Part of my household work as a life partner involves attempting to minimize my family's exposure to rape culture. We'd gotten pretty good at this: pre-screening movies & tv, keeping an eye out for trigger warnings and content notices on print and online media, and cultivating feminism in our village.
That all changed the day the phrase "grab them by the pussy" entered our national lexicon.
Adults in my family haven't slept the same since. Whatever shield there was, whatever bubble we'd created is gone. The patriarchal poison in our culture colors our windows, stinks up the air, and covers our newsmedia in a greasy film. There's no prescreening for the national stories of the day; there are no content notices on our representatives' Twitter feeds. How men are allowed - encouraged even - to treat women is clear. More disturbingly, the giant number of Americans who normalize and apologize for this treatment is clear. Now that we know better, we have to do better.
So to my dear friends wishing and begging for politics to be separate from our daily entertainment/communication/information media, I'm sorry to say this is not a luxury we are afforded anymore. In truth, to have ever been able to consider politics an abstraction was a privilege, and for better or worse, this privilege grows more rare by the day. Silence is louder than screams right now.
I'm not saying we should be fundamentalist about our socio-political ideas. Far from it. We have to listen to each other, we have to entertain differing perspectives, we have to compromise. However, we also have to stop pretending we can have peace without justice, and we have to stop harboring violence, abuse, and oppression in our communities in the name of preserving an unjust peace.
I AM saying we must embrace our discomfort with politics in public as part of our collective growth process. The shock of the recent campaign and election has clearly catalyzed an awakening, and in this I find hope. Awakened constituents are loud and active, and this is a really good thing: our representative bodies cannot help but react to clear cultural changes in the populace. We've seen it happen before.
Therefore, I can't find it in my heart to resist President Trump. He's clearly being manipulated, and is also clearly out of touch with both the spirit and the letter of the presidency. The legislative and judicial branches are designed to resist him, and part of that - congress - can be very responsive to cultural change. I think our energy is better spent engaging the institutions designed to check the president, driving change at the local and state level, and playing as little of the president's personality game as possible.
I am resisting against the culture that elevated him. I am resisting against patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity, and the unbridled capitalism that leads us both to value one another in terms of our contributions to the economy, and also to make heroes out of amoral, small-minded, and unfeeling men. I am resisting against a culture of political disinterest, in favor of education, understanding, and empowerment on a personal level.
Part of this we do by discussing, and then voting on and acting on, political content, sure. However, part of this is also making sure we continue to feed and nurture the other parts of our selves. We have to make art. We have to celebrate. We have to laugh. None of this denies how politics is affecting our daily lives, but instead fortifies us, giving us both the strength to fight, and reminders of what we're fighting for. If there's no escaping it (there's not, but I wish there was), we're instead charged with working through our political ugliness together to build a Just Peace.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Saturday, December 31, 2016
My music listening this year was very focused and depth-oriented. I find I just don't have time for anything that doesn't really move me. There's too much music coming out that DOES move me for me to find the motivation for purely intellectual listening. No, life is too short; I need to dance, and I need to rock. In that context, here are five albums and five songs that I fully loved this year.
CONTENT NOTE: Pacific Northwest rock is glaringly missing from this list. That's because I listened to and loved so much of it that it deserves its own post. Please click here to read my post about our amazing regional rock scene.
Santigold - 99 cents
This one sounds like summer to me. The dub influence, the bright vocals, the clear bows to the party gods. My go-to for every warm day we had.
PJ Harvey - The Hope Six Demolition Project
Fearlessly fortifying us against all this year turned out to be, this band is in a clear artistic prime right now. If anybody can predict the future, it's Polly Harvey, and we should be listening.
Tribe Called Quest - We got it from Here... Thank you 4 your service
This is the one. The standout, head-and-shoulders, definitive album of the year. I've listened to this album to start my day nearly every morning since it was released. The Tribe here shows us both the past and the future of hip-hop with this timely, appealing, and original record. I seriously can't get enough.
Dillon & Paten Locke - Food Chain
The surprise underground rap magic of this record properly enriched my year. It's packed top to bottom with big hooks, boom-bap beats, and food and drink based rhymes. Hoping we hear more from this duo!
Against Me - Shape Shift With Me
Refreshingly personal, their latest is Against Me's most fun album. Not the band I expected to have the least political album of the year, but it's kind of the perfect moment for it.
