Shadow

There is a heightened atmosphere when it starts. I always miss the build up – somehow my appearance seems part of the collective first breath out. I never hear the lights come on but an electrical discharge hangs in the air and collects in small pockets around the stage.

This evening the start is gentle, which helps me get into the flow. It’s hard without anything to go on. The dislocation from nothing to this is so demanding.

Your early moves are complex, fluid and full of grace – my instant replication is always simpler, two dimensional. I am warmed up now and I follow you effortlessly. I enlarge and contract, flow along the surfaces. I am thrown to the side and impossibly stretched along the wall, it is no effort for me, just a slightly annoying lack of definition at the edges.

I sense the audience over your shoulder, I enjoy their focus on us.

I wonder about myself. No volition, no apparent history. Yet there is a sense that I am your shadow again, just as I was before. For a short while our relationship is perfectly complimentary – we share the same body until the coming darkness separates us once again.

 

[Image is of David Hughes found on a Scottish Arts Council Archive]

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