Congratulations on Waking the Waiting Hearts!

Your name is Shari, short for Sharon, and you’re a street performer. You work in Harvard Square, mostly, although you sometimes head down to other parts of the Greater Boston area, weather and tourist conditions permitting.

You’re an art-history major at Emerson with a minor in dance, and you’ve always been deeply interested in performance art. Since you lack even the most rudimentary artistic skills it seemed like the place for you.

Shit like making a pair of underpants out of hundred dollar bills and wearing it around town could be an artistic statement, rather than a gesture of profound mental illness, and just where that line lies is something you’d like to explore.

But for the most part your endeavors have consisted of relatively tame street performer fare. You played a bunch of Ani DiFranco covers along with a handful of original songs on an acoustic guitar for a few weeks, but you usually have garbage thrown at you before long. You’ve done a couple of stints as various living statues, but that Amanda Palmer bitch keeps stealing your thunder. You even sometimes perform sleight of hand, but your general lack of coordination means that the people who stop to watch you are looking for less of a show and more of a train wreck.

That is, until you took that belly dancing class through UMass the other week.

You’ve always moved with little tact and less grace, stumbling from room to room, awkward in your own skin. It’s kind of adorable, in a sad puppy way. Most of the boys and girls you’ve been with have seen themselves as protectors to someone who can’t really deal with the world around them without frequent assistance.

But the moment you put on that outfit it was like your hips just fell into place under your tits and your feet knew just what to do. Your belly dancing is like watching a tattered piece of an unpublished poem drift in the wind. There’s beauty to it, even if it isn’t profound, and even if it would be, at best, awkward if deconstructed.

After your teacher spent three days trying to sleep with you, you realized just how naturally good you were. After successful avoiding her advances you decided you’d put this to use and finally make a street act that means something.

After a lengthy brainstorming session you settled on an interpretive dance piece incorporating your belly dancing, criticizing the reluctance of the United States to take a proactive stance in seeking alternative energy sources. It’ll be a little dated with the new presidency, but the message will still be something you feel strongly for. You figure your roommate, Bekki, can hand out fliers while you do your thing.

You’ll be all set up, wrapped in an army surplus blanket when you arrive on the scene. It’ll be cold for this time of year in Boston and the chill will raise goosebumps on your flesh. While you’re wrapped up you’ll worry that you’ll nip out during your act and blind passers by, but the moment you drop the blanket you’ll forget all about your neurosis. You’ll lose yourself in the dance almost instantly.

It will be breathtaking, to put it lightly. Every Harvard demographic will be drawn to watch you undulate your hips, mystified by the relaxed beauty of your movements.

They’ll feel a deep awakening within themselves, as if they’d just realized a fundamental truth about the world which they could not express to anyone else in the world. It will be like the first time they ate their favorite dish or heard their favorite band, and it will be unavoidable.

In a way it will be a bit of a downer. They won’t grab fliers and no one will drop any money into your hat. It will also deeply exacerbate Bekki’s sexual attraction to you. But you’ll captivate everyone in the Square tonight, and when the performance is finished you’ll simply bow and say “Please, show your concern for mother earth and vote with an eye towards renewable energy.

Then you’ll wrap yourself up in your blanket again and ride to Downtown Crossing with Bekki, biting your lip and feeling a little strange. The people in your wake, however, will feel like they have a fresh lease on life.

Word will get around, and you’ll soon find yourself approached by the Obama administration in what will quickly become one of the most unorthodox and effective energy reform strategies in American history.

That’s another story, though. We’re just here to say congratulations on waking the waiting hearts. You’ll teach a lot of people how to love again tonight.