THIS is a silkscreen I did in the 1980s. I’m not apologizing for it being, perhaps, sexist or something bad by today’s standards. It doesn’t go so much with a poem I’ve been working on, but nothing I found in a search did either. I COULD, of course, draw something that does connect better, but… I haven’t.

I AM ALWAYS working on something, art-wise, story-wise, song-wise, otherwise. I have been working recently on a song that starts out, “It was a private conversation, Words I was not yet meant to hear, She had been to long at the station, Couldn’t have known that I was near…”

WHAT I DO is keep working on these songs, and everything I do until it’s… better. SURF-WRITING-WISE, I am always trying to push some comparison between the best moments and music, even dance. Not all dancing is graceful, Stephanie Gilmore style pretty. AND she also incorporates solidly radical, powerful moves into her repertoire. Similarly, there is something esthetically pleasing about a vicious power hack.

MUSIC-WISE, please try to convince me that you don’t have some tune or beat going through your head when you’re paddling for and surfing a wave. If you don’t, well…

Too much explaining.

                        A Private Conversation

I was coming up the stairway, two bags of groceries pressed against my chest, She was dancing on the landing, third floor, Sun from the distant windows lit her hair on fire, Her shadow moving with her on the sidewall.

Six stairs below her, I leaned against the inside rail.

She was moving to music, music I could not hear.

Her movements made the music real. Slink and slide and step and stop, Step and stop, slink and slide, one arm always at her side, The other, gliding, raised then lowered, Free, and spelling or signing or reflecting, Words or images or memories or dreams,   Real to her.

Real to her, private.

Sunset music, light, a tinkling rhythm beat under the woodwinds, Only fleeting hints of nightfall.

I should not have been a witness, Seeing her, dancing, silent, hair on fire,  In some soft and private conversation with some distant, absent, loved one.

Loved one, someone else dancing with her on the landing, Sharing her space.

The background, The air and the light and the wallpaper and the paint were as alive as she was, Slinking and sliding and stepping and slowing, Listening, perhaps, briefly, The dance resumed as response.

Her other arm became the free one, Sending the code, The secret, private messages in our most ancient language.

I should not have been there.

I couldn’t face facing her, Couldn’t imagine her trying to explain, Not to some neighbor, some stranger three doors down.

Setting my bags on the third step from the landing, Sitting two stairs below that, Alone in the dark, with vague shadows of someone dancing, Projected on the stairwell wall.

I envied her for dancing, dancing alone in the hallway, Music swirling in her head.

Waiting in the stairwell,   Waiting long after her door closed, Long after the light moved up the wall and softened, And darkened, I waited long until her music faded.  

My steps up became drums, not heavy, Step, step, step,

If I imagined a saxophone solo, Sad squeaks and missed notes, Looking out the window at a screaming orange sunset, I couldn’t stop myself from sliding one foot across the worn oak floor, And then the other, My grocery bags shifting, side to side, In some rhythm that made some sense… to me.

THANKS FOR READING. Original material, of course, protected by copyright, all rights reserved by the author/artist, Erwin A. Dence, Jr.

AS ALWAYS, IF YOU CAN’T BE NICE, BE REAL.

I FULLY expect to not tell you about a surf session in the next posting. AND, yes, I am still working on my novel, “SWAMIS.”