J-zone "Go Back to Sellin Weed"
This Bandcamp darling kept me laughing and dancing with its admonition for wack MCs to get back into the drug game. Zone's cool confidence never fails.
DJ Shadow - Nobody Move
My pick for best video of the year, this is a clear moment of inspiration between Shadow and RTJ. I love the video's juxtaposition of the familiar and the absurd, and I love how it sets the performers up not as the instigators, but as the shocked bystanders.
Jidenna - Long Live the Chief
I love Jidenna's irresistible style and sly consciousness, but this is his fattest hit to date for sure. The spare beat makes me want to move, and the rhymes are empowering and forward-thinking.
Boulevards - Move and Shout
My favorite retro jam of the year, this jam was another of my go-to palate cleansers. Plenty of haters will say otherwise, but I know disco will never die.
Kevin Gates - Really Really
I did not want to be down, but this song really grew on me. Gates sounds hungry, and the chorus is rightfully catchy. Apologies as usual for the earworm.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
2016 in Northwest Rock
I was working on a year-end music blog, and it became immediately clear that the amazing modern rock music coming out of the Pacific Northwest this year deserves its own focus and thought. What's happening here is a true scene, because we have bands growing from shared passion and shared roots to cultivate an energetic, melodic, heavy, sound. It's a blast to live here in this moment and hear this music as it's being born.
Here are five Pac NW bands that put out records this year that I loved. These albums formed the backbone of my rock listening for the entire year, and I hope we look back upon them as a magical moment in American rock history.
Disenchanter - Strange Creations
Epic, imaginative, bluesy, and fun, this album is full of stories and characters harkening to the best of scifi and urban culture.
Year of the Cobra - ... In The Shadows Below
Starting from a distinctive and irresistible low-end foundation, this album branches out across rock genres in a collection of songs that sound like spells bringing ancient goddesses back to life.
Holy Grove - Holy Grove
Some kind of miracle of heavy melodies, it's a cultural travesty that this album is not #1 on national modern rock charts. Every song a singalong. Every song a headbanger.
Mos Generator - Abyssinia
Still the best kept secret in the region, this soul-metal band's latest release. Their latest incarnation is lean, tight, and all about the riff.
Helms Alee - Stillicide
Reveling in their genre-defying, inimitable style that's built around a very original guitar tone and three-part, multi-gender vocals, these songs are so listenable that one has to look really closely to see the almost avant-garde stuff they're doing with timing and rhythm. I think our children will look back and see this band as the purely artistic heart of the sound of the music of this region.
BONUS
Sun Giants - Red Silver (2015)
The traveling bards of the scene, this band has a great EP and a don't-miss live show.
Earth - Primitive and Deadly (2014)
In the midst of a long and storied career, this OG Seattle band is making their best and most accessible work right now. Noticeably the slowest-tempoed of the the bunch we're discussing today, they continue to show us how heavy need not be aggressive.
Monday, August 17, 2015
A Dancer's Epiphany
In one era of my life, my partner and I were students of the Divine World-Teacher Beloved Adi Da Samraj. Beloved taught us that certain practices helped us to forget our egoic, separate selves, and thereby to remember our root nature as manifestations of the Divine Being - call it the Universe, Truth, God, as you will. I experience dance as church - as active spiritual practice - because of these teachings. And although my Dance is a daily practice, a prayer I share with my family, still we set aside special occasions to retreat deeply into the rhythm, to touch the Divine Oneness, to see the way we are connected, and to hear past our daily click-clack of complicated symbols. The Dance is Immediate, our barriers dropped, our souls exposed.
In our late twenties, my partner and I went to a house party with a group of devotees of Adi Da. As the night unfolded, I found myself sharing a dance floor with my partner and many other people - warm, dynamic, loud. The DJ felt our moment, and put on some kind of magical trance music: extended, textured, full of Light. I remember feeling my feet and my hips, where I connected to my partner, and I remember my hands raising of their own accord. I remember feeling soon somehow much, much larger, limitless, though I had not the consciousness to look for a limit. I remember knowing my fellow partiers were here with me, in a place not a place, as it was instinctually prior to space and time. Wherever we were before we were born, wherever we are after we die, there we were in that moment. It was fleeting and endless, and I was baptized by understanding and recognition that my search was over - this Oneness was the Truth I'd always been looking for. This was not the first time I encountered this Truth, just the first time I recognized it.
