INTRODUCTION CONTRIBUTORS ABOUT

Twelve thoughts on tightrope walking

Charlotte Burnett

I went through a phase where numbers had undertones:

One is not enough. Two feels awkward. Three is fine.

Four is bad, I read once that it is unlucky in China.

Six feels evil for some reason.

Seven is okay for some reason.

Eight is a multiple of Four, the unlucky number.

Nine is Three fines.

Ten—too even.

Eleven—better.

Twelve is a multiple of Six. And Four.

A blended figure has dreamed her legs into existence.

To traverse a tightrope and balance en pointe, one must be perfect at all times. With every step, she moves to the counts—One, Two, Three. The calmness of a waltz. Anything else is dangerous territory.

I love to dance, toeing the line between staying in my shell and pressing it open so it expands and cracks.

🃄

With smudges of coloured pastel, the artwork could have sprung from the hands of a child. It gives me that icky feeling I had as a child when my hands were covered in oil pastel. I hated glue as well, and the thought of having to peel off every little patch stuck to my skin. It seemed an endless job, and I wouldn’t rest until it was done.

You paint using a brush, an extension of your hand that separates you and the stain and it doesn’t feel as bad. But then you must consider the dissociating need to thoroughly scrub the brush when you’re done, rinsing away the brown muddle of colours. Then you have to wash your hands through the water stream a satisfactory number of times. But when you try to get the paint off you may lose count and must restart. Instead, you choose to always end on a Nineteen—no factors there.

I recently witnessed some children chalk up a vibrant storm in their concrete schoolyard. Their tracky-dacks and windcheaters were dipped in their scribbled messes of pastel pink, yellow, blue...I wondered if their parents would enjoy the clean-up. A part of me wished I didn’t worry about such things.

🃄

I am scared of tarot cards. It looks like a tarot card.  

Tarot cards capture scenes within, like the artwork—a circus act that you will be trapped in, or a dancing figure you must submit to. They warn you of impending doom beyond your control. Your performance will exceed the counts of the waltz—your Fourth step will miss the string, and you will disappear into the gravel. You’ll don a red scarf and never waft back up again.

I may not follow the whole spiritual realm, but there is always the what if? I love trees, but our relationship rests in limbo—if I think of a tree limb falling, crashing, smashing through a window too often, will I somehow conjure that into reality? Health influencers always talk about manifesting your ideal life, meanwhile, during lockdown, while pacing around my room to music and imagining scenarios, I suddenly became scared of the Freddie Mercury song I was listening to, lest I summon his ghost or something. The forces of nature will not be tricked by a Great Pretender. There is always someone watching.

🃄

There is another entity in the picture sitting below the act, letting the rope pull tight enough like a paperweight on a swing. She looks up to where the dancer performs. Her red scarf is wayward, less glamorous and grandiose. She keeps the act grounded in raw reality. The paperweight child.

The pole to her side swells up at the top, bunched sheets creating an illusion of a faux-tree. The highlights match those on the dancer’s tutu. Below, they also match the paperweight’s show pants—what she wears when she knows the diamonds and ditz and pure white tutus are a facade of perfectionism, but deep down still has a want for them.

I am short enough that I only come up to the paperweight’s head, which I think is fitting. I imagine those two points of people—the performer and the watcher—sitting on each of my shoulders so that both feel conflicting and uneven. It makes my ears tingle, my neck feel crooked, as if my skin is covered in un-scratchable itches.

🃄

When the dancer looks down, there are only apparitions, slender lines and streaks of vague highlights and colour. She cannot see her own feet, but she knows they are there, balancing her in place. Does her tightrope even exist? This much, she trusts, is true.

I’d prefer certainty. I will never be a circus elephant and do a little dance for a peanut. Not while the gallery watches. Not while I can’t dictate their reactions.

🃄

Last year, a circus popped up down the road from my childhood home I have yet to leave. It was on an otherwise empty plot and surrounded by townhouses. Soon, apartments would be built in its place but first, my friend and I would walk down to a show one night and feel uncomfortable in the entrance tent.

