tremble, small hands, eyes to flutter

Again she is reaching some sort of peak in the story the words of this song are singing. I am aware her voice is drowning me, I cough to make sure. We the audience are witness to a 'situation' and it isn't what we came for. I pull at the cloth of the arms of my chair, bracing against the vibrations her voice send bouncing off the wood, the metal of the theater. I am rubbed, and becoming raw.

Her little hand holding the microphone, shaking to and fro, it's metal mouth open, eating her voice, spilling it out loudly into my head and her eyes are gone. Flutter, my eye lids practice applause while I unravel to this discomfort, hers and mine. She can't really mean to be this lost little girl amidst the padded seats of the curtained, echo filled theater. Everyone, just like me sees this, knows but doesn't.

Silence and applause.

I look away frightened, frightened that I may cry if I see her alone up there in front of all of us again and if I don't return my gaze to her I may never feel Real for real, again.

I'm thinking of her story in my mind, making pictures of her as a kid. Big business came and pretended to be her daddy and they used her till she had pumped out enough movies and honed herself into one of the most professional actor/singers in the country. And with all of her accomplishments by her lonely side, she built her own little story she told only to herself, it goes like this, "I can't find center." Hands on her center, you could point there, "that's center". She never found it.

So off balance and wildly amazing, she's moving around the stage again. She's singing and her eyes focus and release and the trembling, yes that trembling, subtly climbs out of her mouth and into her arms again.

The audacity defies social protocol and she checks into her own self induced ecstasy and agony. It chokes me. We sit out here scared and uncomfortable, madly invested in every word and note that comes because it's not her talent she's sharing, it's her little trembling soft hands that hold the mike that holds the sound of her guts.

I finally break, tears run, face red with release. She is a ghost in a borrowed body and nobody notices me weep because they are all worried about crying themselves.

Her body jerks along with the tremble in her small hands and her enormous voice tears at our well constructed impressions of ourselves and she is done and we roar, we clap and she says, "Thank you thank you.." She's recovered her well organized, professional entertainer voice and just before she exits stage left, just before she passes behind the curtain, I see her flutter, whispering, "small and alone".

But what I really saw was her pointing and saying, "That's center" and I find it, despite myself.