The summer I was 15, my father left the military, and we moved from the urban West coast to the suburban Midwest. A friend was kind enough to throw me a going away party, and I took the occasion to make my first party soundtrack. This was 1992, so my cassette featured Kriss Kross, PM Dawn, a deep cut from the Right Said Fred album, and as a closer, Bon Jovi's "Never Say Goodbye," a power ballad about love and friendship from the album that taught me how to fall in love with rock n' roll, Slippery When Wet (which turns 29 years old tomorrow, as of the time of this writing). That night was the only time in my life that I've played spin the bottle. It had rapidly devolved from a game into a square dance of make-out moments in the closet, polite middle class high schoolers kindly making sure all party goers who wished got a turn, bottle be damned. Though those make-out moments are pleasant memories, they are blurry and faded - early attempts to connect with one another and fight loneliness in the manner most of our mainstream culture told us about. Years later, when I fell in love for real, though, I understood that true connection was both more delicate and more rare than the fantastic thrill of the make-out. I understood why there's one moment that stood out from the makeouts in the closet. One moment we really connected. When that last song on the mix played, we danced and one special party person gifted me one long kiss in the middle of the room, in front of everyone. I remember feeling out of my body with euphoria, surrounded by a brightness which outshined the whole rest of the room, my dance partner and I sharing the unspeakable bittersweetness of the one and only kiss we would share in this lifetime. For the past 20 something years, I thought the power of that moment was the kiss. I was wrong. It's better than that: we are true practitioners of the church of Dance, and we make Divine magic.
I've only seen the Dance practitioner from my going away party maybe three times since then. They came to visit this past weekend for our annual summer house party, in a clear and conscious invocation of the church of Dance. As intended, we parked on the dance floor, hips loose and hands up. I could see the way the other party goers watched this dancer. We compare the Dance to Sex because these are pleasurable, rhythmic, energetic activities, by which we can celebrate our Oneness and share the pure joy of being alive with our fellow travelers. This is why we often mistake the bodily expression of "I am ALIVE and must be One with the Rhythm" for "Let us Mate." As a hungry adolescent I was on the prowl for the latter. As an adult in a committed relationship, I take great pleasure in developing rich friendships based on the former. I hold these friends with whom I can practice Dance in this manner very closely in my heart, as intimate to me as the family and tribe with whom I interact every day, though I may see a fellow Dancer but a handful of times in my adult life. The connection I share with these dear friends is as much a treasure to me as the romantic intimacy I share with my partner, and I know that I need both of these kinds of relationships in my life.
We've seen the truth together, and it is what we are when we forget our selves. Our egos - our assumptions of separateness - melt away on the waves of the beats. The melodies we sing together are the wisdom of all humans who have ever danced, the aspects of larger Truths that we learn through love and loss and laughter. The expressive and visceral ways we move can outshine the most dingy or the most polished of spaces. Dance is that connection we find in the space illuminated by the combination of the Beat, the Melody, and the Movement. It is Truth manifest, and as deep a Love as I know how to share with any person.
In our late twenties, my partner and I went to a house party with a group of devotees of Adi Da. As the night unfolded, I found myself sharing a dance floor with my partner and many other people - warm, dynamic, loud. The DJ felt our moment, and put on some kind of magical trance music: extended, textured, full of Light. I remember feeling my feet and my hips, where I connected to my partner, and I remember my hands raising of their own accord. I remember feeling soon somehow much, much larger, limitless, though I had not the consciousness to look for a limit. I remember knowing my fellow partiers were here with me, in a place not a place, as it was instinctually prior to space and time. Wherever we were before we were born, wherever we are after we die, there we were in that moment. It was fleeting and endless, and I was baptized by understanding and recognition that my search was over - this Oneness was the Truth I'd always been looking for. This was not the first time I encountered this Truth, just the first time I recognized it.
