He Performs

He swiftly walked off before she could formulate a response. She turned her back to the front of the stage and tried to understand this obscured encounter. Just as she let her thoughts stray, a loud greeting from the crowd interrupted. She turned to see the stranger, the young man quickly walked with the same calm presence up the side stairs to the stage. Once again he had no introduction. Thinking out loud, “who the hell is he?” He grabbed the mic from the table on the stage, observed the crowd as if he could see through the sweaty faces into each of their souls. The crowd waited for some kind of direction to respond to this nameless face. Just before losing their attention, the instrumental music started to play. She became one of them, one of the 653 people who wanted to hear this stranger’s voice, to hear the vibration of he’s words, to build a connection so they could feel as though they knew him. “one-two, one-two, one-two”, like this was he’s sound check. Then he dropped the first verse with which he would own everyone’s attention. A voice that was relatable-no accent, no dialect, everyone could feel it was theirs, a tone that wasn’t comparable. In trance, he owned her as well. One song and he walked off as if he didn’t have full control over everyone in the room. Stared by all, he walked out of the building. The house d.j. just as confused and enameled by this man, his music, the performance, the person, tried to act as if this was planned “and that was …”