A Genuine Attempt
I have almost no recollection of leaving the City, but arriving at the Festival I remember perfectly. It was an empty field where the bus had dropped me off. From there I walked for a day until I got to a wire fence which only covered twenty feet of the field and could easily be walked around. But I knew better than to walk around it. I jumped it, and the moment I cleared the old wire fence I knew I had arrived. As soon as I climbed it —something changed, that is to say I felt something change in me.

I couldn’t hear the music yet, but as soon as I hopped the fence I remember hearing the bass of a distant stereo system, pounding at my feet like an enormous heart buried in the ground. The bass slithered up my spine and down again, energising me. With the bass at my toes there was no limit to how far I could walk without tiring.

I met people in the field and we would walk together, sometimes just myself and one other, sometimes in large groups, but they would all eventually go off on her own, claiming they heard music over a hill. This happened again and again, members of my group claiming to hear the Festival music and going off by themselves (it became an unspoken thing that if someone started walking in a different direction that they could hear the music). Eventually I looked around and realised I was alone.

Once on my own I started hearing things, but what I heard wasn’t music, except by a very broad definition of music indeed. I heard dogs growling, the angry shouts of men telling me to stop—it all sounded so close to me. But every time I turned around I was alone for miles. The growling of dogs at my back was so loud that I could have sworn a dog was only a few feet away from me. Terrified, I started running, and the sounds faded away. I couldn’t tell you for how long I ran. For a long time I was either running or walking, never standing still. The moment I stopped moving I could hear the growling again. In this constant state of unsealed I forgot why I was there in the first place. I forgot about the Festival, about having fun. All that mattered was to keep moving. In that vast empty space I would occasionally come across other people running, who claimed they could hear the barks and shouts too.

When I finally got picked up I was relieved. I didn’t have to run anymore. I could lay completely motionless. It felt strange, being completely still after doing nothing but move for so long. The security guards who captured me were odd characters, not at all my image of Festival security. For one thing, they weren’t dressed like they weren’t festival security, that distinctive white uniform. They were dressed like normal festival attendees, even though I knew they weren’t there for the Festival. They took me to their campsite and gave me my own a tent and sleeping bag in which I slept for many days.

When I finally woke up, they gave me a book that explained who they were. It was a ratty old exercise book, the kind students back home use to take notes, but the pages were brown and fragile as autumn leaves. It had been sewn up and stitched with a needle and the cover had been replaced with cloth, so that it resembled an old piece of clothing. I inferred that the book had been doing the rounds in that camp for some time.

The first thing the book explained was the difference between the ‘festival’ and ‘The Festival’. According to the book, the ‘festival’ and ‘The Festival’ were different places, and that this confusion was a deliberate one designed to trick attendees.

‘The Festival’, it read, ‘is inaccessible to most people who go looking for it, and it is for this reason that the festival exists: to provide a home for all the people who fail to find The Festival’.

The second part of the book was an account of the people I had ended up with. They were called The Dancers, and had as their common goal a desire to master what they called the Language of the Body, ‘what people at the festival incorrectly call ‘dancing’. It was for this reason that none of them spoke. They believed that verbal communication inhibited mastery of the language of the body. Thus, It was against the law of the campsite to talk.

The rest of the book was devoted to what was called the method of ‘mastering the sixteen’. If I were to attempt to join the Site, I would have to dedicate myself to mastering what the book called the ‘sixteen’. ‘The sixteen’ were a series of coordinated movements that had created the site. It was their belief that these very movements had created The Festival and everything in it.

The text concluded with the various rules of the Site, chief among which was that there was to be absolutely no verbal or written communication with any other member of the Site. The punishment for breaching any of the rules enumerated was banishment.

Once my weight had returned and I was strong enough, I began my training. The first few months was dedicated to conditioning alone, what the book had called ‘preparing the body for the sixteen’. It was the hardest thing I had ever done at that point in my life, having lived a mainly sedentary existence. Often I would return to my tent at night and collapse on my sleeping bag and fall asleep, not even bothering to zip the bag around me. But I was glad to be working toward a goal, instead of just wandering around, searching for music I could not hear or running from security guards I could not see.

