Song of the moment: Iron and Wine's "Boy With Coin"
It's been some time since I've added something here, and at the thought of writing tonight, I stumbled over my inability to formulate a real solid concept of what it was, rolling around in my fat head.
...and then I saw it...the video accompanying this song. And I wept and became a little lost in my own confusion, unable to determine what it was that made the tears well up. The ladies in this video are the loveliest of creatures shrouded in what I fondly like to call "dancers black." This is not simply a black. This is the black of dancers, which refine their features, enliven sculpted and fluid movements. This is a black of elegance and quiet drama, the kind which sparks tales of lust, makes men fall short, and pulls a dancers eyes from the depths of her face...emotional movements made clear and precise against the backdrop of a solid mass of color.
This black is perfection in its refinery, indeed.
The smooth wooden floors beneath the clap of heels and whips of toe brings back the smell of a dance hall, a stage, a practice set. The wood polished and then suddenly sodden with dancers' heated sweat and laden with the swells of blood from cramped toes and torn toe nails.
...and then she took to the floor, in the video- an image of a woman I once imagined I might be. Strong, elegant, refined, beautiful. Wrapped in the color void from the dancers attire. Shouldered in a grey wrap, crimson band of grace and a skirt of feathers, which turn, at sudden movements in to birds, flying off in to some distance. This woman, to me, is a garden of idealism. She is the beauty I once sought and the grace I once thought lay just beyond the horizon. She looks to be a woman of staunch practice, stamina and quiet, but madly tapped strength. And the song which guides her movements balances the dramatic colors which wrap her and the stern guild upon her face. It calms the moment.
And as I watch this video for a third time, I become suddenly and overwhelmingly cognizant of the cause for my tears.
I am watching what I once begged to become and failed to be while simultaneously enraptured by a song whose lyrics befuddle my understanding. I can't quite figure out what She was doing when "God left the ground to circle the world." But I am curious now to know what happened that day God decided to give a circle away and why. I am trying hard to listen to the lyrics with something other than my logical brain, hoping that I can make sense of this puzzling lyric while coping with the image before me, watching what I lost somewhere, not certain where I last saw who I wanted to be, and where I've left her. And all the while I am crying more, grappling with too many things swimming in my mind.
I pause. Walk away, only to come back, and watch the video again...
And when I see the dancers, I realize that I am staring, effectively, at a dream I let reality take from me- fearful and unable to hold on tight enough to make it my own. It's not the dancing, alone, which makes my heart swell, but what dance is to me, and what I had forgotten it brings to one who treasures its art and honors its life lessons in stamina, aptitude, practice, grace...grace...grace, emotional reaction in a structured release. Dance teaches us to hone in to the power music has over our movements, dramatizing moments. It is the boxed up expression, wrapped in a package of elegance, structure and refinery. All of these things I had hoped to be, all powerful elements the strongest of women, I assumed possessed.
In short, it is the expression of an impossible range of emotions without all the mess.
Somewhere down some path, I lost my way in becoming the woman draped in the color of hearts, her vision and movements clear and readied. Prepared for the task at hand...teaching her brood, by example, of the true power of practice and strength and of the magic that fortitude brings...should we have the eyes to see it before us. Beneath her steps, trailing the skirt of feathered birds, remains of path of swirls, encircling themselves, as one line becomes a trail of many rounded movements.
It's hard to look at that which you once sought and remember your aim, and then realize you've become lost amidst the chatter, opinions of others, expectations and blase realisms this life pushes before you. It's harder, still though, to understand with very simple and plain clarity that more importantly what became lost was your drive and that ultimately, you allowed things outside of yourself pull you from the path you fought so hard to bare and make your own.
That I gave up, really, is what hurts. And to see that someone succeeded where I failed cracks my heart a little. I wonder how strong those women had to be in order to compose their bodies and hearts with such passion and stance. I wonder how they overcame those obstacles, or if they merely stepped over them, or to the side of them.
And suddenly I am struck by something- a flicker of acknowledgement. The women in this video are being taught. This solitary dancer is not 15. She is not in her twenties, and I would venture to guess that she is not in her thirties, dare I be so brazen to guess at a woman's age. But she has built this gift she has with the time she's been given.
And I succumb to the understanding that your chances are lost, in this life, only at death. Thus, it never too late to refine ourselves in to the grace we seek. In to the movements and style we wish to present to those before us. Suddenly it is the movements of these women which make them so powerful and so lovely, in my eyes. Yet, it is a power of quiet, somewhat stilled and hushed and obvious none the less...they are guided by feet familiar with the grace of this one dance. Feet enclosed in shoes of practiced stance, atop a floor of sound structure. And while the floor upon which they glide may be scratched, torched, muddied farrowed and bloodied, it still manages to shoulder their weight, their conscious movements and battered toes.
It is never too late...
...and one last time I watch the video- and this time I don't cry because I understand that while I am looking at a life I once so wished for myself, I also know that the clarity of this moment is honest. I am starting at something I believe to be the pinnacle of beauty, an emotional reaction to something magical. At least, in the chaos of this life, I have not forgotten what I believe is beauty and I am still fragile and and honest enough to be affected by it. So, my heart still beats...and while I may never find that girl I used to be, at the very least, I am composed enough in mind to begin looking for her in familiar places, and perhaps find the space to become at least a small part of what I had hoped for myself.
Sam Beam ought to be damn proud of a song this pretty and for the inclusion of the sight as beautiful as these dancers.
