I encountered Neptune at a party on the last warm weekend of the year.
The roof, like a vacant parking lot.
Dim stars at flat night.
Deep lights from the street.
Clusters of us here
and there
and there
.
Small trees growing out of elevated edges so you can't confirm the ground.
WE were on the dance floor when the music got house-y.
The party became a mass.
WE condensed. Pulsing, Body, Body, Body, Body. Two's and all of us.
And those who didn't know how to move
or couldn't find it filtered to the edge.
A fist. Closing
over sand underwater.
Bod(y)bod(y)bod(y)body(y).
WE became a mass, moving.
His earring. Jewels. And necklace. Crystal. Painted. Dipping. Purple, orange, green.
Two of them, spun.
WE cleared a space,
a circle around. All the world and back in time.
Right here. Go, now , Go , go , Go , go.
The time and space of us emerged. Out of the mass,
and our studies
of a history that is partially ours,
now
but a distant present, up in Harlem, far away.
And I know people from Ireland are here. Dancing.
And the looks on his face were
pure, Glee, Fluid, Glow.
[Ba , Ba , Ba , Ba.]
I'm standing behind a budget disco queen.
The magic mostly works when more people are in on it,
making a career out of it,
a life.
And many of the people here are just kids. All that could change in an instant.
An other party.
We know what we are supposed to do,
but it isn't any less fun,
but the stakes are lower.
Back on the roof, I asked Neptune about her dancing style.
I thought it was a kind,
with a name, expecting a response.
She told me how she studies movement in her walks. Practice. Syncing all motions, to music and back to themselves. The other motions.
I tell her about face dancing, micro dancing, expressions moving as you walk. We both do it, we don't have a name for it, but we do now.
Neptune has undergone a great change, in the past three years or so.
She was contacted by a stranger on Facebook who had a dream about him.
I see a rainbow, in light, in a square on white and blue.
The stranger and Neptune formed a connection over time.
The original contact shared readings and spiritual guidance,
and through his own programming of his own movements,
a c
a
s
c
a
d
e, until a new way of being
became.
I ask if it is a religious practice.
Neptune knows there are others,
but his connection with the stranger is a personal spiritual relationship
that is only about themselves.
Other people get there in their own way,
sync in
on
their own time.
Neptune reprogrammed himself to be open,
so he can sync and build an energy
that in the moment becomes a dance (with purple, orange, green).
And we swirl around. It wasn't planned,
in history, city, mass and body beat.
Programming is Neptune's own language, not adopted from the stranger or the books.
I ask if he is a device on the internet,
He found self-knowledge through a stranger's dream, and it makes it so he knows how to dance.
He is,
and I am too. And on it, off-on it
off and on it
on it, here
People ask
Who are you?
What are you into?
Neptune says he isn't anywhere. He can't answer that question
He's just in the flow,
synced,
to the all
Which is how he dances like that.
Open hand, over sand underwater
And why the trees are magic to the edge
And why the level
Body, Body, Body, Body, not the ground