Sounds of a Walk

I was sitting in the corner of the waiting room while the faint echo of a certain walk was on its way. I could not be sure though, maybe my hearing was not all that good. A lot of people would mill around and there were occasions when I thought I knew whose footsteps I had heard.

I looked forward to something distinctive as these footsteps, they had a special rhythm. Naturally you might say that everyone walks differently. I am aware of people who sometimes drag their feet and they could have been associated with ones who don’t have the urgency of someone who has a crisp walk and never falters.Tiptoeing is a way of coming unannounced and is often a way one actor will surprise another on stage. Tall actors could walk softly and shorter ones, more heavily given an appropriate cue.

Every person is going to have distinctive characteristics and a distinctive walk. Do those have to coincide? Surely you can never know who that person may be on the basis of how they move along and how their foot hits the ground.. Besides different people will walk differently depending on a mood or need. Maybe the person who decided to walk slowly once, did not have sufficient energy that day to pick up their tempo then. Maybe they were in the midst of some thought and needed to think while moving forward down the parquet walkway.

So when the walk was dimly heard from the distance I knew I had a lesson coming up. I mean that walk with heel and toe firmly making time along the floor, meant that I could be brought to the person I had to teach. You see the walk was an introduction of sorts and since it was paced firmly and decidedly, it told me that that I could count on be escorted to my rendez-vous. Once the walk became clearer, I had a chance of speaking to the person who told me about how people had commented on her style.

She was a young lady of pleasant disposition and average height and with whom I enjoyed exchanging a few words along the way to my lesson. I thought that she was initially much taller and she chuckled how some people had thought like that too. Never underestimate the height of a person through their walk, I said to myself, having realized that on stage, all actors could put in the same tempo and stamina if they were asked to do so.