---
name: Sorry for þe silence.
composer: c4lliope
summary: |
  been on my mind.
labels:
  - memoir
public: false
---

A loud scream, harmonious enough alone,
commanded silence in the room - only long enough,
and quickly concluded by
"please get away from me."

I quickly passed the paper crane I'd been folding
onto the glass DJ cabinet beside us,
and headed to collect my bags near the door.
I needed a couple more passes to grab my bo
and the origami paper that had somehow been
absorbed into the board game pile near the end of the bar.

I'd been unsurprised, because really -
anything could'a gone down that night.
I'd abandoned my hold on the place,
on any sensible discretion,
and passed the obligation along to someone else.
Besides, I'd long ago realized hardly anyone likes me around.

- - -

I'd been going to the shows for around six months,
mainly as a dancer, because her band's synth and percussion mix
had been beyond any other genre I'd heard -
after the first show when I had seen her play solo,
I surprised my diary by adding some lyrics -
a couple of songs, edging in on rap.

In the six months from then to now I've had a chance
to speak 2 of them at open mic nights around DC -
there's another open mic that is more musically inclined,
and so I need to prepare some melodies properly to gain access.

The one piece of lyrics I've not performed,
aside from the many song fragments on my phone's audio recorder,
is the song I originally made in response to her music;
I read her one of the lines I'd made from that piece, the 3rd show:

"A spark explodes, forbodes attack
of fear and panic and dread,
how I can see, how you can hear
how much is going unsaid."

And largely, this is all I'd been able to share
in the following six months;
from October through to May I'd been in the audience,
sharing my odd series of motions,
absorbing the shake of the air from the speakers,
demanding my body to bounce, spin, roll, on the drop of each drum stick.

- - -

And I expanded my range by an incredible measure, in dancing and beyond;
since realizing my lyrics are simplest to express as rap,
I am focusing on my breathing in the middle of rapid, busy scenarios.
This has led me to examine slam poetry, and beat boxing;
one night after a show at Holy Frijoles in Baltimore,
I happened across a homeless man who heard my whistle
and challenged me to join him in a song -
he began a rhythm on a nearby table as I chirped birdsong to accompany.

And, realizing that festival season means large outdoor celebrations,
I emphasized my bo exercises from my martial arts background -
a large, un-dense, flexible wooden staff I could spin in
innumerable stanzas of mechanical moción.

I use this daily to capture the gaze of onlookers in festivals,
as soon as I come into range of a band,
permitting enough space in the surroundings,
I pick up my cadence to theirs,
and close off my mind from all,
beside the barest glimpses of the world beyond the reach of my hands.

A mime can imagine they are bound inside of a box;
they demarc their posición by clear signage,
and use the space they command in a dramatically unique manner
compared to their peers looking on.
In my case, I equally choose a region of space to command,
and mine becomes fluidic; beginning open, permeable,
and as I lean my bo across my body,
clench my wrist to send the other end up and through a memorable cycle,
I build a boundary line; good for ten seconds or so,
until I come around again and refresh the marc - to remind onlookers.

- - -

And so the bo is already spinning, and my hands are dancing as quickly
as an eye can keep up, and I do glimpse many eyes;
I learn to hold gazes only for the quickest span of milliseconds,
because more than I like - someone's gaze pulls me so fiercely,
or they approach in such a manner as to command my consideration,
and the necessary focus on the bo slips,
and a loud smack on the ground reminds me that I had a role to play here.
I lose no moment before I re-acquire my grip, and the spin resumes.

I do a common cadence in front of my body,
both hands in the middle and flashing fore and back,
each peck at the bo bringing another full cycle,
as my wrists form opposing bends to equal the momentum.

As my assurance builds, and I gain a feel for the speed,
and my hands and arms and core and hips and legs
shake the sleep or complacency or road rage from the prior hours,
I begin to pause the spin, or bend the arc, to accomplish new paþs;
a neu boundary line, perhaps by changing the arm I use,
or by taking a step through the middle of the cycle,
and bringing my back to the audience,
or by expanding my range in a lurching forward roll;
the bo collapsing to a single line by my side,
or in some cases, demanding sacrifice of a nearby tree branch,
as I display the speed and precision I can embed into the opposite end.
Each explosion of moción, each change in boundary, requires regression.