My desire to learn the sixteen, to master them, was all I could think about. It pains me that I am not able to describe what the sixteen are—witnessing them is a sight to behold, each movement more breathtaking than the last. To attempt to explain all of the intricate, seemingly impossible movements that make up even the most introductory dances is simply beyond my abilities as a writer, which are already limited. The exercise kept me from questioning at any point the ‘meaning’ of the sixteen. I was quite simply too tired to think thoughts of this nature.

Once a week, all of the members of the Camp attempted the dance they were grappling with at a performance attended by the entire Site, and were judged. When the Elders gave their judgment, they gave thumbs up for a perfect attempt, a closed fist for a failed but genuine attempt, and thumbs down for a non-attempt. The camp had nothing but applause for me from the start; even my failed attempts were widely admired and talked about. I was unanimously regarded as one of the Site’s rising stars, completing dance after dance in record time.

In what felt like no time at all I had completed the ninth dance, whereupon I graduated to the two person dances. The partner I was allocated for the final six was a beautifully slender young girl with the body and gait of a ballerina. I quickly fell in love with her, though we never spoke. I came to know her, not as a collection of preferences, aversions, memories and impressions, but instead as a series of gestures, echoes—the squeak of her slipper, a bead of sweat of her neck. All of our time together was part of one unbroken dance. I knew she felt the same way, and this was confirmed when one night she whispered ‘I love you’ into my ear, under our sleeping bag. I had never imagined that one of us would dare to break the Site’s cardinal rule. I was so overwhelmed with happiness that I wept silently. She looked at me hoping I would reciprocate. I tried, but I simply could not get the words out. Every time I tried to whisper the words ‘I love you’ all that came out was a low, guttural groan. I could see in her eyes that she was deeply hurt by this. In the weeks that followed, I tried to demonstrate my love for her by devoting myself even more to the mastering the dances than I had before. But every night she would whisper that she loved me when we were both under the sleeping bag, and every time I was unable to say it back, tears welled up in her eyes.

Finally, one night she didn’t say anything, and the next morning I woke to find her empty sleeping bag.

One of the rules of the camp that was listed in the book was in the event of a partner deserting, for whatever reason, the remaining member of the partnership would not be allocated a new partner; they became an ‘incomplete’. The ‘incompletes’ were the ‘bad fruit’ of the Site. Mostly older men, the incompletes were rarely seen—the laws of the Site required that they stayed in the place where they and their deserter partner chose to erect their tent, away from the main camp. It was among these sad and loathsome individuals that I was to count myself from that time on.

At first, having a deep contempt for the incompletes, I took my meals alone. I did everything alone. I didn’t want to associate with the other incompletes. I found them to be self-pitying, loathsome creatures. But what was the most humiliating thing of all, I was required to perform the two-person dances alone, and more than this, to make a genuine attempt at doing them perfectly. What constituted a genuine attempt was at the discretion of the Elders. If a member was said to have not made a genuine attempt, they received a severe beating in front of the entire Site by one of the masters. The beatings were severe to discourage people from making non-genuine attempts.

The problem with this was that it was impossible to master the two-person dances as one person; without describing the dances, something I have already said I am utterly incapable of, I will say that in two-person dances there is a great degree of using one’s partner’s weight, leaning on them, elevating, pushing off them, things that are quite literally impossible to do as one person. When an incomplete attempts a two-person dance, they are always deemed to have not made a genuine attempt, and receive a beating in front of the entire Site. It was one of the few permitted forms of entertainment at the Site, the ridiculing of the incompletes as they attempted the impossible. As a young man I had booed these pitiful men and women with the rest of them, but deep down I had always felt a deep pity for them. Many of the incompletes had been at one time among the most skilled members of the Site, and it was the most pitiful thing to watch such people genuinely attempt two-person dances alone. But even sadder than this was when an incomplete finally broke, gave up, and ceased making genuine attempts. Ironically, not making a genuine attempt resulted in a substantially gentler beating than making a genuine attempt. Knowing this, the incompletes all eventually gave up and spent the rest of their career going through the motions, as it were.

