People Still Exist!

I was thinking about what to write. Leonard Cohen was on the television, whispering words of wisdom, sage advice. Then it hit me. What did that note say again, the one you put down in your diary a few months back? The note reads as follows:

 

“Saw someone practicing dance or a performance art in the island in between the road, opposite the university. People still exist!”

 

I can’t remember where I had been; I was in a half-dazed stupor, finding a need to kill time. The cobbles always stretch far beyond the horizon with each lazily placed footstep slowly conquering the familiar beast. An odd North Star appears. A woman, no older than twenty, gyrating, throwing herself around in the middle of the road. My god, she’s trying to do something, do something radical I thought, her visage a hazy outline far in the distance. Only upon getting closer did I see that she was practicing, honing her skill. Despite her location of choice, the island which acts as a limbo between lanes, she was undisturbed by her urban surroundings. To top that, she was alone, truly alone. No phone recording her performance. The passing drivers were her audience, albeit for a fleeting couple of seconds and, undoubtedly, they wouldn’t have given her a second thought.

 

Maybe in London you would see these acts of performance so regularly that the only appropriate action is to brush them off as nothing. But not in Salford. So seldom are innocent moments of spectacle that it felt unique (usually a dead pigeon or a bike that has passed straight through a rouge dog turd is all we get for excitement on the streets). More than unique, this moment proved something to me. It proved that people still exist. The machinations of the big tech companies; the endless media vying for our finite attention; the general weight of the days being counted off the calendar. These now felt insignificant. Her image acted temporarily as an icon of individuality for individuality’s sake.

 

It was Nic Cage’s character in Wild at Heart, one of Lynch’s many masterpieces, who yells “This is a snakeskin jacket! And for me it’s a symbol of my individuality, and my belief… in personal freedom.” At the time of seeing the Dancer, this writer thinks of this quote when describing the unknown performer. Sadly, that degree of personal freedom feels fetishized in today’s dirty world. Why would I think it was remarkable that there was no phone, no recording? Am I some low life pervert for writing about this uncanny encounter in some vain effort to preserve the purity of the moment? Is it even something worth talking about, knowing the dancer will never see it?

 

No, or, at least, not entirely. The Dancer’s chosen stage was clear and free. Even in her practice, she had the confidence to face the world without the need for anonymity, without the need for the camera. Maybe when I turned away down that darker driveway, maybe then she got the camera out. Maybe what I saw was only the precursor to some trending-on-TikTok noise. But, without knowing, that Dancer became an icon of humanity away from the Apple-brand appendage. Rays of glistening sunlight beamed from the ground she stood on, engulfing onlookers with electric inspiration.

 

Completely oblivious to my micro-epiphany, the dancer continued dancing and I continued walking. I would never see them again.