I think this one comes out of some of the emotional background of Who Wants To Live Forever -- that weight of nostalgia, that longing for another world. I'm still so tired of being here. I'm not suicidal, most of the time, just weary... this breathtaking, soul-scarring, heartbreaking, physically heavy weariness, this bone-crushing, mind-melting nostalgia for something I can hardly remember or perhaps never experienced. I feel like I don't belong here, and I want to go somewhere where I do... home -- wherever that even is anymore.
Locked in a sky so blue
Is a land made for me and you
And we're going there, but until the dream comes true
There's a secret place
So full of love and grace
When the world spins and breaks apart
I'm going to the other heaven of my heart...
I've been realising lately that the theme of a lot of my work (not just choreography) is the theme of escape. Not extreme, altered-reality escape -- not detaching oneself from one's emotions; more like escaping into a better reality. I spent so much time in my head because that was where my better worlds were -- the worlds in my head that I unlocked and sculpted with my fingers on the keyboard and my feet on a creaking wood floor. Maybe this song best describes what I've been doing with my artistic output all along. The themes were about escaping because that's what I have always wanted, more than anything -- to be able to reach the goodness that exists only just beyond the curtain of the physical, time-bound world. I can feel it, I sometimes see glimpses of it, but it can't come here, and, until my time comes, I can't go there either. I guess this is why songs like Terry Scott Taylor's Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (among others) resonate with me SO strongly -- at least there is one other person on the planet who sees it too. It's not just me.
And escape is not just the theme of my work, it's often the reason I create. I can go forward to heaven, or back to times I had with people who I will never see again until I can move forward to heaven -- and in the past few years, creating art has often done both at the same time. Choreographing this song specifically takes me back to the time when I still had viable dreams of choreographing and performing, and the friendship of people like M and Brittney. If I could lock myself in any year forever, it would be 2012. There was so much potential and hope in my life then. Now I'm just old and washed up. Doing this piece has really made me realise just how critical M's very existence was to my creative process. There's a duet section in this piece, and I still see her beside me in my mind's eye, doing the beats and turns as I write them down -- her endless energy and bright dramatic eyes. She wanted to escape too, and she was lucky enough to get it. I would be lying if I said I wasn't jealous. I've already choreographed a piece in her memory, but I think this one is in her memory too. No doubt everything I choreograph from now on will be.
I'm about a third of the way through the song now. It's a light, airy allegro piece, very ethereal, lots of arms and heads and a few floating turns... a lot like the music itself, energetic yet dream-like. I am LOVING choreographing the duet part (I still have a little bit of it to go), especially making them intertwine with each other and with White Heart's glorious harmonies. I can't put into words how much I wish M could dance this with me for real. I wish the curtain of time didn't seperate us.
There I go, trying to escape again.
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