DANCING ALOUD
 - By Julie Alissi, Bryon Cahill, Jeffrey Ives, and Sandhya Nankani

First Set:
Jimmy's so tired of sneaking around with you. He's tired. Listen to how tired he is. He's tired but he can still play guitar... and sing about bein' tired. He may not be the sultan of swing, but it ain't no thing. He's too busy not bein' busy. Just makin' rythmic rainbows outta secret key changes and mellow melodies. Play it Jimmy. Play it for the people who paid to ponder your pain. Play it for us. Play it for me.
     Your fingers strum away at the strings, smoothing away my hollow gains. You ask me not to take it no more--this inconsideration. Leave it all alone and push it away--into the dusty corners where aging memories evaporate. your velvet voice grants me my will. It brings back the love in me.
     This country is full of empty stages. There are instruments that have only been touched by the machines that made them. Sitting in stores, surrounded by corrugated cardboard. But this stage is full and these instruments throb to leering beats and dare their untested brothers and sisters to join them. And there is shouting and laughing and nobody asks why or why not. That's how it is. Are you going to change it? Half the world looks into the mirror and asks, "When will I grow up?" while the other half is asking, "When did I grow up?"
     I ask the gypsies to read my hand, to take me across that bridge of time, the one that made me forget how to play the notes on my harmonica. She looks at me with her dark eyes and leads me back to the stage. "Sing, dance, clap," she says. Remember the red hot summer day of spitfire fireworks and steamin' pavements. Run under balconies and strut with the band! "We don't all pray the same, but we all mean it."

Break:
   The silence is unsettling. Isn't it always? No. Hard questions. Easy answers. Gotta fill the nothing with something. Always. Everything is always magnetic, prophetic, majestic, cosmetic, sympathetic, straight up old school crushed apoplectic! Ya gotta be someone. Might as well be you.

Second Set and Third:
   What do you do to be someone? On a Wednesday night the stars you wear can be just as proud of you. Plum pudding, black eye peas, jolof rice, and fried plantain--food is music and music is life. Bang the drums and we all eat a piece of soul. Without soul, what would become of us? Lights fade and we sleep all night? None of us are crazy, but we aren't all the same.
   These are loose joints. Nature made them and we use them, our bodies move and sometimes there's no reason. Sometimes nobody tells us to. Sometimes they just move.
   And then the times when the rain hits you in the eye and it slithersssss and your mouth cries begging for the awful salt of it. What is the wetness? The cloud's confession? Or the sheer truth of your understanding? Try to breathe. Try to hold it. The hurt of it all ain't so bad. We've seen worse. Make your own condensation. Believe it. Cry. And then wake up and look yourself in the mirror. It's never as bad as it seems--always better than we think. I got a sign. It told me to fly. I got a plan. It tells me to sigh. I got to try. The music tells me to forget about contrite.

Final Sets and Refuge:
   THEY DON'T SCREAM ENOUGH AT PTA MEETINGS!!! There's not enough rhythm in lines at the bank. If you're looking for it, you might find it in one place. If you're not looking for it, it might find you.
   Ditches and stitches. You can get over it and you can sing about it and we'll listen and tap our feet and fall in love doing it. And there will be children born nine months later who will know their Godfather played guitar on the streets of old town Chicago. The questions stand. Still. They bump into answers only nobody knows. And 24 hours of a day go by--some saving is waiting to be done.
   If you do them, someone else might notice enough to tap their feet and go home a little bit happier than they would have otherwise.
   Have you ever slept with a smile on your face and a song stuck in your heart? Have you ever run out of room for the things you want to feel? Do you trust yourself with the truth? Do you trust yourself with THE BLUES?