Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

All the voices

to mention him? Because if you think I’m a weirdo I don’t know what you’d make of Ciaran. I dislike the thought that our weirdnesses may be linked and everything could all be, you know, genetically ordained. In that case there’d be no possibility of escaping. Would there. Most particularly, I didn’t want my whole life wrapped up in a musical haze the way most people seemed to do. I liked silence itself, also ordinary sounds. Such as the scrape of chair-legs against rough floor surfaces, or the noise of paper being crumpled up if you squeezed it into a ball. I didn’t know all the sounds that interested me, butmusic itself I kept trying my best to avoid. Because of the way it envelops someone so that they can’t

think clearly. Your mind can get overpowered and you become, oh I don’t know. … somebody else’s puppet. You lose yourself. Some people say that’s a good thing, losing yourself. I supposetheymeanyou let go of anxieties. And there is something to that. For that’s what happens to me when I dance. I feel calmer, better, and I don’t focus on my leg imbalance. But the difference is the dancing is me . It’s all mine. It’s not something from beyond myself, controlling me and makingme do things, while I hang helpless, at the end of a piece of string. It’s not something from the outside that invades you on the inside. It is what you truly are.

A further thought: Music makes you believe you

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