Looking from the outside in, it is Genesis
remembered. The stool at the bar is my balcony seat, and from here I behold-as
on a stage- the universe reborn; mankind is formed once more from sweet terra
mater, once more the earth is subdued and we overrun it. As all men, I am an
actor in the play that is tonight. But I play the audience. I am the eyes
looking inward at the workings of the body, the individual discovering the
self, the introspective mind questioning its machinations.
The lights of the laser beam display pierce
the heavy night. At the herald of each beam, darkness flees. It is just as at
that Beginning when light was called forth from nothing. But the light is no
more veiled in the modest cloak of white it donned at time’s birth. Her bare
self bursts forth in its full glory. In the Beginning, it was gentle
chastisement she dealt to eternal night. But tonight- too long has the shadow
wielded its ghastly power; tonight the cup of her wrath is full, and from it
she bids night drink deep the wine of her techni-color fury. Every hue in her
arsenal in unleashed, and as darkness takes flight at her advance she imbues
her blush to whatever it is her naked and weightless self lies with: and it
lives- every flash a vivifying beat of her brilliant heart; It speaks: colours
blended in that unutterable lyric that whispers passion to the darkest caverns
of the human psyche. There is light. And the light is good.
Every flash of light, every baring of her
perfect form is met with the approval of rhythm. At first it is only an odd nod
here and there and a snapping of those semiquaver fingers- like an audible
beating of light’s brilliant heart. Then there is an approach and an
over-the-shoulder whispering of pleasant nothings. There are clearly two hearts
now. And then the beat throws his arms around light and draws her close. There
is a maddening acceleration of the rhythm of the beating of hearts. Soon it is
impossible to tell flash from rhythm and light from music. Every hue is a note
and all pitch a shade in this rainbow symphony.
And suddenly in the midst of the color and
song ballet, as if painted against the canvas that is fleeing blackness, there
is movement. Formless shadows melding and parting like lips in a stolen kiss -
limbless, headless things. Things melded into one being that heaves to and fro
with the up-beat and the down-beat of the music. This creature breathes song,
eats song, lives song.
I rouse from my dreamy observations at the
calling of my name. Suddenly, the fluid scene that I have been drinking in
descends into chaos. The song and color ballet becomes a riotous shuffle and
dub-step. The song breathing, song eating, song living beast is fragmented into
countless personas, some single, some paired, each sweat-soaked and glistening
and panting from the endless movement. They are slave to the music. And hard
does the music ride them- a savage, unrelenting dominatrix that will hear none
of their pleas for relief.
The siren whose name-calling shattered my
dream is now tugging at my hand, smiling ear to ear. Her eyes betray possession
by forces so primal they are beyond our understanding. Her lithe body still
sways in the ever ebbing current of song. She was definitely not formed from
clay-this lass; for even were the most sacred pope-kissed earth mixed with the
holiest of Vatican-well drawn waters, were the finest of artist’s hands to
thereafter mould that most sanctified mud into a being, was the purest air from
the loftiest of mountain peaks breathed into that being, even then, that being
would pale, nay it would be dross, when compared to her. I feel my side.
Everything about her smarts of divine handiwork. She whispers in my ear for me
to join her in the revelry, and then she steps back and swings her waist this
way and that. I look to my virgin Pina on the counter…
The music eases her hold on her subjects.
They have been driven hard for close to an hour now by the rhythmic cracking of
her polyphonic whip. Endogenous opioids flood their brains. Post-dance bliss
kicks in and they all stagger, grin-faced and giggly to couches and stools and
each others arms. There is a lusty lustre in their eyes, as the men behold
their women and the women behold their men. None doubts the intent they read in
the other’s eyes. It is Genesis remembered.
I never took the invitation.
