I just want to be stabbed by my lover in a desperate bid to save the world from my awful power whilst we both cry over the stupidity of my betrayal (that was inevitably going to happen and we both knew it) and beg the universe to let us wake up someplace better, safer, together! Is that too much to ask?
I like to think about Somewhere Else as much as the next tma listener, but more often I find myself mulling on its absence.
There’s something so morbidly beautiful about complete and total death. Two desperate lovers begging for something better and getting precisely nothing.
All they went through, everything they did being totally pointless. Two beautiful beings of hope and light fighting with all they have against all the odds only to be completely destroyed, gone.
Everything they did meant nothing, and yet still it meant so much. Years of life and love recorded on tapes with nobody left to listen to them. A fleeting existence marked solely by its bleak, sudden ending.
People talk about those they love being taken too soon, “before their time”, but Jon and Martin always had their clocks marked. Whether by otherworldly powers of fear, those that surrounded them, or even the trappings of the narrative, they were always supposed to die then and there. In each others arms, and no amount of effort or exertion could have changed a single thing.
But despite this awful suffocating end that they were always bound to they loved each other. They shared moments that belonged to them and they laughed and they talked about cows and stumbled through misunderstandings and they got to show each other just how much they were worth.
Sometimes, I think, the inevitability of the ending makes those moments all the more beautiful.
There’s something so grotesquely thrilling about the unknowing being a dance. As an art form dance is uncomfortable, painful, and even causes lasting damage to the dancer; but above all it is something that MUST be beautiful.
“I just want you to join me for a dance!”
Such an innocent statement, even if you know that it isn’t.
To think of a partner dance: Perhaps a waltz where your partner is much taller than you, their position forcing your arms out of their sockets as you struggle to keep your form.
A solo dance? Ballet without training, elegant poses that stretch your tendons til they snap; pointe work without shoes, the weight of your body crushing the bones in your feet.
Or musical theatre! Your body moves at a pace you can’t control as your throat grows hoarse from singing louder than you ever should. A smile (or perhaps a grimace) plastered painfully on your face.
What about contemporary? Your soft unprepared body meeting the harsh ground from a leap that ended too soon; something tears inside you as you draw yourself up gracefully in a way you wouldn’t think possible.
The pure raw confusion of your body doing something you never allowed it to know how to do. What is this body? What is this movement? What shape am I being twisted into?
“so effortless!” an onlooker exclaims, as another bone snaps.
You’d scream, but the punishment for not smiling is worse than this pain.
The harsh gaze of dead, automaton eyes watches you from the wings, judging and critiquing. It’s not good enough, your performance wasn’t perfect; but if you’re lucky you won’t live long enough to hear the feedback. You wouldn’t understand it anyways.