Walking The Elephant
For
my birthday, Girl bought tickets. My birthday is in January, but the show I
favoured wasn’t till now. And I was quite certain I would not write about it,
for mostly I prefer to take something ordinary and paint it up in the glitter
of my proficient vision. To start with the extraordinary seemed like cheating,
like a lazy exercise. But sometimes an imaginary elephant turns up and fills
you with such wonderment! I have been to the circus, ladies and gentlemen; a
circus unseated, where you wander, with the crazy performers, and they swing
over your head and stewards in leather kilts are busy keeping the balance
between thrill and law suit. What the troupe present is inspired by the journey
of a wedding gift elephant. Walking from Lisbon to Vienna, thrilling and
alarming, it represents the bewildering, discomforting delight of the unfamiliar,
the push to believe that things can be different, the very extraordinary
wonderment that transforms what was previously regarded as mundane. Proximity
makes the magic powerful. I feel unlocked. I feel like I’ve mastered the
trapeze myself. I feel like taking my elephant for a long walk.
Comments
Oh, and happy (very) belated birthday.