Dancing In The Streets
More, and certainly more serious, soon—life in general and the non-stop WTF nature of current politics in particular has had me working and reworking a couple of pieces to within an inch of their lives and mine. Which makes the following seem even more important…
I was walking down Nicollet Mall between 9th and 8th late this afternoon when a young woman of maybe 20, wearing a purple shirt, a pair of headphones, and a big smile danced past me. Literally danced, unashamedly, full tilt, get down, drop-butt dancing down the mall, reversing, crossing the avenue, and then down the other side. As I stood in front of the Walgreen finishing a cigarette, a tall, hoodie-clad Asian man of about the same age, no headphones, who had been walking normally down the street before the young woman danced by started dancing himself, spinning and vogue-ing his way down the mall towards the Barnes and Noble. I went in to the drug store, picked up a small packet of peanuts, and was walking back down to 9th Street and my office when I saw an elderly man with a white beard and a straw fedora doing, if I remember my elementary school gym class folk dance lessons correctly, the cake walk.
I hope to the dark greasy depths of my all too cynical heart that what I just witnessed was the sort of spontaneous terpsichorean chain reaction it seemed, that the people in question weren’t dancing in the furtherance of Christianity or Scientology or politics or some goddamn viral marketing campaign. Since no one tried to pass me a pamphlet or carried a banner or as much as said a word to me, I’ll ignore the possibility that they were, and just continue to grin like an idiot like I have been since I first saw the woman in the purple shirt.
And on the off chance that any of you who were dancing down the mall today should manage to catch wind of this blog post, I want you to know this—you are magnificent. Dance on, y’all, and thank you.
