︱tape: 04 - backseat wounds︱

in the blooms of stagelights cast an unsteady yet warm world where the juts of the knuckle could lay supine, fingers spread out as if each could grasp the supple air as the body meanders its arms in a dance, unlike the ceaseless circles of their flails. they pivot with their left foot that catches their fall, landing on the other as darkness begins to slip onto their contours yet the retreat is not hasty, playing with this new realm as the lone performer continues their dance that mutated them from the still void of this stage. these movements, the arcs of their arms and the shifting axis of their foot rotating them played with the edges of their world not even contained by the light as it could assume itself in any formation of crowds or conversations it might inhabit were they to debut on stage with them, even a wink towards my direction as if i too was a part of their ritual under the light that made my observation, the fact i caught this gaze, meaningful.

but who was this person? the silhouette was familiar but as they returned to center stage bare of all shadow, the face displayed an affable yet withdrawn expression as if it could easily give to pleasantry but offset by a dulcet voice that kept one at a distance. an expression all too familiar as through a mirror looking at this body and its sudden stillness and limbs connected to a torso rather than being at my sides thinking this is probably another person but as the performer meets my gaze again, i realize that it’s me. but how could it be? i had been viewing them from this distance, feet rooted to the floor but i can’t move. in fact, i don’t have feet or hands. more like, i’m just watching this show where i’m performing these maneuvers and a part of me, despite everyone’s insistence that we are here, their nudges and basking in fading summers, could never be there as i’d come home half cheated and half sorry.

all this came to me as i awoke on the backseat of the car, rumbling softly that i barely think of the stones embedded within the pavement. black plush figures were before me before i discern the voices behind the seat, a panorama of white that melts into highway traffic barely inching closer nor getting farther before eventually turning off the highway ramp or someone drives past us. my ex, courtney and oakley were talking, something about an edm artist called bellareaux whose album cover appeared as a pink curtain billowed in an indigo sky dying its cloth.

‘yeah, he quit his job as an er doctor to be a musician.’

‘oh wow, that must have been a hard decision’

‘but it just goes to show how dedicated a person could be’

oakley went on like this a while. earlier, he spoke of another musician, shosolin, who was a former felon and how his successful yet troubled career that led to his murder a few years ago. this i remembered from videos of a people trashing his vigils across the states or shaking their heads at another lost. but to oakley, the account read so much like a story with some moral that it pushed us to at the end and i saw little of shosolin or even bellareaux. what had they been like walking the street some late evening when the shops have closed up or staring at studio programs with a melody half composed, just barely in sync yet stirred little as they only stare at the screen, these scenes that may colour the skies of their documentaries only fading towards the arc of the scene, their next cut.