There was a dance night that happened weekly in an old community hall, where a group of people came to dance together in complete darkness. No intoxicating substances, just movements. Each time, someone would bring a playlist and queue it up on the sound system and it would begin. Without words, everyone started moving, knowing that no one else could see them.
In this room, there were lots of us. You could see slithers of people’s shadows like fast-paced auroras, but never got the full picture.
As it begins, it’s easier to look at the floor. It’s usually too intimate or threatening to feel strangers in a darkened room. It loosens up after a couple of songs. People around start breathing heavier, their odours coincide.
A shit song comes on. Take a look around, your eyes are a bit more adjusted now. It’s not as dark as it was. Are people actually dancing to this? It’s easier to keep moving than take a break. Wait for the next banger to hit.
Sylvester- I need somebody tonight.
Patsy Cline- Walking After Midnight.
Years ago, I heard that song and thought about taking a sonic snapshot of different parts of the world at the same time, so I could put them all together and see what the world sounded like at one particular moment. I asked people to all walk to the nearest body of water at Midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, Saturday 26th July. My favourite was Antarctica. It was pretty windy there and you could hear the footsteps on the snow.
Darkness is for sleeping. Letting the body spread and curl in unseen ways, setting up electric pictures for the mind to reanimate experiences of the days. Walk into a door frame, stub your toe, feel the shock of a bastard piece of wood knocking on the door of your corporeal fragility. Darkness, the colour of a bruise on one’s skin, transitioning from red to blue to yellow and back to its original tone.
You’re a larvae in a cocoon, the fleshy opaqueness of your eyelids simulating the chrysalis of a hibernation that is about to hatch. As the morning touches your eyes, the sleepy residue stuck in their corners cracks open. It’s light, a fresh start. Wings flapping madly to the tune of an iPhone alarm. Snooze. Let it be dark again, or at least somewhere in between.
We think of darkness as blackness, but is that really so? Or, is it hues of other colours that are threatened by their own lack. A blue-black, if the moon is out. A pink-black if you’re a pupae. White-black when the streetlight is too far away, green black in a forest. Our eyes adjust, they flex to see the flecks of colour most likely or possible.
Darkness in a voice; low, musty, mysterious. Wrapping around the ears like a silk robe. Rum and raisin chocolate, sweet and deep, a sensuous whip.
Our bodies rest in darkness, even as we live. We open wide for a dentist to shed light in an otherwise lightless cavity. We buy groceries from local supermarkets that flood us with florescent tubes. There’s no orifice that our lungs can see through, they’re encased in a dark that we can’t imagine, blissfully unaware.
With a single spotlight, darkness can transform into a stage, a scene. Beaming on a body, or several. Shadows cast as props, embellishing upon a story or song. The eyes of an audience trapped in their own gazes, like photographs of reflected light.
There have been studies that show that audience members heart rates become attuned to one another whilst watching a performance or piece of theatre. We unknowingly adjust to empathise with those around us. Perhaps it explains the magically visceral collective feeling that can happen in the tense moments when the curtain drops for its final call. It hits the rostrum. A pregnant pause, as we all discern if it is indeed the end of what we are witnessing. If there isn’t another punchline waiting to be had, another burst of light that makes everything much clearer. No, it’s the end of it all, a time to slap our hands together to fill the dark with a new noise.
GEOGRAFIER 