Trying to Recapture Some Innate Grooviness
A good friend recently told me a story about a childhood trauma in ballet class and I was struck by its similarity to other memories people have shared with me over the years.
Each of these stories involved someone feeling ashamed to dance in dance class due to classmates/teachers who did and said all sorts of negative nasty things.
I can totally relate and, dance class or not, I think almost everyone has similar stories.
What makes these types of experiences especially sad is that they get carried around our entire lives always reminding us that its safer not to try.
Kids have an innate sense of grooviness that tends to get lost as they grow older.
I think people would generally be a lot happier if they kept even a little of that fearless sense of play and self expression they start out with as children.
There wasn’t any ballet trauma for me but there’s a powerful force that keeps me from dancing. I totally need to get my groove back on the dance floor (or at least in the living room) and do what kids do and just dance as goofy as I want.
Anytime someone just lets themselves go and dances their dance (or writes their book, or sings their song, etc.) the world becomes a nicer place to live.
This post was going to be about my battles with 
This is just the cutest little girl ever. She is totally rocking the coloring.
I did not kill the dog.
Then comes the dog. 
And now it’s all slow motion. It makes it past the first car and then the second. I cant believe it makes it past the second car, it’s unbelievable, it’s still running and I’m thinking maybe it will actually make it, the third car has got to slow down or swerve or something but it doesn’t and suddenly there is this explosion of white fur. I didn’t think there would be fur like that. It’s like the car hit a pillow or a chicken. I am screaming.
Soon the car is at a light and I’m pulling up along side it. I don’t know what I’m going to do — I’m all anger. I’m ready to hate, to judge, imagining the worse possible person — someone laughing on their cell phone or, like, dancing to music — and I look over and there is this women and she is leaning against the glass with her head in her hand in a posture of such sadness and trauma that I am taken aback. Her face is covered but everything about her looks so shaken and upset and raw that I turn away because feel like I am intruding on something deeply personal. The light changes. This all seems to happens in seconds.
For a while all I can think about is what happened. I am filled with this sadness and melancholy that I cant shake. I spend time just sitting and thinking about this damn little dog. Obviously no one wants to see anything killed, but it was more than the loss of life that bothered me and I tried to think about what that was.
I like to sculpt demons. I try to personify those forces which many times lead me in directions I shouldn’t go. There are some big names for sure (Fear, Regret, Willful Ignorance, etc.) but also hundreds of smaller ones that deserve their due.
Figure A
