After gingerly tip-toeing into the year with careful steps so as not to offend or upset it (goodness what a lesson we learned when entering with pomp and bombast!) I think we need a little levity, a little dance break, a little moment to remind anyone who comes here for an escape that there is still room for ridiculousness in this world. To that end, let’s get away, and save our troubles for another day. Not quite an actual escapade as there’s nowhere to go… but up… so get down!
There’s something very noble and refined about the person who runs about in a tattered fur coat and worn-out satin slippers, blithely and bravely unaware of their spent nature, the one who dances in the face of misery and neglect. The days of freshness long past, the blush brushed from the rose, and even the will to get up again largely gone, there is still something defiant and touching about those who hold onto glamour in whatever measly, piffling form we can find. Faded echoes of the past parading like Miss Havisham or Little Edie, we desperately cling to our hopes and dreams in the face of harsh, unrelenting reality. It’s not just that some of us keep playing while the ship is going down, it’s that we dare to do it in style, with some pizzazz, even when it doesn’t matter anymore, even when we know we’re doomed.
Where would we be without an audience, even an audience of one? Would we bother when no one else is around? Personally, I’ve always put on my best shows to an absent audience. Writing this blog, as I’ve done almost every day like a diary for the past seventeen years, is largely a lonesome activity, void of human interaction and reaction. Its ramifications and effects reach me, if they ever end up reaching me, in distant form, worn down by delay or fractured by technologically-glitched transmittal. The result is a buffered, hazy idea of you – yes, I’m speaking directly to you – and who you are. Not by name or identification, but the truest and most honest essence of who you truly are. When the lights are out and no one is around, when your thoughts and your inner-dialogue mesh into one defined recognition of the self you know to be true, no matter how dark or different or destructive it might be.
Who …
Are …
You?
Only the bravest and most heroic would dare to attempt an answer to such a question, and maybe it’s simpler to do that with an audience, with a mirror to gauge whether what we are doing is resulting in a laugh or a shrug or an angry huff. Maybe that’s why it’s easier to see ourselves in others, especially our faults and failings. There’s too much risk in rocking what we consider our baseline of stability. For those who dare, however, there’s a freedom unmatched by any other sort of freedom – an exhilaration unparalleled by fantasy or faux-fabulousness. It is the freedom of being who you are no matter what, and staying true to that even as the world changes and drifts without you being a part of it. It’s the freedom of being that unafraid to be alone, to take what you need to survive, the very bare minimum, and putting it on your back like a worn-out coat or a faded bonnet, and having that be enough. It’s having only your own brilliance to sustain you, and having that see you through without worry or care.
When you discover that light within, you suddenly don’t need all the fancy trappings and trimmings. You don’t need to stand there like a Christmas tree as the party revolves around you. You don’t need accolades or applause or an audience at all. It’s a glorious sort of freedom – it lets you do and say all sorts of wonderful things – and it’s the sort of freedom that exists in love, in that strange way that love becomes more than a particular and specific sort of passion or desire, transforming into something more omnipotently benevolent. It’s the moment you become aware and accepting of the love of humanity, a love that is shared by all, no matter how different we might be.
So do your dance!
Don your tinsel!
String your fairy lights!
Strike up the one-person-band that is you, and only you, and begin the parade. If you’re in it, it can never pass you by.
