Fear and Comfort

On Fear:
Wandering through Vienna Austria, I end up in the museum district.
There is a large performance piece going on.
The music is electronic; a disparate clash of keyboard, drums, sax, guitar and clarinet.
Not quite loud enough to be a cacophony.
Some time later I realize it is evocative of city sounds. Those background noises most of us never hear, except for occasionally jarring sounds that startle us out of reverie.

Eight people, dressed in black, hold a long swath of black webbing, forming a huge rectangle in this urban courtyard. Surrounded on all sides by five to six story buildings. The buildings are stone. My guess would be limestone, slightly yellow cream colored. The unadorned architecture, while slightly regal, hints at ancient Viennese bureaucracies. It is in stark contrast with the incredibly ornate buildings within a stones throw.

The eight people holding the webbing are defining an area about fifty by one hundred feet.
At one short end of that rectangle is the band, amplified, and at the other end stand twelve people, dressed in street clothes.
If you swooped down on any city street and snatched up twelve people, they would look like this.
Large and small, male and female, twenty to fifty years old, black and white. Average humans,
I notice myself looking for indications they are modern dancers. There are none discernable.
They begin, in a line, shoulder to shoulder, facing the band. The music broadcasts loudly over the square, random noises, no rhythm or melody. As they begin, the performers move almost imperceptibly slowly, arms and legs in slow motion mimicry, glacial movements punctuated with twitches and sudden 180 degree turns.
The crowd of onlookers, while not massive, is substantial and engaged.
Over the next 45 minutes the performers slowly move toward the musicians. The music becomes more cohesive, still avant-garde, yet moving, imperceptibly, toward rhythm and melody. The performers movement increasing slightly in speed, still inchoate, at moments interacting with one another. Some of them stand in place, some keep moving forward, some flop on the ground, their twisting and writhing punctuating stillness.
The cordoned rectangle shrinks in length as they move continuously toward the music. Then the webbing definition of the performance space is dropped and the spectators are invited to dance with the performers.
Here comes the fear part:
Sitting next to me, on a stone bench is a beautiful brunette wearing a short flowered dress, brown leather sandals, her toenails painted emerald green. Her brown hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail.
I am yearning to hold out my hand, to offer her a moment to dance with me.
In my mind, ours would be a slow waltz, the two of us approaching the dancing crowd, hands held high, my right holding her left. My left arm, bent at the elbow, my hand at the small of my back. A slow twirl for her, and we would begin the waltz, moving in a coherent rhythm, box step and twirls.
Yet, I stand there, next to her, unwilling; perhaps incapable of action.
Fear incapacitates me.
The performers continue to beckon to the spectators.
The dancing crowd growing as more people join in the spectacle.
The familiar feeling of remaining comfortable as a spectator leaves me unwilling to participate in this dance of life. Immobilized by the fear of looking silly or ridiculous. Have I ever been more anonymous? I know not a soul in this place.
Now, I realize, it is my inner self that remains trapped in an iron cage of fear.
The cage that keeps me disconnected, isolated and limiting my self expression.
Trapped, always as a spectator.
The moment passes and I turn and walk away.
Kicking myself for continuing to cower in my perceived safe zone.
The comfortable, familiar place.
To remain a statue, stone or bronze, a thing to be observed, admired,
possibly photographed as a decoration.
A thing to be observed.
Eroding slightly over time, stained black with acid rain.
To be covered in scaffolding and cleaned every fifty to one hunded years.
Then left again, immobile and unchanging.
Clean, but immobile and unchanging.
Hmpf!