The Party
A Pedestrians Lust- Excerpt:
We got there at about 9 o'clock and it's was already in full swing. The first room was full of different people stood in different spots who did different things with their fingers as they tapped along to the man at the front who was performing. He was of African descent and played the room like a musical instrument (a thing he claimed to own but have forgotten, leading him to perform the entire set acapella and freeing his hands to move in time with his own words alone but in time with no music. Thus, forced to use only his words to create the rhythm that lay behind the conduction of his limbs it seemed as though his whole body and his whole throat moved in unison and played the room like some sort of stringed instrument.
He triggered within different people different things, it was a diverse crowd- different people watched in different ways with different types of lenses through which to see what was being presented to them. There were people of different nationalities and different faiths all of whom looked on with something between scepticism and hope. A plethora of memories lay beneath the consciousness and came back. Like an army of ants time this movement of the tongue and lips and cheeks together and ran faster than the speed of sound through neurons and electrodes until they reached, through well beaten tracks ,concepts which demonstrated what he wished to say. He seemed to pack many concepts into a space in which most would only fit a few and he artfully slipped between tongues, knowing just by looking at them that at least one person in the room would understand at least part of what he was trying so desperately to say. He began pacing up and down the room intently, as though with some kind of intentionality. At each end however he would simply turn back on himself and return the other way. A strange spectacle indeed and one that seemed almost comical.
Suddenly he burst into dance, twisting and turning in time. He rose his legs in unison, floating above the earth momentarily before stretching back into it, his heels hitting the floor in time, before twisting, serving as an axis for the balls of his feet, which, like propellers, rotated multiple times in a way more mechanical than animalistic. The rooms eye was fixed on him now, twitching, it's small movements mirroring his larger ones. The human eye is a thing of beauty. It is not perfect, but is close enough to perfection that the religious have used it's very existence for years as a justification for their misplaced faith. The smallest, miniscule movements can draw one from one small part of the universe to another, and the collective eye was now turned inwards. It was taking in the room, taking in this man, watching his feet patter and prod, searching the floor without a care for what they might find, only enthralled by the act of searching.
The host of the party was a Mrs Agbo, who reputedly hosted these events at regular intervals, inviting anyone and everyone and yet somehow still seeming to elude a measure of exclusivity. I got only a glimpse of her face, less than a glimpse, my eyes did not even stop as they paroused the room- they simply absorbed the image of her and did not reflect on it for moments until the juxtaposition between what I knew her to be feeling and how I saw her present herself came to me in a flurry. At this point , however, I was already engaged in conversation with someone else in the room, could not look back and saw no reason to look back anyways. We spoke a little later that night but not at any great length or about anything memorable. Everyone who came into contact with her however seem to remark on how jovial she was and how she let off such a unique light and aura such that her spirit seemed to light the room like a candle with a wick longer than its base. Only I knew what lay beneath the wax.
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