Outside the Mask

[This piece was written as a real-time prose response to the improvised duo album Outside the Mask, from myself and violinist Marie Schreer.]

A way of being together, looking forward, feeling forward.

Glacially patient inhalations and exhalations, like some aquatic behemoth with slow veins, impossibly veiled, delicately breaching the surface to steal precious moments of moonlight. A broken siren song drifts dangerously, unheeded by ancient shore-side ceremony.

Here a disco fragment petulantly presses against a porous membrane, disrupting, summoning, breaking, a violent moment of cleansing disequilibrium.

Thunder-clap punchline. Cartoon athletes jostle, laughable self-importance, over when the tiny lady sings. Returning to the twilight, the ancient behemoth rising once again to cast a curious eye over a disturbingly disconnected realm.

Fire on the shore. Lonely traveller in a pool of shimmering gold. Two worlds momentarily meet, a welcome tear in the fragile fabric of our tragic separation.

—

We seek a common language, edged with sand, as we walk through the night on this dusty path, bodies softly merging with depthless shadows. Strange voices in the darkness, imploring, insisting, threatening to sweep everything away on a river of endless sorrow.

A mother gently washes away the desperate impotence of incoherent youth, the lullaby which cradles all through this life and the next.

Two travellers in a pool of flickering gold defiantly summon brittle melodies to keep the darkness at bay, recounting tales of the sea, so very, very distant. The earth hums, muted peals rolling heavily from above, ocean drawing near.