Dancing

I never liked dancing. Watching people dance is one thing, but doing it oneself brings a shudder. I guess I should not generalize it. Doing it myself brings a shudder.

I have been asked to dance at weddings, parties, discos, beaches, and shows—hell, even the shows where I’m one of the people responsible for getting everyone to move. Playing music to get others to dance feels a natural extension of my role in this world. Participating in it couldn’t feel more alien.

I grew up feeling that I lack a penchant for physical coordination and three-dimensional orientation. Things that people take seconds to figure out would take me minutes, and stuff that people would master in hours would take me days. I would be left feeling disappointed with myself to even dared to have attempted new things.

I remember having to confront two activities that I was eventually able to conquer—playing music and typing on a keyboard.

Everyone is aware that playing a musical instrument a difficult task, especially in the early stages. It is worse when the act of playing an instrument involves physical movements that have no equivalents in daily activities. Holding a few strings against a piece of wood with the tips of your fingers of one of your hands and trying to trigger vibrations in a few of them with the fingers of the other , while taking care of melody, rhythm, and precision, is quite a leap of grace for someone like me. I’m sure it is not too different for others.

Things get worse if you seem to be in perpetual competition with peers, which I was in this case when I was taking my initial lessons in guitar. My friend, who was younger to me, seemed to have so much more grace and leaning to mastering this complex motor routine.

Unfortunately, this friend—who I’m not friends with anymore—is also involved in the second example. On my teens, I used to frequent a friend’s place. The guitar-peer friend and I used to meet our older friend, a teacher of accounting, who was a couple of decades elder to us. We used to talk about music and technology, primarily computers and hi-fi equipment. Our older friend had poor vision and used to have trouble preparing tests for his students.

That evening, a few days after I got my first personal computer, I was trying to help my friend finish a test. I was at the keyboard and I was asked to press a key. I did not know touch typing then and I looked down a the maze of letters, symbols, and numbers under my hands. Every key looked like it could be the key I was looking for, but only one was the right one and couldn’t find it.

My friends were over my shoulders calling out where it was. They were laughing at my inability to see things that they could so easily do from farther away. I felt bad and felt my heart racing. My body was telling me that if in the setting of a jungle, this sort of inability would be tantamount to risking my life.

A couple of more letters later, I stood up from the desk and told them that I’ll learn the layout of the keys before I try doing this. Within a week of practicing for an hour daily, with the help of a free typing tutor, I could type without looking at the keyboard.

As I type this, I know that I will feel confused if I look at a keyboard that I can easily touch type on.

In both situations, I had to dissect the process of mastering a skill, work at it for durations longer than someone else would, and slowly bring me up to a level where I can stand shoulders levels with everyone else.

So what about dancing? Why haven’t I attempted to start the process of breaking it down into bite-sized chunks? I don’t quite know myself.

I started writing after I heard the song “Dancing In The Moonlight” by Toploader earlier this morning.

“Dancing in the moonlight

Everybody's feeling warm and bright

It's such a fine and natural sight

Everybody's dancing in the moonlight”

The song sounds great but the lyrics are as unavailable to me as are blue skies that are hidden behind the thick smog this morning.

I guess I feel a certain sense of physical revulsion toward seeing myself dancing. I’m not talking about looking at myself in the mirror. Instead, more like splitting my consciousness from body and observing myself from a metaphorical tree branch.

Something doesn’t fit right. I have not quite ascertained if my discomfort stems from seeing myself emulate the physical movements that constitute dancing. Or is it the difficulty in seeing the discordant feelings of joy and contentment told through my face and my eyes, which if was able to do, would fees like a betrayal of my true self.

Unlike the processes of smoothing over of the two cavities, which seem to have left indelible memories, I don’t feel the need to mend the situation I have not yet felt inadequate because of my inability to dance, nor have I felt the need to aspire to emulate someone or something inspirational.

However, I must confess that I have at least one person in my life who likes dancing who, thanks to their generally uninspiring, condescending, and irritating nature, continues to push me away from dancing.