Just a couple years back, one of the MC’s favorite MCs dropped a genre-defying album that was so tremendous it moved him to write her a double-digits-pages-long letter in which he praised her singular work at sizable length. For several specific reasons, however: K-Roo opted against mailing the letter. For there was 1) his worry that she didn’t read long letters from unknown roos; there was 2) his considerable anxiety over whether his effusive praise (& possibly overly-familiar tone) might lead her to think he was a crazy kangaroo at best, or stalkeroo at worst; and there was lastly 3) his wish that his words be heard as coming from a fellow MC, not just a fan.
        Given these concerns, MC K-Roo knew that a personal delivery— ideally through a mutual friend— was in all likelihood the only plausible option. Given that he didn’t seem to know anyroo who knew her— and the contents weren’t time-sensitive in the least— the letter’s delivery would have to wait. Which was fine by him: she was busy, & he was busy trying to become as busy as she. And “Perhaps,” he further mused, “it’d be better to have more ‘recognition’ before attempting an introduction, anyways…?” Whatever the case, Poochypouch accepted that Yolandajoon wouldn’t be getting the letter anytime soon, and simultaneously reflected that the music world was, at the end of the day, a small world: meeting his liaison was thusly but a matter of time, the proper moment of which chance was probably best left to determine anyhow.

And so for a couple of years, the letter sat.

Then one day in the autumn, The Marsupial Troopa was passing his favorite local music venue when he looked up at the marquee to read SPECIAL ENGAGEMENT TONIGHT & TOMORROW NIGHT ONLY: MC YOLANDAJOON, which he basically actually couldn’t even believe. So he went over to the window and asked. Whereupon the rooette at the box office confirmed it, noting it was she herself who’d placed each & every letter of the words up there on high, adding it was also she herself who’d sold each & every ticket to the show but one… and wouldn’t he like to purchase that last one? By way of reply to the nigh-unnecessary question did he remove from his pouch his wallet, pay the requisite dollar amount, & then receive said ticket in an envelope in exchange. Thanking the box office rooette with a nod & a smile, he then slipped his wallet & the envelope back into his pouch, and headed off for home for the remainder of the day until the evening hour printed upon the ticket arrived.

And before he knew it, there he suddenly was: in the middle of a long, around-the-block-winding line of dapper-dressed & chic-looking roos & rooettes, all there for the same shared reason of being swayed by the peerless sounds of one of their generation’s greatest beat-makers & lyricists: MC Yolandajoon. It was pretty exciting, not least of all because he’d never seen her live before & didn’t really know what to expect— especially since the albums he felt her finest were ones the perfection of which showcased her ample & influential studio mixing skills. Thusly & in sum: about to see a never-before-seen, long-time favorite MC & without expectations of any kind: he paused for a moment to think: just how great that situation was; and— looking up & down at the smiles of the otheroos ahead & behind— far from the only kangaroo thinking as much was he.
        As the line shortened & disappeared into the door of the venue, The Rooster imagined a long strand of yarn collecting itself into a ball on the other side of the door. Very soon would he be wound up warmly within it. “Tickets,” said the rooette working the door, whereupon K-Roo reached into his pouch and then handed to her the envelope produced.
        “…?” read the expression on her face, followed with a “What’s this?”
        “…!” read the expression on his face, followed with an “Ah! …sorry, wrong envelope,” as he took it back with his left paw & reached back into his pouch with his right, quickly producing the correct envelope & handing it over to her with the ticket inside. When she handed back the stub alone, he was left with the one, incorrectly-handed-over envelope in his left hand, the center of which read “For MC Yolandajoon” in his own handwriting from over two years back: he’d almost completely forgotten, but there it was: the long & unsent letter he’d written to her after first listening to her last album, Future Beats.
        “Huh,” he went. This was unexpected. Upon finding and taking his seat, he opened the unsealed letter, flipping through it briefly. The sight of its pages brought flashing back to mind images of the room in which he wrote it, as well as of that summer generally. The plan, as then hatched, was to give the letter to a (TBD) mutual friend to give to her, or else to give her the letter himself in the presence of said TBD friend, however many years in the future that may have turned out to be. But from the present moment sitting in the venue’s seats— with MC Yolandajoon on just the other side of the curtain, upon the venue’s stage— it almost seemed the imagined future would never come. Indeed, one had to admit there wasn’t any guarantee that it ever would: what if he simply never had a friend who was friends with her? It was quite possible. On the other hand, the present had the following certainty: he, she, & the letter were all there in the same place & at the same time— now. And so it was strange: for while generally when a letter & its intended recipient were within 50ish feet of one another, immediate “manual” delivery tended to be a no-brainer: here, however: he had absolutely no idea whatsoever as to what to do.

