Sometimes this voice is raspy, sullen, and shy. She says she won’t come out to play today. Other times she struts like Jumpin' Jack Flash. She has a statement to make, a performance at stake. She feels a quickening like before stepping out on stage. Like a wild cat just released from her cage.  She lets the words be free from preconceived notion. No approval or applause necessary, no narcissistic need to satisfy.

She knows if it speaks to you, you will hear it resonate within. She doesn’t expect you to understand unless you want to. She plays dyslexic scrabble and turns the gram-o-phone up loud. As a girl she laid by the hi-fi-delic stereo and imagined a miniature concert inside the speaker. Inside the velvet undergound her riff played on and on.

No stage fright, she bends over with her denim rock n’ roll ass and plugs in the antique white Fender Strat and tells the whole world ... 

Hey, Hey, You, You Get Off of My Cloud ...

She kneels and feels the ecstasy of the solid body electric. She tells the truth. The electrical current is wound through the strings. She finds home at the fifth fret. She combines the A minor penatonic scale and plays a melody in time with the beating of her heart. She exhales stretching the fascia over the muscles and bones of her rib cage, the curve of her breast.

The skin she resides in is her own, no reveling in Revlon, no plumped up collagen lips, no masquerade, no wolf in sheep’s clothing, no fashion parade, no emperor’s new clothes, no debutante ball. This ain't no dress rehearsal. This is it. The time is Now.

There’s nothing like it in the world; nothing like the exhilaration, the sonic buzz.  In this moment you will answer for nothing, to no one. In this terrain there is no counting of votes or casting of  ballots. Here the muse knows the solitary companionship of One. The tribe can wait while the writer wrestles with words. The hush of intimate communication trumps and precedes the mass, the media. It all starts here. Whispering within and walking where love has not yet dared.

Sometimes those who know the darkness are closest to the light, like a moth fluttering near the bulb, like the Phoenix, like Icarus' scorched wings from flying too close to the sun. Like VanGogh fearing to steal its radiance.

The muse knows the Virgin Mother, Mother Nature’s fortunate son, Mary Magdalene and Proud Mary. She hears Garland and Holiday. Channels Grace Slick, Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde. She knows Brando, and Elvis and Hud. She has lived In the Heat Of the Night, On the Waterfront and East of Eden. Far beyond the drama and boredom of Wisteria Lane and Melrose Place.

She hears the harmonica blowin’ in the wind and the sound of the drum beat now calling ...

Copyright Scarlett SuMac 2010.