The Wild Freedom of the Dance

This may sound incredibly stupid, but one of the things I legit miss most about Cambridge is the opportunity to dance like an idiot twice a week. My history with dancing has been rough to say the least. I danced pretty consistently at weekly classes until I was about 14, and by consistently I mean consistently badly. Being a bit shit would fly in most amateur dance classes, however, the dance school I was at was ran by the most fierce octogenarian I have ever, and most likely will ever encounter. Honestly, it was a good class if there was only one kid crying at the end. And so began my fraught relationship with dancing.

Skip a few years and the possibility of dancing in a nightclub has become a very real threat. I must unlearn everything years of dance classes have taught me. The pros are clear: there’s no one to shout at me if I go wrong. But the cons are also evident: there’s no routine, I have to make up a creative, non-repulsive way to throw my body around to a song I might not know. A moment of appreciation is due here for ‘The Cha-Cha Slide’ and ‘Macarena’ – two songs which THANK GOD come with instructions – they have saved many an awkward dance floor-occupant from complete disaster. Anyway, my unlearning/relearning process was proving more difficult than I had initially expected. One friend’s advice was ‘bend in the middle’, yes, it was going that badly. Enter the hero: a bottle of wine. I wake up the next morning expecting to have been made into a meme. But no, I am unscathed from my dance experience, and after a few more clammy club nights I have become as Abba might put it, the Dancing Queen.

The song ‘I Get Ideas’ covered by M Ward (my favourite version, video below) has the best opening few lines: ‘When we’re dancing and you’re dangerously close to me / I get ideas / I get ideas’. Now I know that getting with people in clubs is not the traditional image of romance, but I genuinely think that there is something just a little bit magical in the dance together beforehand. These are the single most hopeful few hours of any entanglement; nothing can go wrong in the dance, there are innumerable sparks at the prospect of what might happen next, and best of all, you don’t know each other in the context of romance, so even if it’s just for one night you can believe that you’re both perfect. The haze will probably clear in the morning to reveal you’re both dickheads, but in the moments before the plunge you’re standing so high that the hangover and awkward encounters to follow are so worth it.

I miss miss miss the fun, wild absurdity of dancing. One of my favourite poets Gary Snyder has a poem called ‘What You Should Know to be a Poet’ which is literally a list of things he believes one must experience before laying claim to the title of poet. One of these experiences is ‘the wild freedom of the dance’. This is one of the most truthful lines I’ve found in poetry. If we accept that to be a poet is to be a witness, participant and scribe for the deepest movements experienced by the human race, then of bloody course ‘the wild freedom of the dance’ is essential to a poet’s understanding. Something happens that is genuinely electric when we let go and dance without restriction. Speaking is unnecessary. The movement is all. It says I am here, I am physically real, I am worth celebrating, I am both individual and part of this collective act that has always been such a basic human impulse.

'The wild freedom of the dance' captured spreading from left to right.

And I said, what about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?

The germ of the idea for this post began whilst I was engaged in that most reflective of activities, clearing out roughly five years of crap from my room. Being sick of the Spotify adverts (“Don’t you love this song?” *elevator music*) I was listening to my iPod from which a song has never been deleted since 2008. This of course means that there are an awful lot of terrible songs living in there, but thankfully there is also occasionally gold. Cue ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ by one hit wonder Deep Blue Something. FYI if you don’t know the song then the rest of the post might be a little difficult so video is below: (it’s really quite fun, I forgot how much I liked it)

SO, being reflectively tidying as I was, I got to thinking about having something ‘in common’ and how the idea plays out in romantic relationships. You see I’m not sure if having stuff in common is all it’s cracked up to be. When you ask someone ‘what do you have in common with x?’, what you’re asking for are what I shall refer to as surface points. These are the things you could talk about with a near-stranger quite comfortably. For example, I once had a great Tinder date (I know right) with someone who had so much in common with me it actually bordered on the bizarre. We liked the same music, films, books, hobbies – basically name anything you would consider a surface point and we had it in common. However, the great unexplainable ‘it’ wasn’t there, and after asking myself repeatedly what was wrong with me, I’ve come to conclude that the reason behind the absence of ‘it’ actually had nothing to do with me being odd/soulless. The thing is, we had so much in common that I wasn’t at all intrigued, we were way too similar and I DO NOT want to date the male version of me. Having different tastes and interests means both parties get exposure to different things – there is so much music that I love now that I wouldn’t have heard of if I hadn’t been introduced by exes. One of the worst questions I’ve been asked is ‘what do you two talk about?’ – I genuinely don’t know what kind of answer is expected here, there isn’t some kind of conversation menu. Having dated only science students for the last three years, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at actually enjoying talking about science for which A-levels had previously given me a burning hatred.

