“Dance as if no one were watching, sing as if no one were listening, and live every day as if it were your last.” -an Irish proverb
Certain nights downtown, I can say myself, are dull.
By the time the street lamps sputter on and dimly light the sidewalks, every person is either home or in the pubs for the rest of the night.
I was walking around a quaint town with no particular name that I can recall, and it was Sunday night at two o’clock in the morning according to my wrist watch.
I had gotten the watch with the birthday money I received on my eighteenth birthday. I had needed a watch. Of course, within a couple of weeks I had damaged it in a bad fall down the front steps. Now, whenever the watch hit three o’clock, a large scratch blocked the hand, so that you had to tilt it this way and that to spot it.
This particular small town was ghostly once deserted. The many bronze statues of famous former citizens littered the street sides with their special plaques at their feet. Their complexions were earthy and dull, and not shiny or glossy like some other copper figures. Standing tall, they looked like they could parade out and bow to me, and I’d curtsy and we’d ballroom dance in the streets until the night was through.
Maybe they would.
Whenever I used to exit the movie theatre, after seeing a terrific film full of dancing and singing, I would always say to my friend, “I wish life could be like that. Suddenly, you’d burst into song and everyone would know the words, no matter who they were, and everyone would dance around you in perfectly flawless steps.”
She’d laugh and agree, completely uninterested, as we walked first to her house, and then I’d walk to mine alone. That had been when we were younger. When we had been in junior year of high school, she’d decided to get into an argument with me over some guy I randomly liked. It was no big deal, but obviously she thought it had been.
I still thought it would be neat for life to be a musical. To laugh and dance perfectly in rhythm, it would all be beautiful.
He tapped me on the shoulder and I slung around to face him as I returned from my reminiscing. His polite smile was quite a change from the severe look his bronze face normally held. I smiled back; nothing in the world could harm me when no one else was watching. I curtsied after he bowed, and together we –me and a bronze confederate general- danced and twirled under the stars.
The stars were brighter here than home. Smaller town, less lights, I guess it made sense.
I was passed from general, to mathematician, to musician, and to artist as we skipped, hopped, and glided in the pale streetlamp light.
They had been lonely for so long, they said with their eyes. They never made a sound other than the careful clanking of their feet. Even when their mouths moved to say something, no sound came out; they were forever silent, just like the dead.
All they had ever wanted was for someone to stay out after most everyone had left.
Someone walked by and saw only me, dancing with myself. I don’t blame them for scurrying home faster. I don’t blame them for not seeing.
Not everyone can see.
Abruptly, the invisible chamber orchestra stopped playing, and the mathematician took center stage. He broke out singing something I couldn’t hear. It was easy to know the words when all you heard was silence. We linked arms. He clanked, I skipped, and we jigged all around the pavement. All the other figures joined in. The general’s sword clanked, the musician’s sheet music flew, and the mathematician’s glasses bounced.
When the sun began making the sky gleam from below the horizon, the statues all slowed and returned to their posts. I laughed at the sheer joy of it all, of everything, of the musical that couldn't exist in the real world.
I walked with the general back to his plaque. Our silence was friendly.
The general reached his post, stood up straight and looked to the rising sun. He looked back to me.
He bowed.
And I curtsied.
