Let me be upfront about this: I love music so much that it pains me that I can't express my love for it in the manner I'd chose to. Or manners: I can't play an instrument or sing to save my life (though I can sing to annoy people with my voice and I used to play the hell out of an old three-stringed guitar that was in my family since the Seventies and looked it). I also can't dance. At all. I make Carlton Banks look like Barishnikov, basically. Whenever I've broken out in a dance on the floor, people have wondered aloud if I'm suffering a seizure. I'm not even sure if I'm kidding about that.
But still, I love music, and expressing my love for it is hard to do if I can't at least try to boogie down with my bad self from time to time. Mostly in the privacy of my own room, where (back when I had a CD player) I could blast music and just let myself go, free from the shame that someone could be watching me (unless someone was watching me...I don't know much about our neighbors, there could be some real pervs out there). But since the death of my old laptop and my inability to start up a new iTunes account, I've pretty much had to confine myself to head-bopping along to whatever CD I've got going in my car. Dancing in the car is not only not what a car was built for, it can actually be dangerous for you and your fellow drivers. Imagine the pile-up if "Got to Give It Up, Pt. One" by the immortal Marvin Gaye came on over the radio and you just let loose. You'd be on the news, and not in a good way.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that my ability to dance isn't that great; I am white, after all (just kidding, some white people have rhythm. Justin Timberlake, for one...and some other guy, but really it's just JT). But I do remember in the past, way back in the Eighties, when my aunt and her friend would be out in the driveway trying to break-dance, and I'd try to join in. The song I associate most with that was Billy Ocean's entire body of work ("Caribbean Queen" and "Get Out of My Dreams (Get Into My Car)"). For a brief moment, I could convince myself that my moves would impress the cast of Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, but I was really just fooling myself.
(Sidebar: Everyone jokingly refers to Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo as the best sequel ever, but no one seems to remember the original. Was it denied a place in mock-hilarity history because of its bland name, or its inability to rock the "Electric Boogaloo" tag early, as a pre-emptive strike on the sequel's claim to fame?)
Anywho, I long to dance, to dance in a way that doesn't embarass myself or those around me. But it's just not to be. And I think, in the long run, I'm okay with that. I even refer to my style of dancing (if it can indeed be called that) as "happy dancing," because I'm just happy to be moving. Too many times I've been at dances (okay, none since high school) where I could've got up on the dance floor and made an ass of myself but I didn't. My rep in high school wasn't the greatest (I was already regarded with disfavor for the crime of having glasses and actually reading books...for...fun), so it wouldn't have been that bad to get up at the prom and at least try a slow dance with one of the two girls I was kinda into at that time. But alas, I did not.
Happy dancing, by the way, is a pretty good name for a mix CD you make for someone special. But I already did that, so don't copy me, fellow using-music-to-express-feelings emotionally-awkward young men.
Marvin Gaye is, to me, the greatest soulful singer of all time (Al Green is the greatest living one). What draws me to this song is the utter incongruity of his claim to being a shy wallflower when it came to dancing (anyone who thinks Marvin Gaye was ever shy about the ladies needs to get their head examined). But once he does start dancing, wouldn't you know it: He's a hit with the ladies. That's every nerdy white boy's fantasy, and it's only just out of reach because when we do actually break out the moves, we look more like a fish flopping on dry land. But we can dream, oh how we can dream. Music gives you the soundtrack to such imaginings, and it doesn't matter how clumsy we really are, hitting everyone and looking like Michael Scott instead of Michael Jackson. We're our own bosses of dancing.
No comments:
Post a Comment