Fool me Fool you

London looks great from the river. The almost full moon is visible in the dusky dull of the sky and on one side I see Westminster and Big Ben and to the other is the slick glass of the city and there is something about the way my shoes are clicking along the pavement that makes me walk more upright and purposeful. I feel like I’m in a scene from a film, and that Bridget Jones type details from my life might flash up on a big screen behind me; how many units of alcohol I had consumed, or cigarettes I hadn’t smoked and dates I hadn’t been on.

            I was on my way to watch a dance show and had been asked (for the first and maybe last time) to write something about it, but somewhere underneath my pretend sense of purpose I had a feeling of uncertainty. I don’t really know anything about dance. I am not a dancer myself: I gave up ballet when I was six after a single performance as a woodland creature because I didn’t understand the names of the French positions, and although I love to move, I know I don’t have any of the grace or control of a trained dancer. Part of the enjoyment of watching other people dance is that it is so far beyond what I am capable of doing with my own clumsy body that I feel in awe of it. I cannot name the technical feats of their performances or tell you what they are doing or how they are doing it. I can only tell you what I see and how it makes me feel. It would be like if someone stood me next to a car, opened the bonnet, turned the key and asked me what was happening. I wouldn’t be able to talk about the pistons or the cylinders, but I could I tell you what it sounds like, what it smells like and how it trembles and roars.

So I sit in the audience, with a note pad on my lap, scribbling down things that occur to me whilst I am watching and I am thinking how foolish this is. It’s too dark to see the paper so my sentences are piling up on top of each other, and whilst I’m squinting at the page I am missing movements on the stage and I so preoccupied with what I’ll say about it later that I am not concentrating anymore. What words am I supposed to use to describe things I cannot do?

            I’m just making it up as I go along, repeating things I hear and read and hoping no one notices. I collect the words I like and save them to use in sentences of my own and then I use them to make comments about things I do not understand. But then again, I wouldn’t want to read what a mechanic has to say about a car, I would rather read the observations of a fool.