I Can’t Dance To Your Fidgety Tune

“You can commune with the sensibility of culture that’s in the air.” The cool thing about living in a vibrant, bustling city is, you can instantly plug yourself into the creative undercurrent. It’s an endless supply. And it’s completely free of charge, on one condition––you have to pay it back with your originality. That’s the most important currency you have. As a citizen, you’re obligated to contribute to the intellectual and artistic commons of the community. The work doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to change the world. It just has to be yours. Cities should include these specifications on people’s home leases. Inspired by an interview with Judy Gold.

“I can’t dance to your fidgety tune.” Within our first two months of dating, my fiance and I started taking ballroom dancing lessons. Most of our friends made fun of us. They said dance lessons were for married couples. But they were wrong. Dance lessons were for old married couples. Anyway, we made the best of it. In fact, dancing became a beautiful way to expedite the intimacy of our new relationship. We understood each other’s body chemistry. We learned the leader/follower relationship. We practiced extended, concentrated eye contact. We communicated through our movements. Why wait until marriage for all that? Anatomy is destiny. No wonder dancing is the vertical expression of horizontal desire. Every couple should be required to take lessons within the first three months of dating. It’s almost scary how accurate of a mirror dancing is to human relationships. Turns out, I’m a better follower than I thought.

“To get scientific about it is a little like trying to catch moonbeams in a jar.” For a long time, I put my faith in prophetic agencies like fate, serendipity, synchronicity, luck, the law of attraction and god’s will. Until I started noticing nature’s agenda. The geometric order and rhythm of life. You know, something I could actually prove. And the more I ran my experiences through that logical filter, the more patterns started to emerge. Turns out, you can actually design systems and structures to align yourself with nature’s timing. Listen loud enough, and you can put yourself in the right place at the right time––by virtue of being in a lot of places. Funny how that whole science thing works. Inspired by an article about sentences.

“It’s the gasket to purge everything that happens to me.” That’s how my friendMitchdescribes his writing process. Totally dig it. Anyone with a strict regiment of vomiting is alright with me. Why? Because people who regularly metabolize their experiences tend to have the deepest perspective, the most interesting ideas and the most penetrating questions. They excel because they expel. And it’s not an accident. What scares me is, we aren’t as reflective as we used to be. Since boredom has become a quaint relic of the past, since there’s no need to wonder anymore and since people are turning more to technology and less to each other, I can’t help but wonder if humans have forgotten how to vomit. I can’t help but wonder if we’re raising a generation of people who don’t value the cleansing and liberating joy of sitting down next to someone you love and crying until our shirt sleeves are soaked. Let that shit out, man.