Monday, May 23, 2005
Dancing Philosophy I
It's taken me quite some time to figure out what my first nontrivial blog entry would be about. I thought: "Maybe StarWars III," but making one's debut blog entry about StarWars seemed way too lame for me. So, I came up with something more substantial.
I went swing dancing last night at Edgewood club (Shameless plug: pghdance.com). Possibly due to a mild caffeine overdose, my dancing was on some extra special crack. Not a single dance was what anybody would consider "normal."
That's the way it should be. I sometimes get stuck in "the box" while dancing, and don't reach out enough and run for the creativity stick thrown out in front of me. That's a fairly depressing condition, which results in at best mediocre dances, and less fun on the dance floor. Naturally, one can extend this metaphor to creativity in life in general. Let me codify my rules for reaching your creative potential:
The Rules for Breaking the Rules
1) Fall on the floor at least once a night. If you don't, you're not trying hard enough.
2) Create a pattern you have never been taught. If you need to, stop, take a patient moment, and seek divine inspiration for it.
3) Repeat that pattern. This helps to prevent arbitrary flailing, and makes it look like you mean what you're doing.
Follow those rules, padawan learner, and you will transcend to new planes of dance existence. It really works. At the end of last night's dance, a guy came up to me, just to say (in effect) "You're fun to watch. You're so good at improvising." And this happens to me more often than I feel comfortable with. If people only knew how much of a hack I am! I am saved only by the fact that so few people (in dance, or in life) follow the rules outlined above.
This post is getting longer than I originally intended it to be, so I will forbode future posts on aspects of my dance and life philosophy as all good blogs do. And what's best is that in the classical blogospherical character, I do not even have to deliver!
I went swing dancing last night at Edgewood club (Shameless plug: pghdance.com). Possibly due to a mild caffeine overdose, my dancing was on some extra special crack. Not a single dance was what anybody would consider "normal."
That's the way it should be. I sometimes get stuck in "the box" while dancing, and don't reach out enough and run for the creativity stick thrown out in front of me. That's a fairly depressing condition, which results in at best mediocre dances, and less fun on the dance floor. Naturally, one can extend this metaphor to creativity in life in general. Let me codify my rules for reaching your creative potential:
The Rules for Breaking the Rules
1) Fall on the floor at least once a night. If you don't, you're not trying hard enough.
2) Create a pattern you have never been taught. If you need to, stop, take a patient moment, and seek divine inspiration for it.
3) Repeat that pattern. This helps to prevent arbitrary flailing, and makes it look like you mean what you're doing.
Follow those rules, padawan learner, and you will transcend to new planes of dance existence. It really works. At the end of last night's dance, a guy came up to me, just to say (in effect) "You're fun to watch. You're so good at improvising." And this happens to me more often than I feel comfortable with. If people only knew how much of a hack I am! I am saved only by the fact that so few people (in dance, or in life) follow the rules outlined above.
This post is getting longer than I originally intended it to be, so I will forbode future posts on aspects of my dance and life philosophy as all good blogs do. And what's best is that in the classical blogospherical character, I do not even have to deliver!
// posted by David McWherter @ 4:24 AM 
