Feb Week 1 Prompt: Beat
I opened my bag
Out fell confetti and smells
Latin Memories
As the tiny bits of colored paper flutter to my bed I kneel down to put myself closer to the memory. I close my eyes and think back to the honest stone and confident colors that are Mexico.
It was my first time ever being immersed in a culture so incredibly different from my own. The thing I remember most is the colors-in Mexico, colors know who they want to be. There’s nothing loitering in the middle of green and yellow. The hues are true and bold. It’s such a refreshing change from the United States, where houses hide in exhausted grays and half-hearted periwinkles.
Also the music. The melodies of Mexico are as vibrant as her colors-the tones and beats weave such a sweet story that it is almost possible to taste the chords hanging in the air. It is the music that made the largest impression on me. It seems that music has a way of describing its culture; every country can be represented by a dance.
In Mexico the ballroom is an area of meeting. A place of togetherness. A paved square, maybe; or a sandy street bathed in sunlight that falls in dollops so warm and pure that golden sequins seem to hang in the very air. A lone trumpet cuts the atmosphere with a bold exposition. Just as important as the instrument itself is the man playing it. The real, breathing man standing only a few feet away from the dancers imbues the brassy tones with a quality no synthesizer could ever match. The music is palpitating with a living rhythm. It has a pulse. Soon the melody joins in, and the dancers follow its thread into the middle of the street. They spin and step in spicy spirograph patterns, swirling amid colors of red and gold. Everyone is renewed by this holy communion of movement. Everyone partakes of and understands its beauty and significance. I am astounded, but even as a foreigner I am struck by the fellowship of the dance. That is Mexico.
It was only after I visited there, a place completely removed from my own culture and familiarity, that I was able to see my own country in a completely new way.
A different dance: a black room. The only illumination comes from small patches of colored neon lights, and even they are clouded by artificial smoke. There is no rhythm. There is no melody, only a strong, overpowering, desperate electronically reproduced beat. Pulsing, pounding, throbbing through the tiny room filled to double its capacity. Words of some form might accompany the impersonal, generic beat, but they are lost in muffled speakers, bouncing off so many bodies they are unrecognizable--but it doesn’t matter. They were never important anyway. Like everything else, they have been left behind.
The single thing that remains, the only thing endowed with any importance, is the beat. The dance itself is a thing of endurance. A multitude of frantic bodies drenched in sweat push into each other like badly formed puzzle pieces. They pulse in frenzied necessity according to the omnipotent beat. It constantly accelerates, increasing until no one can measure the pace. That is not important. All that matters is matching its velocity. Keeping up as it rushes on, quickening uncontrollably, scrambling pushing plunging urging on the dancers whose only desire is to live until the end of the song. So many people in such close proximity; all completely alone. One focus. How much can be endured? How much of life can you tolerate? How long will the beat hold out?
I sweep the confetti off of my bed and in the general direction of my waste bin. It makes me sad to throw it away; the colors are beautiful-- but I have little use for mere beauty. I feel somehow secure in being back. Ready to make an extensive “to-do” list. Eager to return to the dance floor. Wondering how long I’ll last.