Dancing (S2E4)
Give em a bit of the ol razzle dazzle.
The first time I was called upon to dance in public was at a school-wide, surf-themed jamboree. It was 1984. I wore white trousers and a short sleeved button-up shirt that looked like it had been attacked by a painter’s apprentice.
I spent a lot of time putting that outfit together. Miami Vice was a heavy influence (I was too young to watch the show, but Don Johnson’s “Sonny Crockett” was inescapable). I think the shirt was a new purchase specifically for the event, which at the time was a huge deal for us.
All the other boys wore shorts. I remember being asked what about my outfit was surf related, and I had to explain, repeatedly, the Miami Vice connection, beginning my lifelong habit of dressing in a way that requires explanation.
I think I asked a girl to dance. I don’t remember the music.
I wouldn’t dance again in public for 10 years.
It doesn’t have to be the way it is.
- Ursula K. Le Guin
Five years later at a welcome dance for grade 8, and my anxiety levels are somewhere between “This is terrible” and “I might die today”. In between these school dances I moved from Montreal to Vancouver and left my self-esteem somewhere in Winnipeg. I don’t know any of the music playing, but one song that day really left a mark:
I ask my friend Allan, who is this? And Allan, who knows about music, who would later introduce me to the Wu-Tang Clan, says, “It’s Ron Bass”. That’s what I hear. Ron Bass. Which I repeat to an older kid a few days later, who says, “Who’s Ron Bass.” And I say, he does that song, It Takes Two. And the older kid says, “You mean Rob Base?”
Beginning my lifelong aversion to being wrong.
I didn’t know Rob Base. But I did know one thing—under no circumstances should I attempt to dance.
You know the joke, how do you know someone’s vegan? They tell you. In my experience that’s more true of singing or dancing. People will tell you they can’t sing so fast it’s like they’re scared you secretly have the power to make them do it, right there in front of everybody.
If you’re an annoying person you might say, anyone can sing. Anyone can dance. And there’s a certain smug logic to it, a real undeniability that’s meant to check mate atheists into throwing their hands up and launching into a shanty or jig.
I know, because I’ve been that annoying person.
These declarations are one of those unique adult constructions that are completely true and utterly useless. When a kid says “anyone can do X” they mean you’re not special for doing it. When an adult says it we mean you should enjoy doing this thing as much as I do.
I’ve been reading a lot of books about why we do the things we do. In particular I’ve been reading about how people we admire—artists, builders, makers—keep doing the things they’re doing. A lot of it comes down to creating an environment where the kinds of things they do can most readily happen. It sounds outrageously obvious but I gather most of us don’t have that environment, either physical or social or psychological.
Most of our interior and exterior worlds are performing double or triple duty, especially since COVID. Our homes are our offices, our relationships are our communities, our Instagram wellness posts are our books of common prayer.
Meanwhile all our third spaces are being monetized to death, to the point you might think you’re chilling in a park with the homies but actually your presence is merely being tolerated by the developers who now own the entire waterfront.
Which is all to say we don’t see a lot of out-of-context singing or dancing. When I was in a London choir we once set up shop outside a tube station and ran through a few numbers. People were appreciative and kind, but even if they weren’t it was always lovely to sing in a group. What I wasn’t expecting was how subversive it felt.
Outside, our voices mingling with the commuter traffic and dub from bike speakers, we seemed as radical as suffragettes, as fomenting as Occupy Wall Street. Only, you know, doing close harmony renditions of Avicii.
Dance like no one is watching. Do anything like no one is watching. There’s a point in childhood development when you go from thinking everyone is a version of yourself to understanding people are completely separate entities. The long and the short of this is you then realize people are watching you and thinking their own thoughts. For some of us, this awareness takes the form of a crippling self-awareness (especially if you were ever admonished as a child with What will people think?).
I can pinpoint the exact moment my thinking went from “if you dance people will look at you” to “if you dance people WILL LOOK AT YOU!”.1 It was in law school.2 Downstairs in the student union’s cafeteria. Someone complimented Andrew on his shoes. And Andrew, after looking down, said, “Of course. Everything starts from the ground up.”
And then he pulled off the smoothest dance move I’ve ever seen, a step step shuffle pop and lock that left my jaw literally open. I think I made a sound like guh. I definitely said, “What the fuck was that?”
This uncovered two things:
The realization that people who did not look like they danced actually dance.
Dancing, applied with precision, can have strategic importance.
For 20 years I applied this thinking with a kind of kid into trains intensity. It lead to a series of commitments that I’ve kept to this day.
Commitment 1: Always dance at weddings.
Commitment 2: If you like the song, dance.
Commitment 3: Always dance with children.
Commitment 4: Always dance if it’s partnered dancing and someone who doesn’t have a partner asks you to dance.
Commitment 5: I’m a firestarter, terrific firestarter.
What I didn’t do is dance in clubs or festivals. And then I met David.
People say you make your own luck, and to an extent I think this is true. I call it variance. You can’t control a lot of things that happen, but you can control the amount of variance in your life. The more variance = the more possibility space = the more potentially good things can happen = luck.
But also, sometimes you’re just lucky. Sometimes you meet someone and then that someone leaves. And through that someone, you meet another someone, and because that first someone left you find a reason to connect a bit more with the other someone. One thing leads to another, one affinity spawns another affinity, and the next thing you know you’re a bit off your head standing in a glass-roofed barn looking at a pint of beer held aloft with the sun hitting it just so like God’s own voice calling to you through the DJ and oh my god this is why people go to festivals.
That first festival with David led to a first techno night at a club led to a trip to Berlin led to more festivals led to parties in London and Tokyo led to buying two turntables and a microphone which all combined together into this:
Almost a year to the day David, M and I came up with the name, we held our first Uncle Friend event. Like all good parties it had a reading table and a swap meet and a rotating head animation with its own viewing booth.
It’s pretty rare to meet someone who’ll change the whole trajectory of your life. In the last 8 years I’ve met two. You can dance like no one is watching but a gentler way, if you can swing it, is to dance while someone(s) who really sees you is looking out.
Watching over.
And cheering you on.
It’s true that I took ballroom dancing lessons in university for three years, even winning a prize for the Jack and Jack Jive (when you dance with a same-sex partner)((it was the 90’s things were different)). Please believe me when I say, I was an anxious mess the entire time.
It’s been 21 years since I started law school. Wtf?
I really loved this, Thom. Makes me want to dance more!