This Kind Of Connection

acrylic on canvas, 2018

Sometimes it's an hour, never to be repeated again (though we don't know it); sometimes it's one whole night (the kind that bleeds into dawn); other times it's a thing we don't recognise but feel it grow roots and expand across the nervature of who we are in the dark.

Sometimes it grows with us, sacred and steady, unpredictable yet present like a lifetime.

Let's venture right into the spell of its centre: it's the kind of connection where we go so wild and so deep in conversation that it almost feels dangerous – we relish it together, easing ourselves into silences that are vast and yet keep us close.

We are high yet grounded with this possibility: that someone understands us, that they see us, that they hear us without rushing to define us; that they see the shifts and turns in our character and our non-linear selves; that they're with us on some strange field (or its dark frontier), or neck deep in some mind-swamp, and we get to share that moment, that territory, together.

Sometimes, the multitudes we contain get to dance and commingle, and then the connection becomes a banquet, a soul-feast of selves and characters, and parts known and unknown to us participate in this communion where we get to be both hosts and guests.

It's an invitation mixed with attention, it is free but directed, a mixture of roaming and precision. It happens when there's a touch of alchemy coupled with intention, and it is never without risk — it is through vulnerability that performance turns into connection. (All relating starts off as intimate theatre).

It is the kind of connection where we meet someone we willingly choose the longer route with. Someone we can be shape-shifters with.

It is exciting (and scary) to trace the path of recognition, to see where it leads, what it unmasks, what it creates — what we create.

Less an unveiling, more an unfurling: the joy of otherness.

A connection where all sorts of verbs lead us in all sorts of directions — we plunge, we dive, we ride, ascend and descend, traverse and transverse; where we all bring something of our full selves to the table, to the floor, to… wherever we are led, or wherever we dare.

When we create something like a ring, or better, a cup – holding, not binding.

Looking deep but knowing when to look away.

Ultimately, it's choosing trust spiced with audacity, and being ready to share; it’s opening one's closet, shifting the skeletons, and extending an invitation — “there is space here for one more”.

A welcoming of joined mysteries – that kind of connection.