Nothing moves in the house till the wind blows.
We hammer up the new boards to patch the holes in the walls, but it’s taken us longer than we anticipated, and we glance at each other every time the clouds begin to pass overhead. Not nervously, in particular — we could brace ourselves for what happens next, but there’s really no reason to. We’re used to it by now.
Thunder rips the distance, and we call it a day.
The wind begins to blow.
This old house, it begins to dance.
First the drapes billow with initial force, the approaching storm’s advance energy electrifying the building and awakening its revelers. Then silverware, clothing, dishes, chairs, pictures, and books — oh, the books! — come whipping through the rooms on currents of air, whirling and cascading with sheer joy and particular abandon.
We take it all in, a spectacle as wondrous and disruptive as it sounds. We watch the pirouetting coatracks and the jitterbugging cushions, and we brace ourselves against the gale, holding hands, lost in the chaos and beauty, simultaneously not wanting it to end and dreading having to clean up after it. And as quickly as it began, it stops, everything stopping in mid-motion and crumpling or crashing or flopping or clanging to the floor.
The more I think about it, the less I’m convinced that patching the holes in the walls is actually the answer.
Melissa St. Pierre plays us out, fingers buffeting piano keys like sheets of rain, increasing and decreasing intensity and velocity at random. Sonelab Sessions is the house, the piano is the action, and White Reeves Productions is you and me.
Or maybe you and me are you and me.
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