Thusly unable to determine a path of action (or path of none, as it were), he decided it likely best to chill & enjoy the show, wait & see if his feeling changed one way or the other by its end. He wasn’t sure why the yarn in this mind’s eye was pink, but it was: and like everyroo else around him, this pink yarn was precisely what— with Yolandajoon’s beats now beginning over the speakers & his private mental space being exited & the collective one around him entered— he & all the otheroos in the room in essence became.
        And it was good to be a piece of yarn— especially in the midst of all the other yarn sufficient to sum to a ball thereof: there was still nothing like live performance. For the duration of the show MC Yolandajoon would gently bat this ball around, playfully here & more seriously there. Sometimes she’d just roll it back and forth in a line or a zig-zag, and other times in small circles. With adept timing she’d  periodically switch the axis upon which it spun, thereby subjecting the audience’s emotional baseline to the seeming whim of her calculated flux. Now & again she’d slacken it a bit and then play with the slack, letting it fall loosely around her feet in looping patterns, all so as to cause her body to appear as the center of a flower the audience memberoos were each but petals growing out from. Then in the next instant the aforesaid image would disappear as she’d tauten the line, sometimes subsequently plucking at its tautened length to produce soft & curious sounds… until then slackening the line once more, lessening its sound again & into silence, a silence from which she’d rise as & when she wished, always at moments no roos could guess of— but moments which, later & after the show, everyroo would agree were precisely the right ones. For over an hour, this and more is essentially what she did.
        While there was no precise measure, at some point after that first hour it was clear that a shift had occurred, that a finale of sorts was en route in approach. Description was difficult, but it was almost as if one could feel the tension dropping from the yarn, yet the movement somehow not. For didn’t the speed of everything seem to feel on the increase? even as the perception of said speed registered near a standstill? More or less, that was— however paradoxically— how it was. Perhaps as an analogue: one can imagine staring from the window of an airplane taking off, the speedblurred tarmac racing beneath at a hundred miles an hour— and then a few minutes later & several times as fast, the window’s view of anything below or beyond being perfectly clear and nearly entirely still. Certain performers can do this, of which Yolandajoon was a one.

(It’s worth it to note here that the ability to collapse time & space is oftentimes used to describe the functions of both airplanes & art. One may see how each operates in the following fashion: after the moment of leaving a point of origin (a), one enters a realm where perception seems unlimited or unfettered, time nonlinear or practically paused… until the moment of arriving at the intended (or even unintended) destination (b). Here, one discovers being in a distant & completely different place, even as hisher legs have scarcely moved in the least. It is often & accurately said of such an experience that one has been transported— literally in the first case & metaphorically in the second.)

While the tension had left the yarn, it seemed to remain in the air; K-Roo could not help but picture little fibers of tension slipping out from the yarn, as light as air & joining ends together to form tiny halos of tensions hovering overhead. The audience was on the edge of their seats, such that if an earthquake at that moment occurred & the room’s front came up as its back fell down: everyroo would be perfectly balanced upon the fulcrum of their chairs, staring up at the stage from which MC Yolandajoon would be continuing to emcee sans interruption.
        It was thusly apparent that the end of the performance, as it were, was near: having slackened it all to the degree of nearly unraveling it, she wove and wove the yarn around and around the seats so that when suddenly she chose the moment to pull it all taut: new tensions were present where previously there were none, thusly drawing new figures & figurines in areas previously blank, creating new forms where previously existed empty space— the genius of which was best appreciated by mapping the turns & tensions as a whole (via imagined bird’s eye view, say), and not by experience of the individual points alone. K-Roo pictured the gridded nailboard / elastic band toys of his youth & of how, if seen from above, MC Yolandajoon’s manipulations of the audienceyarn shared a similarity of resulting aesthetic.
        As to what it all represented in the present, however: was as tremendous as it was ineffable. From up above the yarn amidst the seats below comprised an epic & pink Rorschach blotch of sorts: by turns it looked like a spinning galaxy, a burgeoning society, and a playground with young kangaroos playing and bouncing all around. An aspect of it had elements of a medical illustration of the inside of a marsupial’s heart, as well. And while it mightn’t have been possible to enumerate the total number of nouns it looked like, the underlining feeling for each was essentially the same for everyroo: a sense of wonder over the fact of what it meant to be a conscious rooman being existing upon the earth in that place on that night, together with otheroos feeling the same.

Metaphorically and almost literally did she tie each & every instant of the evening’s performance together, a cat’s cradle of kangaroos’ paws. Before The Rooster could even register that the performance had actually ended, applause was roaring all around him, and he found himself spontaneously clapping and standing in ovation as well. The many rows of silhouetted, pokey-eared heads of audience memberoos slowly dissolved back into the myriad identities of the individualroos they were as the lights went up & the curtains down. “MC Yolandajoon is a fucking geniusroo,” he found himself saying to himself as he stared at the shuffle of feet & tails and made for the exits, repeating as much to himself several times over. As the reluctant exodus was dense and slow, his words were overheard by other roos & rooettes who agreed & subsequently spoke similarly; conversations were thereby started and new alliances made, even if they didn’t necessarily lead to friendships (or even acquaintanceships) in fact.

What was important was what was felt. And, how the same or a very similar feeling came from everyroo who’d come that evening, enveloping each like a warmest of blankets, and how these eternally-had-but-sporadically-used blankets were now shown to be of a kind of velcro, binding strangeroos together en masse de facto by virtue of their simultaneous proximity to the music & each other alone.
        It was pretty incredible. K-Roo wondered why more roos didn’t take these blankets out of their proverbial pouches more often. “Probably because everyroo would be all stuck together all the time & nothing would ever get done,” Platy said in response to his thought. And, it was true: it was good to hear the right music at the right time instead of all the time. For if art— which speaks of a specific space & a particular time— were everywhere always & ever-present, the entirety of the Earth would be the map & the territory all at once, and newborn roos would be raised in confusion over whether they were standing upon the signifier or signified— the significance of each thereby being forever unknown.
        “And the almost magical relationship of each to the other thereby being forever unknown!” continued Platy in hypothetical lament. Which was also true; and so it was good to occupy the space between the map & the territory, which was rooman consciousness precisely. K-Roo’s & Platy’s conversation on such topics specifically & of the performance generally lasted them a quantity of minutes sufficient to carry them home. Once inside, MC K-Roo took his wallet out of his pouch and set it down, the fold of which inadvertently pulled out his unsent letter to MC Yolandajoon as well. “Whoa…!” was he. Under the spell cast by her performance and in the resulting half-daze with which he wandered out, he’d forgotten about the letter & its question entirely.
        To himself he said “I guess there’s always tomorrow,” knowing that while his words were true as he spoke them, they wouldn’t be were he to repeat them the following evening.