Sometimes when I return home after classes and realize that no one else is around and I am all alone, I let my desires reign free and I give way to my deepest, most primitive yearnings. I probably shouldn't, but I can't help myself. At first I was afraid one of my suitemates might walk in and discover me, right there, letting it all out in our living room, but now I don't care. I love to dance.
Yes, it's true. I admit it: I need to dance. I do it every day and it makes me feel alive and joyful. I am addicted to the flailing of my arms and the kicking of my legs. Without it, I am a lazy and lethargic bum; I fear my limbs may atrophy, shrivel up, and fall off. With my daily dose of dance, however, I am a ball of energy, a bird in flight, a speeding car, a delicate butterfly. I am as formless as a cloud, as light as air, as fine as dust, as complexly perfect as crystal. I am a pumped, powerfully pulsing package of jutting, jolting, jangling Rob.
I had searched long and hard for that perfect drug to give me a new understanding of life. Caffeine made me too hyper, alcohol made me too stupid, vitamins made me too healthy, and heroin made me too chic. I thought I would never find the answer. I thought that all was lost until one day, with the radio playing loudly, the pounding bass, the beautiful melody, the roaring guitars, and the thunderous drums all came together. And with each discrete note emanating perfectly from the speakers like droplets of some magic potion, I had entered another world. My body was no longer within my own control, my arms flew about, my feet left the ground - sometimes both at the same time - and my head bobbed around above my shoulders. Every single part of my body, my toes, my back, my eyes, my tongue, was in motion. My bones and muscles moved with a never-seen-before harmony. My heart pumped in time with the tune, my bladder bounced, my stomach soared, my lungs leapt, my spleen splun splastically. That's when I knew it: this joy, this pleasure, this full-body, emotionally consuming experience would be my drug of choice, now and forever.
Don't get me wrong; the dance I cherish so much does not actually fit under any particular style of the art form. I move with a crazy randomness and a focus on release. Most spectators probably wouldn't even classify what I do as dancing. But it's okay. That's no skin off my back - my rolling, rocking, bumping, grinding back.
I hate clubbing. I would never even think of performing with the Tufts Dance Collective or competing as part of the Ballroom team. Salsa or swing night at local establishments do not appeal to me one bit. To me, that's not dancing, that's organized movement. There are too many rules and too much concentration. There are the right steps and the wrong steps. There are important things to remember about timing, what to do with your hands. For me, all that business is extraneous, filling my head and stiffening my muscles. It gets in the way of what's important: a perfect experience with an empty mind and a body full of free-flowing energy
People always think of Buddha as sitting quietly, serene, and motionless. But I know better. I am sure true enlightenment, a new peace, is actually achieved only when one is dancing insanely, with complete abandon. Surely our content, blissful, round-bellied, bald buddy Buddha knew how to get jiggy with it.
Zen masters encourage their disciples to listen for the "sound of one hand clapping." That is, of course, an acknowledgement of the universe around us, forever keeping time with the tunes that play everywhere. Though perhaps not always audible, these songs surround us always. By moving in turn with their every note, only then can we truly conceive what it means to be alive and of this earth, and, more importantly, what it means get our groove on.
Granted, my resistance of style or any kind of traditional form does make it difficult to dance in groups or in others' presence. As a younger child, still growing into my appreciation of self-expression through chaotic movement, I was thrown out of more than a few Bar Mitzvahs for disrupting the "Electric Slide" with what I called my own "Epileptic Slide."
But I don't care. If you want to join me in my freeform dedication to expressing my uncontrollable desire to move around crazily like someone on the verge of insanity, please do - I'd love the company. But I refuse to give in and do your fixed-form dances just for the sake of fitting in. I will not do the Hustle, I will not cha-cha or tango. Square dancing is for squares, disco's for duds, and country line dances do considerable damage to my achy-breaky heart
Bob Dylan suggests in his poetically perfect song "Mr. Tambourine Man" that in one's quest to find peace and "forget about today until tomorrow," one ought to consider exploring some liberating body movements: "Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free..." The truth is, he's got it exactly right. Let go, feel those synapses fire and that blood rushing through your veins. The important things will work out, and the inconsequential things will fade away into that glowing diamond-flecked sky. Before you know it, everything else will seem just fine. Throw your hands up and let go. Who knows where you'll find yourself?
