Dancing On A Saturday Night

Found this via the Manly Viking, it’s a song I could learn to like but towards the end of the video where everyone is floating along with the lyrics ‘Everything could go so wrong but we’re so happy’ I pretty much felt like I did on the dancefloor at the Dark Side whilst dancing to The Passenger.

It was this bubble of extreme happiness, I think I may have laughed as I danced, it happens to me on dancefloors sometimes. Just this feeling of yes, I should be here and everything should be now and I’m so extremely, extremely happy that I’m dancing. I nearly didn’t come out, I was really tired after the Yellow Sign stuff. I was in the bathroom moisturising after showering and wondering when I got prompted to wrap myself in gaffer tape and put my wig on and just dance. ‘When they said come dancing my sister always did.’ So I did.

She’s no longer The Bitch, I made my peace this weekend. Partly that was dressing as Aphrodite and thinking about Freya… both Goddesses stand outside things, go where they please and make their own marks. Partly I was looking, writing and thinking about things Archie has said about me. I had a motto for a while, ‘take only experience, leave only memories’… I think that the way to mend a broken heart, completely I mean rather than just forcing the edges together with your own hands is more to do with taking the memories as well as the experience. It’s about daring to believe things can last, perhaps training your mind to believe it can last against all the odds and living as though it will.

If it doesn’t… well, if it doesn’t… ‘If you can make one heap of all your winnings, And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings, And never breath a word about your loss;’ then I’m still winning, I have had so much this year. So many memories and so much friendship and so much love. Now’s the time to act as if this is all real and make it happen, all of it.

‘And when they said come dancing,
My sister always did.

Dont be afraid to come dancing…
just like the palais on a Saturday night…’

I’ve been reading Anais Nin. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. That bubble of happiness, the perfection that was inherant in Wrong Mike’s shirt, in Mother-In-Law’s half closed eyes, in Foxy Jonno’s split second of airborness, in the Nymph’s split skirt, in Lady Byron’s smiling mouth, they are here forever in this bubble floating through the web.

‘Let’s dance to joy division,
And raise our glass to the ceiling,
‘Cos this could all go so wrong,
But we’re just so happy,’

‘And everything was made for you and me
All of it was made for you and me
cause it just belongs to you and me
So lets take a ride and see’

Can’t stay under glass, glass is protective and the thing about Love is, part of it needs to hurt as well as be beautiful, but I’m not big into celebrating needless pain. The pain of Love isn’t one that crushes, isn’t one that folds you up, Love is so enthused about this big world out here and the need to become everything you could possibly become that it tears you apart. Joy Division are quite accurate in how you spread and are torn and bleeding and then, keeping your head in so far as you can and knowing exactly how far you may trust yourself you go up to the Non-Poncey Goth or whoever is DJing and you request Joy Division and that bubble of ecstasy keeps moving you, keeps letting you grow because without the pain of being torn, pulled, and stretched then the bubble is worthless and you won’t keep moving you’ll just stagnate.

I found the cure for a broken heart, be torn apart, keep moving, keep dancing, grow a little more. Every unforgiving minute filled with sixty seconds worth of distance run… and what a distance, mine is the earth, yours and mine because everything belongs to you and me.

(Apologies to The Kinks, The Wombats, Iggy Pop and Rudyard Kipling)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

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