Today I‘m releasing my latest song, “dance”.
This last year has been challenging on so many levels. It‘s also been so surreal – the uncertainty, the fear, the lockdown, the isolation. Sheltering in place, we unlearned being around others. Music is a relief. Dancing in solitude as well, but only to a point.
I started writing this song when I was walking through northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago more than four years ago, when I was in dire need of alone-time to regain some clarity of mind. The original version of the song was about my favorite music place in Zurich, X-Tra, which may not reopen even once the pandemic is behind us, and the weekly Wednesday night dark music event, ”More than Mode”, where I‘d become something like a regular. That didn‘t feel right anymore, so I rewrote it late last year and am presenting this version to you now.
In our solitude we dance
Your silvery eyes
Your unsteady gaze
Translucent skin
Wrapped in black lace
Your loneliness
is legion’s prayer
A hungry god
Whose cross you bear
In our solitude we dance
Velvety darkness blooms in our soul
We’re all alone in our trance
Bravely pretend we’re in control
As you alight
Set foot in the sacred ring
There’s a sigh from the deity’s core
What’s that gift you bring?
Put on your favourite garb
Put on that dark line of kohl
Out of the numbing noise
You’ll be rendered whole
In our solitude we dance
Velvety darkness blooms in our soul
We’re all alone in our trance
Bravely pretend we’re in control
And on our own we still dance
A wordless anguish fill us all
Each one alone in our trance
And one by one we start to fall
And when we close our eyes
Give in to yearn a little
Stirs up an image bright
A mirage oh so brittle
How much of this is real
Have truly we gone through
If ever we’ll rejoin
Will you be who I knew
In mutual solitude we dance …
© & ℗ 2021 Michael Hatscher
Artworks – as always – by the amazing Marcel van den Berg at kommerz.nl. Dank je wel!