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PAGE TWO
DANCING WITH OURSELVES
Everybody there knew how to dance, but no one knew how to dance with anyone else. It seemed I had stumbled upon something (besides my own feet). I thought, of all the things I had learned in my life, most of them didn't teach me how to be a better member of society. They taught me how to be a better individual.
Walkmans, solitaire, Top Ramen, computers, television, reading tabloids and playing Tetris were all things designed for me to use or do by myself. I realized that I e-mail now more than I talk on the phone. In a world that is making huge advances in communication technology, our lives have been reduced to a series of monologues. Even on the dance floor, it was as if I would do a move and everyone would kind of watch, and then they'd see if they could top it. It was more a competition than it was a sharing or a dialogue of movement.
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Meanwhile the elders were talking with their bodies on the dance floor. Granted, some of them were having pretty lousy conversations, but at least they were having conversations. We, we were just shouting at each other, trying to see who could shout the loudest.
It was sweaty and depressing and I didn't even get the girl, though I suspect that was because my (ex-) friend Sam told her he heard me calling out for Fred Astaire in the men's room.
I left the wedding feeling like we had been swindled as a generation, like we had traded in tradition for technology, and I was stuck with a lemon of a lifestyle. (Not to mention an annoying flare for alliteration.)
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And apparently I'm not the only one who's decided to do something about this. (The dance thing, not the alliteration.) The Wilson High gym is packed, and there's an overhead projector showing two pairs of feet with arrows. I follow Alber(t) and the transparencies with all the coordination I can muster, but it's no use. Neither I nor the woman I am dancing with (some waif with blue eye shadow and white jeans whom I met at the punch bowl) can do it. But it doesn't matter. I see a few couples who have actually memorized the steps, but they look about as comfortable and fluid as two planks of wood staring at each other in the lumberyard.
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Taking it apart and putting it back together isn't the answer. The magic is killed through dissection, like the fetal pig you tore apart in high school. You can't force real culture, and it sure as hell doesn't come in three easy installments of $19.95 in a decrepit high school gym. Sure, you get the blueprints of culture, but so what? You can learn the notes to "Bitches Brew," but that don't make you Miles Davis.
I'm not going to learn how to dance, at least not this way. So I go home and listen to Billy Idol, dancing by myself in the living room, and hoping for some action.
Daniel Weinshenker is a freelance writer based in Boulder, Colorado. He does a lot of things by himself.
© 1998 Tripod, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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