Of course it would be ridiculous to date someone whose fundamental life views are opposite to yours (anti-feminists of any description need not apply), but I think that matching up surface points is a poor way of measuring the potential of a relationship. Maybe it’s a safety net to stop us from asking the big questions – we both love Scorsese films so his attitude towards commitment doesn’t matter etc. etc.

‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ opens with the lines ‘You say we’ve got nothing in common / No common ground to start from and we’re falling apart’. Well Deep Blue Something, whoever the hell you are, good news is that you don’t need anything in common, bad news is you gotta find something more fundamental than Breakfast at Tiffany’s to base a relationship on.

Love Letter To Cambridge

Seven days ago I graduated from Cambridge and six days ago I packed up my room and left college for the final time. In the rush of the final few days there were so many people who I didn’t get to say goodbye to, some of these people I will see again, others I won’t. Though not a love letter in the traditional sense, this is addressed with love and thanks to a great many people who have shared my time at Cambridge and who have touched my life. So this is my proper goodbye.

There are a lot of different notions of what home is, but for me it is clear. I have a happy family home which I was incredibly lucky to have been born into, I’ve always been comfortable, but it’s never quite been the place for me. Homerton and in a larger sense Cambridge has been everything to me that a true intellectual, spiritual, social home should be. Unlike my family home I was not born into Cambridge, or indeed with the odds in my favour of getting there. But being a stubborn bitch I did, I built the foundations of this home myself, and therefore I’m going to break with habit and say that I’m actually terribly proud of myself.

Coincidence would have it that on this day five years ago I had my Year 11 prom. Being a precocious 16 year-old, I of course thought that this event marked the beginning of the rest of my life and that the me presented on that day would be the me I would take forwards into the world – my best self. Obviously I was an idiot. I was bitterly shy, unsure of myself, viewed boys as another species, took a lot of shit, hated talking to strangers and still thought I was going to be a vet. How times change. I realise that in another five years time I might feel the same way about myself at graduation: a stupid 21 year-old, still precocious and perhaps overly optimistic. But what I can say truthfully now that I couldn’t five years ago, is that I am closer to being the woman I want to be than I ever thought possible. It doesn’t look exactly how I thought it would, but the fact remains that I have reached a point where I know that I’ve stopped wasting time feeling inferior, I’ve stopped being scared – I am exactly who I want to be at this moment  and that is thanks to a great many people.

Never before have I felt that I’ve had such a large safety net of wonderful people ready to catch me should I fall. You are what made Homerton and Cambridge my home; bizarre, nonsensical, loving, wise, stupid – you have been the best friends and the best people I have ever known. You taught me to be good, to be strong, to be weak when I had to be, never to settle, to seize the day and most important of all to always know that I am never alone. Without you I would not have come so far, not laughed so often, not danced so ridiculously and not experienced my full capacity for happiness. Thank you for being there and consenting to live as violently as I do – things were never done by halves.

You have given me the best three years of my life, I love you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

***

This list is not at all exhaustive but special thanks go out to the following people. No matter how long or short our acquaintance, no matter how long since we last spoke, you have been and still are important to me.

Hollie Blockley, Luisa Callander, Phil Colbran, Ed Crowther, Anton Evans, Callum Fleming, Andy Goodwin, Miranda Hewkin Smith, Nick Jones, Ruby Keane, Jack Lawrence, Jo Lloyd, Libby Majumdar, Will Morris, Elena Natale, Geraint Northwood-Smith, Alex OBT, Louise O’Neil, Eleni Pahita, Steve Pickman, Danielle Poole, Isabel Power, Ria Sanders, Ben Spurgeon, Hanna Stephens, Nicky Watmore, James White, Alex Wills, Sam Wiseman, Susanna Worth, Jenny Young.

I separate my English pals because they deserve a specific thanks: I am convinced that it is because of you that my love for literature has not died a painful death. Talking about literature with you has kept it interesting and enjoyable – you saved me from becoming electively illiterate, thank you.

Finn Brewer, Freddie Cooke, Bryony Glover, Kirstie Green, Zoe Green, Lizzie Humberstone, Jen Hutchings, Lizzie Mahoney, Bryn Porter, Naomi Pyburn, Flo Sagers, Miranda Slade, Jess Wing, Toby White