I told Martin last night, "I bet nobody has ever done Lenten dancing to Better Than Ezra," and he agreed.
"I really don't feel like dancing," Martin said, all bleary-eyed from too much grading. I know how he feels, though I think he is, in general, a more patient and wise person than I, and that's why he's a teacher and I'm not. I absolutely hate grading a stack of papers--there's the writing that makes me hope for the future, but there's also so much bad writing--and then I'm torn between relationship with the student and the righteous indignation I feel when I write F, just stopping myself from adding, "Excruciating to read. After reading your drivel, I feel closer to despair than I did before I started."
Martin shows real patience, though, and he sees real progress with his students. He delights in their progress the way I find joy in the burgeoning of a story I'm writing. When we were in college, our graded papers bore--maybe--two or three comments, or check marks or just a grade. Martin fills his student's papers with comments and scribbles and marks, and he's gained a reputation for being a hard grader. But if they have any sense, his students know that this is the way Martin, as their teacher, pays them respect.
And so Martin emerged from the murky tunnels of essay grading not a little wall-eyed. And some weird dancing followed, people. Occasionally I'd see him behind me, with the purple hat pulled down over his eyes, writhing in inner pain. "Are we done?" I'd say, ready to turn off Ezra and go on to TV. "Another one," he'd answer, and pull down that hat again. "Can you even see?" I asked, and worried for his safety as he wriggled and dove all over the room. At one point he was thudding on the armchair with his fists.
"I'm inside the music," he said.
Let me give a little background here. Martin's and my first days together were marked by his musical snobbery. Minute by minute, he pulled down my castles of feel-good music and happily trampled on my preferences for show tunes and Roger Whittaker--in order to educate my tastes and raise me to his erudite mesa of artistry. In our little, two-door Honda with the bad sound system, he played tapes and CDs of music that literally made me want to jump out of the window. Or pound my head repeatedly on the dashboard. It was so unlistenable, so wretched, so discordant and NOISY. I resisted education at every possible, painful juncture. I had never cared about musician's or songwriter's histories or stories or approaches, and I jolly well was not going to start caring about what I thought was mere trivia.
BUT. . .ten years later, I'm opting for The Decemberists or The Weepies and saying things like, "That song is very Dylan, but he's totally butchering the approach--there's only one Dylan, and this guy is not him" or "That song has a real Beatlesque sound, but it's actually more like. . ." Blah, blah, blah. I can actually listen to a song and say who's singing it. And I enjoy a much wider range of music. But I still have little patience for music I don't like.
So this is why Martin, who's absolutely gaga for music and listens to the most appalling noise, got inside the music and was moving around our library like a bear with a toothache. Me? I was practicing kicking my leg and lifting my arm ballet-like. I was still aware of droopy boobs and how I wanted to take some more off the thickening wintry middle area of Kim Cockroft. But then. . .I shut my eyes.
And the whole library was gone, and so was Martin, and so was I. I was suddenly inside the Better Than Ezra song, and I was exploring the complexities of the music with my body. Mostly, I was pulling my arm toward my head, over and over again, like somebody caught in a loop, but this repetitive motion worked like a meditative prayer--I mean, it cleaned me out and took me to a place beyond sight or words. Needless to say, if I could have seen myself, I would have laughed myself silly or blushed beet-red. But I couldn't see myself--I just was.
I've always both envied and also kind of looked down on people who lose themselves in something. As a writer, I'm always writing about an incident as I'm living it. There's often the Voice narrating action and reaction and there's little chance of getting so lost in an experience that I haven't already formulated one or two descriptions of it. I'm rather embarrassed and anthropologist-like about ecstasy, of all kinds. My ears light up like ambulance sirens or I break into hives if I become too emotional with anyone I don't know too well. And if anyone had come into the library last night, I would have given a good explanation of our craziness and offered them tea. I mean, no way would Martin and I dance like this around other people.
And yet. . .maybe we should. Or maybe we shouldn't. There's no real cultural home for this kind of expression in our tradition. My stripe of Caucasian American doesn't do any kind of ritual drumming or chanting or dancing. The only venue for publicly losing self-consciousness is a charismatic church or. . .a bar? Or maybe a group therapy session? Though I am duly grateful for all The Enlightenment did for us and our culture, it ruined us in some ways, don't you think? It saved us from superstition, cleared our minds, gave us scientific method, and absolutely ruined our capacity to dance like fools. Or maybe the two have nothing to do with each other. Maybe, if we loosen up some, we who are tied up in self-important knots dance MORE like fools because we HAVE to--we have to give ourselves up to some expression that doesn't rely on the entanglements and pomposity of words.