The summer I was 15, my father left the military, and we moved from the urban West coast to the suburban Midwest. A friend was kind enough to throw me a going away party, and I took the occasion to make my first party soundtrack. This was 1992, so my cassette featured Kriss Kross, PM Dawn, a deep cut from the Right Said Fred album, and as a closer, Bon Jovi's "Never Say Goodbye," a power ballad about love and friendship from the album that taught me how to fall in love with rock n' roll, Slippery When Wet (which turns 29 years old tomorrow, as of the time of this writing). That night was the only time in my life that I've played spin the bottle. It had rapidly devolved from a game into a square dance of make-out moments in the closet, polite middle class high schoolers kindly making sure all party goers who wished got a turn, bottle be damned. Though those make-out moments are pleasant memories, they are blurry and faded - early attempts to connect with one another and fight loneliness in the manner most of our mainstream culture told us about. Years later, when I fell in love for real, though, I understood that true connection was both more delicate and more rare than the fantastic thrill of the make-out. I understood why there's one moment that stood out from the makeouts in the closet. One moment we really connected. When that last song on the mix played, we danced and one special party person gifted me one long kiss in the middle of the room, in front of everyone. I remember feeling out of my body with euphoria, surrounded by a brightness which outshined the whole rest of the room, my dance partner and I sharing the unspeakable bittersweetness of the one and only kiss we would share in this lifetime. For the past 20 something years, I thought the power of that moment was the kiss. I was wrong. It's better than that: we are true practitioners of the church of Dance, and we make Divine magic.
I've only seen the Dance practitioner from my going away party maybe three times since then. They came to visit this past weekend for our annual summer house party, in a clear and conscious invocation of the church of Dance. As intended, we parked on the dance floor, hips loose and hands up. I could see the way the other party goers watched this dancer. We compare the Dance to Sex because these are pleasurable, rhythmic, energetic activities, by which we can celebrate our Oneness and share the pure joy of being alive with our fellow travelers. This is why we often mistake the bodily expression of "I am ALIVE and must be One with the Rhythm" for "Let us Mate." As a hungry adolescent I was on the prowl for the latter. As an adult in a committed relationship, I take great pleasure in developing rich friendships based on the former. I hold these friends with whom I can practice Dance in this manner very closely in my heart, as intimate to me as the family and tribe with whom I interact every day, though I may see a fellow Dancer but a handful of times in my adult life. The connection I share with these dear friends is as much a treasure to me as the romantic intimacy I share with my partner, and I know that I need both of these kinds of relationships in my life.
We've seen the truth together, and it is what we are when we forget our selves. Our egos - our assumptions of separateness - melt away on the waves of the beats. The melodies we sing together are the wisdom of all humans who have ever danced, the aspects of larger Truths that we learn through love and loss and laughter. The expressive and visceral ways we move can outshine the most dingy or the most polished of spaces. Dance is that connection we find in the space illuminated by the combination of the Beat, the Melody, and the Movement. It is Truth manifest, and as deep a Love as I know how to share with any person.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Rammstein commentary
When I first heard "Du Hast" in the mid-90s, I kind of wrote it off as novelty metal. When I tell friends I'm a big fan, they often laugh based on the same assumption. I initially took the song at face value: a metal jam about being hated, pretty standard fare. However, one day a friend said that one could interpret "du hast mich" as either "you hate me" or as "you have me". This ambiguity turns the song into a much more emotionally complex piece of art. It also gives perfect context to the definitive Rammstein sound: heavily palm muted rhythm guitar juxtaposed against new wave keyboard melodies. These two sounds are great complements, and they keep drawing me back to this band, because we don't often hear them played together this well.
I often point to Depeche Mode as the biggest influence on Rammstein's music, which sounds strange at first. However, their cover of "Stripped" shows that they're coming from the same place as DM with respect to dark sexual imagery and powerful synth lines. Similarly, "Ich Tu Dir Weh" (from their 2009 album) is based around a soulful chorus and breathy, teasing verses that would make Dave Gahan proud. DM's bigger guitar jams - "I Feel You" comes to mind - would fit easily on a Rammstein album, and I could definitely see DM doing "Engel" or "Haifisch" quite beautifully.
There's one song to which I keep coming back: "Keine Lust" from 2004's "Reise, Reise". Besides a fantastic video featuring the band dressed up as dramatically obese versions of themselves, this song is sparsely and sharply constructed. We hear the giant spaces between guitar riffs, and the drums are pure and heavy. Alien-sounding synth licks hide at the ends of a few bars for the first part of the song, but in the 2nd half they jump up and round out the vocal performance, so the climax and coda are pure headbanging bliss.
I got to see Rammstein live in Cleveland in 99, and it was a wonderful spectacle. Lead vocalist Til Lindemann is giant and beautiful and expressive. At various points through the night he shot flames from his hands, feet and head. He jerked off a giant dildo and sprayed the crowd with it. He felt up every member of the band and headbanged to every song. He was like the Terminator, but with soul - easily the most energetic person in the room, and I would jump at the chance to see this band again.
