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ursako's instigation, windbourne
and I joined her at the Crocodile for their annual Cure cover night. As
you may know, The Cure are pretty much my favorite band of all time, so I
was thoroughly enjoying myself.Then Jodie Watts took the stage. After a number or two, the lead singer looked out into the crowd and said:
"You know, we've got a lot of room up here on stage, so if anybody wants to come up here and dance, that'd be great. Actually, we've got a spare microphone up here, too, so if anyone wants to come sing with us, you can."
They're kidding, I thought. They can't really mean --
"Come on! Come on up here! You probably know the words to this one!"
And they started to play the opening notes of Just Like Heaven. My favorite Cure song ever.
A song that, for literally years, I've harbored a secret desire to sing, on stage, in front of an audience. Honestly.
I couldn't! I don't have the nerve --
The singer must have seen it all on my face, because then he pointed right at me and raised a questioning eyebrow.
Oh, I thought, what the fuck. And got up on stage.
---
"All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music," Walter Pater once said. I love doing my readings, don't get me wrong. I like being up on stage and weaving pictures with words. But I walk away from them, sometimes, wishing they had the immediacy, the energy, of musical performance.
Maybe that's overstating the case. Maybe a simpler way to put it is, I sometimes wish I were a rock star. Sure. Who doesn't?
For just a few minutes there, I got to be one.
It was an impossible moment; it was that Walter Mitty moment everyone secretly hopes for that never really comes, that kind of "Is there anyone on board who can fly this plane?" type of moment.
As impossible as, say, for example -- getting a second chance to know the girl whose name I never caught.
---
There is, at the center of my life, an impossibility. An impossibility that flashes me Cheshire-cat smiles, all soft curls and eyes dark as night, a glint in them like stars. A secret that sits in the middle and Knows. She reminds me that you can hold on to the impossible, that miracles happen all the time to those who reach out for them, that I can have everything I ever wanted. Be everything I ever wanted.
"As we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same," Marianne Williamson wrote. "As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Consciously or unconsciously, just by being near me, she gives me that permission. And I shine.
