About dancing:
Sometimes I even close my eyes. Other times, because I forgot a bandana to tie my bangs out of my eyes, my sweat-slick hair whips across my glasses, so that it's like I've been crying in front of my glasses, and not behind. Then I don't even need to close my eyes. I just let them wash in unfocus, my peripherals used to prevent collisions.
But it always starts a little more tentative; a little less in general. Feet together, head bobbing and shoulders rolling side to side. Getting the feel. Finding the beat. Remembering the steps. Remembering to forget that people watch and smirk and judge. Learning all over again how to just trust the music's instructions. Its little cues and set ups. Its mini surprises and pseudo conclusions.
And most nights, I get going a little, take a break, enjoy a song, goof off with friends, and maybe even dance with someone novel. I've been the guy kissing a stranger on the dance floor. That's happened. That's kind of thrilling.
But the best nights are the nights where I'm alone in a room full of people. The nights when for 20 or 30 minutes, even an hour, I get into tribal-rain-dance mode. When I peyote-vision-quest that shit for song after song, except without the peyote or the desert. It's when I lift my head from my feet and the floor and avoiding eye contact with non-dancers of all stripes. When I lift my head and smile and look at nothing and let my body wind and bounce and shift improvisationally, mysteriously in tension with what's been and what is about to be.
And I smile. I just grin pleasantly to no one in particular. And I try to lose all my gravity and keep my balance all at once.
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