The thing that really sets this band apart is that while they draw from dark and often depressing themes and images, the music is really quite poppy (especially for a German industrial band). This music invokes demons, and then faces them down without fear or irony. They've got the grandstanding of the best arena rock bands, but the dark, gruff sexiness of the best gothic glam bands. Four albums out from "Du Hast" with another due out in 2014, Rammstein has shown me that not only are they not a novelty act, but their unique sound continues to make their music fun and satisfying.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
PJ Harvey "Uh Huh Her" Commentary
There's a sexual act known as "edging" in which one is repeatedly stimulated almost to the point of orgasm, and then left alone for a moment. For many people this can result in an extended state of heightened arousal, but it takes patience and practice and gentleness. PJ Harvey's 2004 album, "Uh Huh Her" is the musical equivalent thereof.
This record is expertly executed and entirely empty of the usual tricks rock records use to grab us emotionally: there are no big opening hooks, no loud/quiet/loud dynamic, no 12 bar blues. Instead, we have understated instruments often bordering on lo-fi or the folk-singer-slob style of Sebadoh or early Beck. We have Harvey herself teasing and howling. Mouthy but not throaty, she's clearly holding back and exploring more subtle vocal textures. I confess I find this both appealing and at times off-putting, because I want to hear her wail.
"No Child of Mine" is my favorite on on this album. Barely over a minute long, Harvey harmonizes with herself and plays a chord progression so simple it's hypnotic. I keep waiting for the drums and the bass to come in, but like a proper punk, she gets in, says what she needs to say, and gets out. This band has soul to spare, and for better or for worse it leaves me wanting more.
"Cat on the Wall" follows, a rich chocolate truffle of a song, full of fuzzed out layers of bass and voice. Harvey growls at us and hints at letting go, but never does. Amazingly enough, we can hear what sounds like her ghost singing beautifully in the background, but it blends in with the keyboard, and hides behind the drums.
I can't say that this record ever really lets go, and there the metaphor breaks down, as I also can't say it's unsatisfying. It's not: it's as provocative and thoughtful as everything in this band's catalog so far. Taken as an exploration of musical textures as opposed to a collection of songs, it's very satisfying. However, overall, depending on set and setting, this can be either quite a sensual album, or quite a frustrating one.
This record is expertly executed and entirely empty of the usual tricks rock records use to grab us emotionally: there are no big opening hooks, no loud/quiet/loud dynamic, no 12 bar blues. Instead, we have understated instruments often bordering on lo-fi or the folk-singer-slob style of Sebadoh or early Beck. We have Harvey herself teasing and howling. Mouthy but not throaty, she's clearly holding back and exploring more subtle vocal textures. I confess I find this both appealing and at times off-putting, because I want to hear her wail.
"No Child of Mine" is my favorite on on this album. Barely over a minute long, Harvey harmonizes with herself and plays a chord progression so simple it's hypnotic. I keep waiting for the drums and the bass to come in, but like a proper punk, she gets in, says what she needs to say, and gets out. This band has soul to spare, and for better or for worse it leaves me wanting more.
"Cat on the Wall" follows, a rich chocolate truffle of a song, full of fuzzed out layers of bass and voice. Harvey growls at us and hints at letting go, but never does. Amazingly enough, we can hear what sounds like her ghost singing beautifully in the background, but it blends in with the keyboard, and hides behind the drums.
I can't say that this record ever really lets go, and there the metaphor breaks down, as I also can't say it's unsatisfying. It's not: it's as provocative and thoughtful as everything in this band's catalog so far. Taken as an exploration of musical textures as opposed to a collection of songs, it's very satisfying. However, overall, depending on set and setting, this can be either quite a sensual album, or quite a frustrating one.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Love on the Dance Floor
I absolutely and happily admit I have gone to the club to meet women. No question, and I would do it again under the same circumstances. But looking back on those times, I realize that while this choice was instinctual for me, it was by no means inevitable. Proper dancers are a relatively rare breed, and only a handful of us were regular clubbers and ravers. Everyone else was going to bars and mini-golf courses to meet people. I know now that really, I did it because I wanted to meet women who loved to dance. That's why I'm not ashamed. To meet a life partner, one has to do what one loves, and meet other people who love to do that same stuff. I danced, and I hoped to meet ladies who did, too.
