the borrowed voice

April 2013

Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue: to
ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree, and so forth (Bakhtin: 293).

China: today. I am in the Gallery. It is cold. I crouch on the floor to look at my notes for the dance class I am about
to teach. Out of the corner of my eye is the movement of a small child.

I look up. The little girl sliding towards me on her belly is about 4 years old. Her cropped black hair frames a round face and tentative smile. She only speaks Chinese. I only speak English. 

We consider each other.

I reach for another sheet of paper and a pen. She waits. I draw a smiley face on her paper. She draws the shape of a fat peach with a jagged line through the centre and then looks up at me. I draw a cat that looks like a skunk. She draws a series of inter-connected lines and shapes that gobble up my images.

Thoughtfully, we consider each other.

She draws an arc and looks at me. I draw around her line, copying the shape. She smiles and draws a line around my own. I begin a new line from the end of hers and we continue our conversation with long sweeps and short scribbles until she
discovers the pen makes a clicking sound.

Eyes smiling, we agree to click our pens in unison and then with two distinct rhythms. She throws her pen in the air. I copy. She giggles and we throw and toss; drop and roll: click, flick, let go, catch and swap hands to throw again.

Her pen flies into her face, a small black line unexpectedly drawn on the end of her nose. I laugh and point at her nose. I lick my finger and rub my nose. She understands but instead of copying me, reaches for my hand. With her own small fingers she lifts my fist holding a pen to make a mark on my own nose so that we are the same.

Together we consider the marks made all the while laughing out loud. After a while we then each lick the tip of a
finger and eyes inter-locked, rub the lines from our noses.

The laughter propels us to our feet and she takes hold of my ipod. I press play. Music fills the space and we follow each other: laughing, listening and talking as we dance.

“In this dialogue a person participates wholly and throughout his whole life: with his eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit, with
his whole body and deeds. He invests his entire self in discourse, and this discourse enters into the dialogic fabric of human life, into the world symposium” (Bakhtin: 293).

Image taken by Katie Chown in China