I had lasted much longer without giving up than was normal for an incomplete, and for my stubbornness I was dealt increasingly vicious beatings in front of the entire Site. The young ones, sick of having to watch the severe beatings I received, began trying to convince me to crack. They all shouted at me to give up. While I recognised the futility of continuing, the pain I received was a welcome distraction from the far more painful thoughts that tormented me when I would retire to my tent, alone. The injuries I received were, if anything, more of a painkiller.

But eventually I did crack, as all incompletes do. But It happened in a most extraordinary way. One night, as always, I walked to the stage to perform my dance, the sixteenth and final, the dance my partner and I had been on when she left me, the dance I was condemned to perform for the rest of my life. I walked out onto the stage, and immediately the wall of booing and hollering commenced. I had learned to drown it out, but on this night, against my better judgment, I snuck a peak at the crowd. When I looked at the Masters who sat below the Elders, I was shocked to find that some of the men and women who had joined the Site after me were already Masters. None of them jeered at me or booed me, but looked on at me with the same rehearsed look of mild disapproval. My eyes then drifted down to the young ones who sat cross-legged at the front of the stage. Some of them had been brought to the Site that very week and were watching their very first performance. I locked eyes on one of the girls. She was young and very beautiful, and her features reminded me of those of my former partner. I could see a deep pity in her eyes, though she attempted to hide it, like I had, to please the other initiates. Somehow I knew that this was her first recital. She didn’t know what was going to happen to me, the beating I would receive, or why everyone was booing. I could see in her eyes that she was hoping for the impossible, that I would surprise everyone and complete the dance.

I held eye contact with the girl at the front for some time. I saw myself through her eyes. Then a reservoir of sadness broke in me. I thought of my partner, out there somewhere, wandering in the field perhaps, or even worse, at the festival, and at that moment I felt an intense heat cut through me. It was a blinding pain that ran vertically through my whole body, bisecting me. Stunned by the pain, I bowed deeply, reflexively, as all dancers do before they commence their attempt. When I bowed I felt my back rip in two, like the hem of a shirt that is too small for ones body, or the way a single-celled organism splits into two. The booing stopped instantly, punctuated by a collective gasp. I stood there, observing myself from some distant place. I saw two people standing there on the stage. They were identical to me in height and weight, but had no clearly identifiable facial features; there was only smooth, naked skin with no genitals, like life-sized cookie-cuts of men with human skin.

Despite being identical to each other in appearance, I could see from the way they bowed that they were very different people: One bowed playfully, even flamboyantly, the other with strength and poise, clearly determined to complete the dance. With no involvement on my part—I was merely a spectator—I watched this strange duo perform the sixteenth and final dance with a level of precision and skill rivalling the Site’s most elite partnerships. When they finished, they took their bow, and I found myself transported back to the space in the middle of where they had been standing side by side. I was shaking profusely, barely able to stand. But despite the pain and dizziness, I managed to remain rooted there on the spot, awaiting the Elder’s judgment.

Where the performances of incompletes had always resulted in booing and raucous laughter, on that particular night there was only silence. The whole Site was waiting to see what the Elders would say. They retired to their quarters to deliberate, only to return over an hour later. The great elder held out a closed fist, signalling a failed but genuine attempt. I received deafening applause. Even the Elders applauded. Only the Masters, whose smug dispositions had been replaced by looks of positive disbelief, did not applaud.

Now the Site eagerly awaits my performances every month. Every performance night there is palpable electricity as I walk to the stage. The young ones whisper among themselves “will tonight be the night that an incomplete completes a two-person dance?” Occasionally I am not able to split in two. On these nights, I do not make a genuine attempt. I don’t make any attempt at all. After bowing, I walk directly to the spot on the stage where the beatings customarily take place, and prostrate myself. But these punishments are nothing compared to the unbearable pain I feel when I split in two.

Indeed, on nights when I split in two, I have to spend the entire next day in bed recuperating, something that no one in the Site knows, as incompletes must live apart from the rest. Splitting apart with such regularly is even beginning to leave a faint scar, running all the way up my body. Every day I see a new wrinkle or liver spot on my hand or face, and even basic exercises are much harder than they once were. When one spends all of one’s time dancing, it is very easy to lose track of the time.