As I resume a common cadence,
and ease my mood to a calm pace,
and use a small moment to breathe easier,
and perhaps re-learn the gaze of those people around me,
who have seen nothing similar beyond the bounds of cinema,
I decide how much energy I can use in the follo'ing phrase.

As I explore the fair, going from one zone to another,
perhaps chasing the sound stages,
I ease the moción, nearly to equal a simple hiking staff;
only on each placement of the staff, I bring my hand around,
allowing my moción to bring the bo into a rolling amble by my side;
one end, then the other, taps the ground
in a measure proporciónal to my speed,
and as the crowd becomes dense or sparse,
I add a small flourish, or else hold in place,
my energy reaching across to amplify those people nearest to me.

- - -

I had considered on many occasions that I am seen perhaps as a nuisance.
This band I'd been playing groupie, or roadie, for -
they had made no ask of me for my participación.
I suppose that my road-bound rituals
keep me from making, or holding, normal friendships;
and so concert announcements on Instagram
can seem to fill the missing gap of invitación, inclusion,
that anyone begins to yearn for.

Too much exclusion, of being held on the periphery of social circles,
begins to bear in on a psyche; isolación needs to be learned,
and is a dangerous enemy for a mind used to social confinement.
The liberación of solitude is only realized
by learning the skills of resilience,
the demand that a body needs to be in moción
to earn the comforts a body demands.

And so there is no couch for me to lean on,
no reclining until I am ready for sleep,
no sleep until I reach the end of my chosen road,
no road until I fill my belly and clear my mind,
and no meal until I clean and expel the grime of the prior night.
The grueling demands of unclear, endlessly changing surroundings.

This in my mind, I call resilience; and as much as I imagine
that I need to harden myself for the rigors of the cycle,
I find that such hardening can quickly drain my mood, or energy,
or physical endurance; and for sure it keeps me at odds to my peers,
who are more likely than anything to spin a day
into an upredic'able debacle.

And so isolación builds resilience,
only leads one into an unclear landscape of imaginación;
are those people in the audience speaking of me, and how so? 
Is my appearance drab, or scary, and do I have the energy to care?
Should I have shaved or done make-up,
before pulling myself from the car to dance for all of their amusement?

And hardening yourself to these social morés, is necessary;
social scenes depend on compliance to keep all in a calm mood.
To be seen, to be remembered, requires your noncompliance,
and so a hardening phase is necessary, an isolación to explore
the cases where you can indeed abandon the human conneccións around you,
and the cases where to do so is a horror, or a danger, or suicide.

- - -

So long under isolación's spell,
and I had been bearing silence in large rooms.
So many of the discussions I bring myself to
use language I'm unsure around -
I no longer rely or depend or am reassured,
by ideas of joy or love; and this may be a phrasing issue.
Passion, amor, seem more applicable.

Only none of my peers use such language;
they see me dance and they say I dance beautifully.
When I explain the martial arts I studied, they explain theirs.
We both agree that dancing is a more noble pursuance,
only I have no phrase to offer in the moment to express this idea.
I lapse on my end of the discussion, remembering this to bring up again.

- - -

I could explain my qualms around English;
the amalgamación of ideas being so clumsy in applicación,
and unusually garish in expression.

I can apologize for my silence in language by saying,
many of the earliest sounds I remember came from speakers of Japanese,
where language is a percussive drumming of reassuring consonance.

Only, to argue a king you need to speak in a king's language.

To challenge a monarch head-on, you need to dance in their hall.

- - -

And is the energy there, to do so?

Expulsion is assured as soon as one breaks their assigned or chosen role,
and can come across as relief in comparison to the daily caprice,
the bending and breaking of one's body to earn a smile, or a glance.

The halls of memory, echoing age upon age,
are cold, and lined in sharp edges.

The easy day comes in goes in a flash of decadence;
a memory designed to endure decades has to be fired in pain.
