BIO
I was never going to be a ballet dancer, though I spent my childhood and teenage years apologizing my body into form. I understood my body in relation to its lack as a classical ballet body. Though sometimes when no one was looking, I would slip into the rigid space of a ballet student and move fluently. I kept moving towards. I started piano lessons. The first real piano book that Mrs. Lawrence chose for me, The Greatest Hits of 1988/1989, laughed at my desire to fit a classical form. She coached me as I played Milli Vanilli to the tick of a metronome while I longed to perform Chopin. Mrs. Lawrence saw my future through her tiger’s eye ring. I quit piano lessons to spend everyday of the week in the ballet studio. Now, my movement is stifled by time and circumstance. I can only attempt to speak the language of ballet through my stiffened joints. I can hardly brush against the classical form, though, still, sometimes I do touch the edges.
The ballet fantasy lives in my muscles. Now, I listen to a lot of pop music. Pop music that for three minutes sings the chorus lines of my childhood rides in the car worrying about dying with credit card debt, my evening at the laundry mat, my night at the pizza restaurant making a dance party of the table, my morning at the funeral home when my cousin wept a pain I don’t think I can ever know, my afternoon buying carrots at the grocery store. You were there with me.
Look, they’re playing our song. We are part of something larger. That song is a part of something larger.