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"I would believe only in a god who could dance. And when I saw my devil I found him serious, thorough, profound, and solemn: it was the spirit of gravity - through him all things fall."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
I never would have suspected that I would dance at a concert. I imagine that few others would expect it either. I don't consider myself a dancing person. In no aspect of my life am I outgoing, or demonstrative. I don't chat with people, I don't introduce myself to strangers. I'm also not physically expressive. I don't use a lot of body language, my idea of flirting is staring, and I don't touch my acquaintances. Throw in my lingering adolescent self-consciousness, and you don't exactly come out with Richard Simmons for a personality type.
Despite all this I have, and do, dance at concerts. I'm not talking about the Mashed Potato or The Grind. Just that my body is moving to the music. I don't know what I look like while it happens, and I don't want to know. But compared to my past concert behavior, I'm like Gene Kelly out there.
I guess this is a sign of maturity of sorts. I never felt a burning need to dance before, I was, and often am, perfectly happy sitting in my seat and listening. After all, I told myself, you're there to see the show, you can stay home and dance. But I can't fight the understanding that the reason I'll dance now is that I don't give much of a shit what people think about it. That's what we call cynicism passing off as maturity, but if it rescues me from the land of the junior high loser I'll take it. It could be a new appreciation of music versus lyrics, it could be the right band, but I suspect it's me.
It's still hard for me to ignore the opinions of the sea of people around me. After all, I used to watch the people dancing and think they looked fairly stupid. But, although I am aware that I probably look stupid, I dance on. Because it's fun, and there's no reason not to do it, other than worrying about what others think. When I die, I won't look back fondly on those times when I acted properly, and did nothing.
What I try to do while I dance is to look at the people who are really dancers. The ones who don't think about any of this stuff, they just know how to express themselves. And I remind myself that I'd rather be like them than the people standing next to me thinking I'm a loser. That's the irony of self-consciousness. The people whose opinions we pander to are those who we least want to be. Who wants to be like those who do nothing but ridicule. Why not aspire, though you fail, to be like those who do the things you admire. It's easy to be petty, but not very rewarding.
It is part of human habit to worry about what others think of you. I don't know if I'll ever be able to defeat that. However, if we're going to worry about others, the least we can do is worry about the people we admire. There is some good that can come from wondering what our role models would think of us. So I watch the dancers, and I hope they will admire me for moving, not sitting. And that gives me the motivation to do what I secretly wanted to do the whole time: Dance. I'm only going to be here so long, and only go to so many concerts. I don't have time to stand around.
Poetry is a very different art than it once was. Some people celebrate the passing of rhyme, meter and structure, others mourn it. Me, I sit on the fence (what else is new). Some things have been lost, and some gained. What we gain in freedom, we lose in the ability to recognize greatness.
Those who have written a structured poem of any sort know that fitting your thoughts into a poetic form is quite a challenge. Not only must you find the words to say what you feel, but you must make them rhyme, or fit the meter, or what have you. In a way this structure is being brought in from outside the poem, so it is superficial. But in the best poems, the form magnifies the beauty of the poem, and the challenge adds to the accomplishment of a great poem. This type of poetry is hard work, ti takes a lotof crafting and tuning. But it is responsible for the greatest poems of the past.
To those who revel in the poems of yore, free verse poetry is too easy. Without the challenge that structure gives, the poet is no longer a craftsman. Robert Frost said that free verse is like playing tennis without a net. In other words there is no goal fro the poet to strive for, and no way for us to measure their achievement. Sure there are still great poets, just as a great tennis player is still great even without the net. But there is no way for us to know that they are great, they look the same as the rest.
I agree with this analysis. When poets have to adhere to a form it makes their successes that much more amazing. Free form poetry, like modern art, looks like anyone can do it. Which doesn't mean that none of the artists are great, just that without knowing what's going on in their mind, it's hard to tell. Maybe they're just spewing words onto the paper. Or maybe they are putting as much feeling and energy into the poem as any poet. Who knows.
However, I still applaud the advent of free verse. Many of my favorite poets write like this. I am glad that poets have been freed from these structures. The ideal for free verse is that every poem invents its own structure, that is perfect for that very poem. Each inspiration has its own way of being told, and the restrictions of poetry once put a damper on that. Now a writer is free to let loose their idea in any way they can imagine, and that is good. The danger is that anyone can throw some words into a random arrangement and call it poetry. And we must defend that, because we have no way of knowing better.
I have to come down on the side of freedom, for this one reason: In the end, it is the reader who is most important to the poem. No matter how the poet strived or slacked, it is how the reader interprets the poem that will determine how they feel about it. And if the poem moves that reader then it is good, no matter the poet. Great artists will always strive to challenge themselves, and readers will always find poems that strike them. So even though I don't know which poets are great, I'm just going to find my poems, and let them sort it all out in a hundred years.
You took your coat off.
Stood in the rain.
You're always crazy like that.
And I watched from my window,
Always felt like I was outside looking in on you.
You were always the mysterious one
With dark eyes and careless hair.
You were fashionably sensitive,
But too cool to care.
And you stood at my doorway.
With nothing to say,
But some comment on the weather.
In case you failed to notice.
In case you failed to see.
This is my heart
Bleeding before you,
This is me down on my knees.
These foolish games
Are tearing me apart.
And your thoughtless words
Are breaking my heart.
You're breaking my heart.
You were always brilliant in the morningtime.
Smoking your cigarettes,
Talking over coffee.
Your philosophies on art,
Baroque moved you, you loved Mozart.
You'd talk of your loved ones,
While I clumsily strummed my guitar.
You teach me of honest things,
Things that are daring,
Things that are clean,
Things that knew what an honest dollar did mean.
I would hide my stained hands
Behind my back.
Somewhere along the line
I must have gotten off track with you.
You know nothing of this world.
Excuse me
Think I've mistaken you for
Somebody else.
Somebody who gives a damn.
Someone more like myself
And these foolish games
Are tearing me apart.
And your thoughtless words are
Breaking my heart.
And I showed you to the door.
You were leaving again,
This time it was fine with me.
You know nothing of this world,
For if you did
You'd see beauty in callouses.
You would see honesty in soil.
And you wouldn't talk so loud
Because you would know the wisdom of a stone
Lies in its silence.
"Man is something that must be overcome; and therefore you shall love your virtues, for you will perish of them."
-Friedrick Nietzsche
The End