Blind, gutsy and gifted … Karin discovers life, love and independence through learning how to dance.
Promo for Can You Feel Me Dancing? [1986] starring Justine Bateman as Karin
Karin feels the rays against her eyes & sways, two ticket stubs in her hand, invitations inside her carry-bag. Larry arrives presently, guiding the cup towards her face. Coke’s strong motion against ice. Her brother’s hair is spiky to touch, of course, echo of freeway traffic in his shaking left hand. Just like his personality. He uses chop- sticks to make beats when they order take-out. Always watching that show – The Fall Guy – in between his practice, driving Karin to work & wishing he was blind. So would that help, if I was blind, just like you Karin? She heard disbelief in his Fall Guy voice when she said she wanted to go to The movies? What the? You? I, no way! Reaching over to touch her arm & say sorry, expertly removing the Coke from her grasp. The cinema’s cooling system hits Karin’s face like a museum of the dark. The preview starts but Larry’s talking about his band The Cathode Rays & how he’s been giving it some thought & has decided to leave home. Karin’s trying to make it out, some kind of children’s movie, all that Disney tinkling on the keys ... the cinema’s roaring with subliminal advertising & though it has no obvious effect on Karin, who is to say what might happen when an image passes through a person, as the blip-verts did. Their hot velocities, yesterday evening, downtown. The premiere this afternoon is for another of Justine Bateman’s teen films. Karin lined up for tickets all day outside the radio station offices, on that wind-blown interstice of the new city. Dancing makes you free. You’re in an invisible machine, standing upright, & each movement of your body bends space & time. For Karin, that moment before lift-off comes like a swoon, or a screen kiss at the end of a dance. She freezes in mid-air like Superman before a blue screen, or a magician’s assistant, supported by strings, listening for the end of each scene. A minimum of crowd noise, just the tube’s silver surf. The way it was that afternoon at home when she sat & listened all the way through it. That silence just before the evening news began, that high & lonely message, the dead air calling home. That cessation, at some core aural level, of her mother’s progress across the lounge’s lino floor, stunned by a headline. The moment between dancing & love-making, then, amounts only to a way of saying the same words, singing the same tunes. She & Richie dance near the bar, her feet on top of his white dancer’s shoes. Now, the moment the movie begins, Larry’s talking about his mobile phone & how when he types in movies it mistakes it for mother & Karin wonders if he even knows the movie’s started & that this is how it feels to fall in love. The moment after that moment between, when people become lovers in lanes or catch commuter buses. That musky hum, of things we know of that are yet to happen. Advertorial dreams, or the snicker of a game-show hostess off-camera. Heaters the crew might have trained on the site of their screen love’s consummation, a warmth that she alone could not provide, not in a sex scene, & certainly not with him. & so, in the cinema toilet cubicle, Karin sits listening as two girls discuss Justine Bateman’s after-party outfit, her uniform for the obligatory autograph sessions. Parting with her invitation at the door, Karin’s hit by a whirl of silk scarves & hears the voice of Karin & Larry’s introducing her as his sister & saying how she’s blind & how she likes that other movie she was in & Justine Bateman’s going Hi Karin then Oh then Oh, I see & Karin’s standing there shaking, going No. No you don’t. Across the street the last supermarket's already closed but Karin’s out in the middle of the road, sensing both the kerb & the figure she guesses is still Justine & she’s trying to say that even though the end is coming soon, more than TV, more than cinema even, how she wants the movies to come to her in her radio-play dreams & then Justine’s leaving, the taxi’s arrived & she hasn’t even said goodbye & when the soundtrack cuts out it’s cold & Karin recalls that she never did learn to dance, despite his encouragement & now it’s snowing in Los Angeles & she’s the only one here who knows.
First published by The Red Room as part of its Poetry Picture Show project.