We took selfies with the anaemic-looking, animatronic lion. Since it was a weeknight there were fewer kids than expected, though I still felt big and cumbersome. I knew I had to push forward since wasting money is a fate worse than death. I ignored the un-mowed, choppy grass we walked through to get to our seats, and blocked all the noises and colours until the actual show began and distracted me from my body entirely.

There was a tightrope act there too—Three men who did backflips on a single strand. Safety in numbers when that number is safe. Fine.

🃄

Sometimes when thoughts flash behind my eyes—the brain’s tactic of processing the experiences I’ve absorbed throughout the day, the noises and colours, the madness of memories into logic all culminates and I feel like my head has exploded—

then there is only peaceful silence, and I can sleep, refreshed.

🃄

At the Circus. In a frenzy. Every eyeball from the audience fixed on a single probe-worthy point. It was only after I turned, seeking a corner for refuge, that I ran mind-first into this piece. I witness the artwork for the first time with the awkwardness of the number Two—my second time in this specific room. Despite its name, it is subtle, sandwiched between two louder, more vibrant works. It softens the brightness and loudness of the gallery, lending less jumbles of emotions. Its bones are not bound by precision and polish. It is a show of the muted reality behind a bombastic and perfected performance. A circus is oddly baron in all its tan shades when the lights go out.

Perhaps that’s why I am comfortable here.

Inklings of the gallery still try to trickle in. It reminds me of how, even in the comfort of my room, I often can’t help but feel that someone is always watching. My collection of stuffed animals moved out in Toy Story fashion a while ago, but figurative angels may always float in the free air behind my back while I sit at my desk. Unless that angel is simply a scrutinising part of myself.

🃄

We went for a walk today since it is finally on the cusp of spring. It was the perfect temperature with a light breeze, though I sensed something asthmatic in the air. The smell reminded me of the ominous sound of wind chimes, and sure enough, a house we soon passed had them ringing outside its front door. I looked up, saw how dark the clouds were getting, the foreboding sky, and knew we had to hurry home.

Now that we are back, I hide inside from the thunder with as many switches off and cords unplugged as I can remember. I check the weather app—‘severe thunderstorm warning’—I already know this, but I need the validation.

Despite the unrelenting fear from a Two-faced storm, it is indicative of that childhood feeling, wherein you yearn for some spooky and exciting, old-timey omens without the perils that come with it. Like the creaky swing set you trapeze off in the playground before running home right before the rain hits, that exciting point after you realise the swings and the chimes have found lives of their own.

🃄

The streaks in the artwork look like nicks from someone who dropped or relaxed a pencil. Lines like scribbles without too much strain. It doesn’t pretend to be realistic, like some sort of replacement for reality. It needn’t stilt stiff to one side and topple entirely if it chooses to free up its footing. I might be both the paperweight child and the dancer.

🃄

The Third time in the gallery room—on the cusp of slipping into a Fourth time—there is a tourist group passing through. I manage to ignore them, even though it’s weird to stand with a notebook instead of a phone.

I am learning how anything that exists can still be ignored. I don’t have to take in and perfectly analyse every nook of a stimulus or other person in the same room, and how I might exist within it. The paperweight is allowed to climb and perform occasionally, and the performer is allowed to rest.

It doesn’t matter what germs creep along the floor—I drop my bag anyway. I no longer feel restricted by the unevenness of it, weighing down one shoulder, or how it flops and folds in one crooked direction. I make eye contact with a man, and I shrug it off.

🃄

The performer in me is starting to see the world for how it really is—in a calmer manner. I see it as a moving canvas, and I’ve learned to appreciate the curiosities of imperfections. Even if it’s hard to shake the feeling of smudged, pastel covered hands, it has become less of an anxious concern, and more of a simple habit.

The paperweight is also starting to feel less weighed down.

Like a piece of art, I can glance at the impression of the moment, and simply observe a scene without overwhelming scrutiny, to let whatever different pastel strands and streaks there be loose and free.

Linearity can be an inherently wobbly path, one where I must accept my irregularity, and that I exist within an irregular world. We can interpret dances, improvise with our counts and flow with the music. No dance will ever be performed the same, no matter how robotic and second nature a piece of choreography becomes.

One

Two

Three

A jagged waltz, with the sinister and thrilling anticipation of the Fourth count.