Cause and Effect

In the conga line of cause and effect the only choice you will ever make is if you trudge along or dance. Dragging your cross like a dog on a walk, it was there I met you. Your regulation haircut, regulation consumer branded clothing and regulation step to the silent rhythm of society’s orchestra of drums. My regulation love at first sight.

A step isn’t a step at all in a line of people. You’re one metre further forward but you’re looking at the same view and relatively you’re in the same position you were before. It’s as if a sadistic puppeteer is marching you round in a circle finding the beat in the irony of triumph. We live in a world of people going nowhere and queuing up at traffic lights to make the same journey they did yesterday to no great avail. As we march round the corner their eyes always light up at their big break, new surroundings and chance to turn over a new leaf, but when you turn over the same leaf every time it’s never going to change and that step forward is always another stride on a stubborn treadmill.

Nobody heard the drums but you, as you jigged onwards like a dancer on a sinking ship. The beat did not hurt you like it did me, reminding me of my futility and reinforcing my meaninglessness at an unyielding master – it charmed you and in that beat you made music. In your eyes I found freedom; a man is never truly free until he accepts he has nothing to live for but the sake of living. And in your music I found love.

The paradox of limiting an emotion so pure to language so bordered and narrow has never escaped me, so I won’t patronise you with words that will fall and land so mortal. Everyone treks with their baggage on their back but when you’re free it feels a whole lot lighter. Free, we danced together in the conga line finding music in the unhalting drumbeat and over time we outgrew it. Over time we learned to clap on the off-beat and whistle alongside it. We learned to love in a military rhythm and eventually it didn’t matter that we were on a great voyage to nowhere in particular; it didn’t matter that we were on a package holiday with no landing time. Nothing mattered but us.

We danced along to the music of freedom, making it up as we went along and behind the solemn marchers we smiled like we had no chains to bear. While they stared at the bars holding them in, we stared in the gaps where the sun could peak through. Freedom is closing your eyes because when you close your eyes you could be anywhere; you could be free. Our eyes lost in each other, it didn’t matter if we were walking to nothingness or to everything because our love never changed and our gaze never averted to anything but ourselves.

As the great conga line marched themselves one by one off the cliff-edge we dropped hand in hand, completed, and fell away from the worldly abyss into each other’s arms to lay forever.