BEHIND THE WALL
Aussie Spring, 2016
Listen as if to hear from behind the wall the songs of birds who populate the secret garden – Auguste Rodin
I write in the dark without glasses, blindly moving pen across page. I should get up: get going, be productive. Put on glasses. Turn on a light. But I don’t. There is something moving beneath the surface of my skin. I feel it. I scribble a channel; a way for ideas to burst through to the surface. The movement is still hidden and elusive – waiting is not enough. The writing and scribbling – it is not enough. The dance under the surface - it is not enough.
Free the dance of the skin from what holds it beneath. There is no reason to be afraid, or worried, or desperate to impress so someone provides a grant for a project within the body, buried deep. No, no! The dance of the skin erupts through cells hydrated with life, bursting to connect soul-to-soul.
We are seasonal makers. Jumping walls, we chase birds through the summer. In autumn we share secrets. In the winter we listen. Now is the season of skin freed to dance with the wind. I like this new season: wild, unpredictable. Perhaps I won’t dance . . . but perhaps I’ll make new dance? I dismantle the walls holding me in.
This precious time is abundant with remnant ideas and dreams. Remnant artists are precious, abundant with timely ideas and dreams. They are not left-overs, discarded. No, no! They are not broken fragments or abandoned performers. They are not too old, too fat, too young, too much, or not quite enough. They are the dancers moving in seams beneath the earth’s surface.
Burst into terrain unfettered and free, scattering dirt. Turn in the light and sparkle with colours unique and unusual. Together we dance angles and shapes that refract light into colour and cut into character. We are the shinier for bursting through to move together. We dance with the wind. Now is our season.
Photograph of Esther Scott and Charity Ng by Amanda Humphries ©2014, reprinted with permission.