I got a bright rush out from a poster I saw on my way to work today: George Clinton with Parliament, March 4th at Plush. I stopped and immediately scribbled the details on my wrist. (“If anyone gets funked up, it’s gonna be you“). Is anyone else excited about this? I’ve been a burning square the last few months, I need to get out and boogie. Tickets are a terrifying $60, but if it’s anything as catchy as the Afrikaa Bombaataa last year, it’ll be worth it. (I danced through my favourite pin-stripe fishnet stockings at that concert.)
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It’s like he was made to be played on the piano, his body all black key self confidence and gentle pale ideals, a skeptic caught in the violent wake of an irrefutable miracle. I liked him on sight. His dreaming mouth, too busy to notice me, giving smart voice to idiosyncratic creatures of feigned precision, reminded me of an unconscious Rembrandt. I rolled up my mental shirtsleeves and tried to think of other things. Six thoughts at once, I decided, and found five easily to replace him – until he looked up and met my eyes. They were the colour of a favourite song of hard-earned nostalgia or an elegant walking stick from another age, polished from two generations of impeccably gloved hands.
Too stubborn to look away, trapped by the pure audacious mechanics of competition, I was suddenly too close to a vanishing point to get proper perspective. Lines were being drawn around me, inked with subsumed intention, in the shape of a conversation with conspicuously missing words. Unbidden, I imagined the mark of his teeth on my neck and our bodies together like Tristan’s handmade boat, rocking soundly through a storm wherever next we encountered a flat surface. The ghost of my faith shook in its sheets, unable to consolidate this encounter with its bitter heart. We crossed the space between us in an indecent freefall, threading through the crowd suddenly as insubstantial as clouds, as charming as grocery shopping alone.
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(Just as an aside, baby-ballerinas are possibly the most doll-like human beings I have ever encountered outside of a fetish club.)