“Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.”
― Langston Hughes
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
― Emily Dickinson
It was my first time, in the midst of what seemed millions of men, shirtless, sweaty, with swagger almost a synchronized team of swimmers, dancing to the same music, but in various degrees of chemically induced highs, or just pure adrenaline, powerful enough to seemingly lift their bodies off the dance floor. It was an old movie palace in LA called the Mayan Theater, now a VENUE, to use the correct jargon, a hidden universe where imagination erupted from, each and every thump-da thump, the crescendo of Diva’s hitting the highest of notes a human ear could hear or a human voice might muster, and beats so deliberate one might have thought it was an echo from a monster’s heart. I was free, I was alive, I was living a dream I feared my whole life, it was the moment, I witnessed my closet door slam shut, and a magic entrance opening with neon, flash glitter, and delight! To dance, for me is the excellence of being alive! The freedom of movement, no restrictions, no reservations, just the rhythm, raw and revealing, passionate and pulsating, never perfect, but precise enough to enrich any emotion, and evolve into a non-stop swirling dervish…part devil and mostly delicious! It was a dream, I had hoped for, it was hope I had dreamed about, it became real, living it, loving it, and now remembering the delectable chance to dance, and dance and dance and dance. It was my first coming-out party, and I celebrated it with people who at first seemed strangers, but during the hours of a DJ spinning his records, these people soon were never any stranger to my life than I had been to myself!
I write this rant, on a Monday night, when if I wished I could painstakingly witness a witless, woefully wretched maniac, pretend to be a man of the people, but who in reality hates the people who applaud him, and is never man enough to admit he has no emotion, nor empathy, and only presumes his life is the one that matters. He will and would shall and could deplete the hopes and dreams of any living being with a conscience or soul. I have grown so weary of this feckless façade, this pinnacle of failure, this insidious incendiary image of selfish and sociopathic machinations. So instead, I asked SIRI to play for me one of my oldest newest favorite songs titled ‘I Just Wanna Dance, by Alison Jiear.
“Things are going bad for me
I am feeling sad for me
So I just wanna dance
Oh, I just wanna dance.
I'm tired of laughing
And I'm tired of crying,
I'm tired of failing
And I'm tired of all this trying.
I wanna do some living
Cause I've done enough of dying
I just wanna dance
I just wanna fucking dance.”