It didn't work back then, generally speaking. In all my club years, I met exactly one woman that I got to date (we're still friends and she's done awesome stuff with her life). At my first proper rave, I met a woman I still count among my best friends, but these two ladies are notable for being the exception. The club was a crappy place to go to hook up with strangers. What we really did there was bond and transcend.
I'm trying to write this while listening to dance music. I can't: I have to turn the sound off. It stops the flow, takes me out of sentence- and paragraph-length thoughts. When really feeling a great beat, I can sense the core - the root - of my consciousness because the past and future fall away. There is only the Rhythm Right Now, and it is plenty.
Spent this past Saturday night on a dance floor. It was my living room, and we were dancing for my birthday. This was the purest dance experience I'd had in a while, and it both satisfied me and left me hungry for more. The core of us was just a handful of people: 10 or so out of the maybe 40 or 50 people there danced all night. We smiled, we sang along, we called for responses, and we responded to calls. We had a comment here and there, but in the way of old friends hanging out, we needed very little to enjoy each other's company. Thus we bond: we deepen friendship through shared experiences.
For those of us instinctually wired to love to dance, the richly physical act thereof brings great bodily pleasure. When my favorite song is on or I'm particularly feeling a beat, I will close my eyes, throw my head back and breathe deeply, just to open up to the music as much as possible. I looked around this weekend and at moments saw a roomful of people doing exactly that move, dripping with the sweat of a great workout. When so strongly feeling our physical selves while moving with powerful rhythms, we can easily forget the daily heaviness of life. Dancing takes away my stress, because my body can hold no stress while manifesting rhythm. Dancing cures my worries, because energetic physical movement affirms my existence. Thus we transcend: we move past the daily work of life and feel the play of our bodies in the here and now.
We bond, we transcend: this is the truest church I know. In dancing we let go our conscious and separate selves to join in something much greater; These moments are religious experiences. The beauty of it is: we've always had this love on the dance floor, from the nights we went out hoping to meet somebody to the nights we go out ready to celebrate somebody we met years ago. We benefit from dancing in the short and long terms and it takes no belief, requires no faith or dogma. Just a stereo or an instrument, a body to move, and a heart to move it.
It didn't work back then, generally speaking. In all my club years, I met exactly one woman that I got to date (we're still friends and she's done awesome stuff with her life). At my first proper rave, I met a woman I still count among my best friends, but these two ladies are notable for being the exception. The club was a crappy place to go to hook up with strangers. What we really did there was bond and transcend.
I'm trying to write this while listening to dance music. I can't: I have to turn the sound off. It stops the flow, takes me out of sentence- and paragraph-length thoughts. When really feeling a great beat, I can sense the core - the root - of my consciousness because the past and future fall away. There is only the Rhythm Right Now, and it is plenty.
Spent this past Saturday night on a dance floor. It was my living room, and we were dancing for my birthday. This was the purest dance experience I'd had in a while, and it both satisfied me and left me hungry for more. The core of us was just a handful of people: 10 or so out of the maybe 40 or 50 people there danced all night. We smiled, we sang along, we called for responses, and we responded to calls. We had a comment here and there, but in the way of old friends hanging out, we needed very little to enjoy each other's company. Thus we bond: we deepen friendship through shared experiences.
For those of us instinctually wired to love to dance, the richly physical act thereof brings great bodily pleasure. When my favorite song is on or I'm particularly feeling a beat, I will close my eyes, throw my head back and breathe deeply, just to open up to the music as much as possible. I looked around this weekend and at moments saw a roomful of people doing exactly that move, dripping with the sweat of a great workout. When so strongly feeling our physical selves while moving with powerful rhythms, we can easily forget the daily heaviness of life. Dancing takes away my stress, because my body can hold no stress while manifesting rhythm. Dancing cures my worries, because energetic physical movement affirms my existence. Thus we transcend: we move past the daily work of life and feel the play of our bodies in the here and now.
We bond, we transcend: this is the truest church I know. In dancing we let go our conscious and separate selves to join in something much greater; These moments are religious experiences. The beauty of it is: we've always had this love on the dance floor, from the nights we went out hoping to meet somebody to the nights we go out ready to celebrate somebody we met years ago. We benefit from dancing in the short and long terms and it takes no belief, requires no faith or dogma. Just a stereo or an instrument, a body to move, and a heart to move it.
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