This was the day I met a man:
I had my life in a sway, sizzling on a dance-floor made of ivory with clouds bestowing pearl drops upon which I’d shoot and slide.
At times, it all turned into black marble, a dark room; and I would welcome that new handicap, that blindness that allowed me to feel with my body, to mould my clay, to eavesdrop on heart-beats in my blood stream. I’d be a sculpture, then another, yet another, a fleeting shape and a new one further. This blindness would sometimes look down on me kindly, and gift me those fleeting lights, like thousands of shooting stars upon a night-sea. They would take flight from the sky (but that I didn’t see), sometimes under the sheen of the moon, and then take a jolt into the waves. Oh! These shining stars! Yellow! Blue! They would swim in the black-ink sea, wet their celestial bodies, amorphous like the twilight and go back to their place of origin…
Thus did I deploy my body, indulging in the beauty of clay and the wonder of lights.
Then that day I saw a man for the first time. He wasn’t sizzling unlike me, for he did not know the tune of my promenade. But that man…
…That man was still made of something… something… a different kind of sculpture whose substance I could not identify.
It was one of the ivory-stage days, of a pure white with pearls falling from a blanched sky that I could not even see.
There was the man, a piece frozen in time: beautiful, I thought (broad shoulders framed in a rectangular physique, blue jeans fading into a grey texture, un-ironed t-shirt, hair straight out of a pillow fight, stubble of black pepper flanked his cheeks, angular jaws like they were drawn by a cubist painter…). He however did look like a sculpture to me. Not a like the fleeting clay sculpture that I was, but one of those concrete chocolate sculptures; the kinds that do not melt but remain always, even after they have been eaten.
His brown flower-bud eyes seem to speak a language, I language I did not know.
Till then, the only language I knew was the one of clay, the one of corporality, of a body that expresses itself through sculptures in accordance with various rhythms and shades; a body that on the way enters glimpses of lights and flash-bubbles and sizzles on a dance-floor.
This man rose to me, like a mango that, overnight, crops out of a tree. A deep dusky voice told me: “I want to learn your language”.
I wondered… how?
And then he touched me. Fleeting fingers on my hand, like the discreet glimpse of a beggar beseeching a coin of pity.
That touch, warm yet icy, concrete yet fleeting, solid yet liquid. I thought, “the man is made of clay”. May be together, we could make a new sculpture, one of darkness and light, of day and night, of earth, of the wind, the water, the fire: a new language and a new body taking shape. So I accepted.
Thus did I start teaching my language: the language of clay.
We merged, we sizzled, we died and lived again, we lost our individuality in the search for a new one... I liked that game: the new dance I was learning and the redemption that lays in giving up the sculptures that were me.
This was the day I met a man.
A man of flesh (for he was not of clay), for that I learnt... too late!
The day I met a man, I taught him how to dance. I pumped new rhythms into his veins, changed him into a monster: half flesh and half clay.
As for me, who was clay, I imbibed new perspectives: I saw sweat, I saw blood, I saw flesh, and I saw pain and suffering, but above all I saw beauty. Beauty in a man.
I lost my selfdom, but found a new parentage. While giving, I also received. That was the day I met a man who cleansed myself from impurities, and added pulse to the clay of my body. I changed shape, over and over again, and soon I changed substance as well.
I continued sizzling, I swam in my dance-floor always, yet I was not longer clay. I decided to become a man.
That was the day I met a man.
I had my life in a sway, sizzling on a dance-floor made of ivory with clouds bestowing pearl drops upon which I’d shoot and slide.
At times, it all turned into black marble, a dark room; and I would welcome that new handicap, that blindness that allowed me to feel with my body, to mould my clay, to eavesdrop on heart-beats in my blood stream. I’d be a sculpture, then another, yet another, a fleeting shape and a new one further. This blindness would sometimes look down on me kindly, and gift me those fleeting lights, like thousands of shooting stars upon a night-sea. They would take flight from the sky (but that I didn’t see), sometimes under the sheen of the moon, and then take a jolt into the waves. Oh! These shining stars! Yellow! Blue! They would swim in the black-ink sea, wet their celestial bodies, amorphous like the twilight and go back to their place of origin…
Thus did I deploy my body, indulging in the beauty of clay and the wonder of lights.
Then that day I saw a man for the first time. He wasn’t sizzling unlike me, for he did not know the tune of my promenade. But that man…
…That man was still made of something… something… a different kind of sculpture whose substance I could not identify.
It was one of the ivory-stage days, of a pure white with pearls falling from a blanched sky that I could not even see.
There was the man, a piece frozen in time: beautiful, I thought (broad shoulders framed in a rectangular physique, blue jeans fading into a grey texture, un-ironed t-shirt, hair straight out of a pillow fight, stubble of black pepper flanked his cheeks, angular jaws like they were drawn by a cubist painter…). He however did look like a sculpture to me. Not a like the fleeting clay sculpture that I was, but one of those concrete chocolate sculptures; the kinds that do not melt but remain always, even after they have been eaten.
His brown flower-bud eyes seem to speak a language, I language I did not know.
Till then, the only language I knew was the one of clay, the one of corporality, of a body that expresses itself through sculptures in accordance with various rhythms and shades; a body that on the way enters glimpses of lights and flash-bubbles and sizzles on a dance-floor.
This man rose to me, like a mango that, overnight, crops out of a tree. A deep dusky voice told me: “I want to learn your language”.
I wondered… how?
And then he touched me. Fleeting fingers on my hand, like the discreet glimpse of a beggar beseeching a coin of pity.
That touch, warm yet icy, concrete yet fleeting, solid yet liquid. I thought, “the man is made of clay”. May be together, we could make a new sculpture, one of darkness and light, of day and night, of earth, of the wind, the water, the fire: a new language and a new body taking shape. So I accepted.
Thus did I start teaching my language: the language of clay.
We merged, we sizzled, we died and lived again, we lost our individuality in the search for a new one... I liked that game: the new dance I was learning and the redemption that lays in giving up the sculptures that were me.
This was the day I met a man.
A man of flesh (for he was not of clay), for that I learnt... too late!
The day I met a man, I taught him how to dance. I pumped new rhythms into his veins, changed him into a monster: half flesh and half clay.
As for me, who was clay, I imbibed new perspectives: I saw sweat, I saw blood, I saw flesh, and I saw pain and suffering, but above all I saw beauty. Beauty in a man.
I lost my selfdom, but found a new parentage. While giving, I also received. That was the day I met a man who cleansed myself from impurities, and added pulse to the clay of my body. I changed shape, over and over again, and soon I changed substance as well.
I continued sizzling, I swam in my dance-floor always, yet I was not longer clay. I decided to become a man.
That was the day I met a man.
