key to. To dance is to lose control, to let loose and let every desire manifest with the beat.

Dancing: The vertical expression of a horizontal desire.
Let go…
Lose all constraint and move with the free rhythm your body was born with.
I don’t know how to dance, I simply move with the music.

My father yelled at me many times when I was younger to turn down the music, he warned me that one day I’d become deaf… I never thought that would be true.
The last time I heard the music, truly heard its sound was at an Indian music where Stevie Wonder declared that he’d just called to tell her that he loves her.
Stevie Wonder is blind man – it never occurred to me so much as it did tonight.
I sang the words that I knew so well from my childhood and smiled as I heard the crashing sound of my heart breaking. Did you know that your whole body feels the moment when your soul breaks?
It doesn’t take a big reason or a lot of pain to break down someone’s soul… all it takes is an accumulation of various disappointments that build up over weeks, months, even years… once they’ve gained weight, they become devastatingly heavy on a soul… until one day something triggers it to crashing effect. You let you soul give into the weight, burying it somewhere deep and unreachable.
Wide awake and with a smile on your face, you feel your soul cave in… the beat stops, the rhythm dies and along with it… the music.

When the soul dies so does the rhythm and no matter how hard you try to coordinate your body to the moves and steps of the sound… your movement becomes nothing more than effort.
I listened hard for the music, I tried closing my eyes and making contact with my soul. If only I heard that beat… that sound… my body would respond.
Nothing…
I could hear nothing but the deafening sound of disappointment. Surrounded by people in a great atmosphere where they played my favourite songs… I heard and felt nothing.
Desperate for sensation… feeling… anything, I turned to the potency of alcohol… when all else fails: go for the nearest glass of wine…
As I felt its poison run in my veins, I closed my eyes and listened… soon I’d hear the music, feel the beat and once again let go…
But nothing…
Maybe I hadn’t drunk enough… so I had another, and another… and nothing… The beat was gone, the rhythm was dead and along with it so was my soul.
I sang with the music, hoping my heart would recognise its melody but it couldn’t hear it.
I moved the way I’m supposed to move when I’m having fun, but I couldn’t feel it.
Facing the sad reality that my soul had deserted me, in the middle of the dance floor tears threatened to fall. I listened; I strained so hard to hear it… nothing.
I saw the people, the faces of the people I care about… and nothing, no rhythm, no passion… nothing.
I’ve lost the desire to dance duo. I counted weeks and days for the opportunity to dance with someone who knew how to make my body move… tonight I counted the hours to go home. Not even when I was lead by someone else’s rhythm could I bring my own body to feel alive once again. When the soul dies, the rhythm dies and the music dies with it.

I don’t want to dance anymore. I don’t see the point...
I realised that part of the reason I couldn’t feel my soul is because I simply no longer wish to… this is how bitches are made.
They lose their soul, their rhythm and the music in life stops playing

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll feel a different way… but for now, my feet are sore from dancing on my own… I think it’s time to sit it out.

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