Dancing – Rant and Roll

I love to hear you speak

What are we talking about again?

Oh yes, of course. I remember now.

My heart is broken and full.

I am split.

I am whole.

Yourself, electric.

We turn up a song, and dance around the kitchen on the tips of our toes.

You grab my waist with one hand, and twirl my twisting torso, round and around.

Each time you make a face, I laugh.

Each time you laugh, I laugh harder.

My hair reflecting the soft light of the dying sun; the new night air drifting slowly through our windowpanes.

We breathe deep.

You hold me.

As we dance.

On the tips of our toes.

…

What are we talking about again?

Oh yes, of course. I remember now.

Putin in single.

He’s been flirting with China’s first lady.

His libidinous and hyper-heterosexual machismo manifesting itself in tan shawls and gallant gestures.

At least he wasn’t bare chested and riding a horse.

I always wonder about the nomenclature we affix to the husbands of women who lead countries.

First man?

Mr. Mom?

Ugh.

Probably not.

I don’t think Joachim Sauer ever worries about these things.

Luckily, being a quantum chemist and full professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin, he can likely depend on a solid “Doctor Sauer” anytime he needs be introduced.

Even better – he’ll probably never have to fend off unwanted advances from the likes of Park Geun-hye or Simonetta Sommaruga.

Meanwhile, poor Angela Merkel has had to put up with George W. Bush and his ridiculous compulsion for ill-timed and completely inappropriate shoulder rubs, amongst I am sure, many other forms of completely sexist garbage.

Speaking of which, I keep laughing because the media has been telling me that we’re currently experiencing a watershed moment here in Canada in terms of the physical and sexual abuse of women.

As if this is a thing that we didn’t know existed.

Or that is supported.

Or that is propagated.

Or that is reinforced on and by all levels of society, from individuals, to the organizations that create our rules and enforce our laws.

I know I shouldn’t have been, but I was genuinely shocked to learn that there are people who didn’t know that sexual impropriety and abuse are rife amongst the affairs of our parliament.

I just (wrongly) assumed, that much like steroids in professional sports, these practices are an integral and important element to the running of our national political organization, and all the safeguards and policing practices geared towards finding and stopping this abuse are outdated, inadequate and completely impotent.

They are run and overseen by the abusers.

What good could they possibly do?

…

What are we talking about again?

Oh yes, of course. I remember now.

Beautiful, beautiful Nova Scotia.

Just hold on tight – don’t let it in

Okay, some things.

1. Marc recently purchased Dark Souls II.

For those of you who are not versed in From Software’s latest release, this is a game famed for its incredible difficulty, infinitely unforgiving structure (you cannot ever pause gameplay), and relentless onslaught of terrifying and hard to kill monsters.

So of course my husband (and millions of other gamers the world wide over) love to drive themselves crazy engaging with this insanity.

Marc, in particular, really likes to set the right tone before picking up his player console, and as such, this is what our living room has been looking like for the past few nights:

I mean, I’m all for mood lighting, but I’m not sure if the candlelight is really fulfilling its intended function if he is still rage quitting every time he accidentally gets obliterated by a boss, or inadvertently walks off of a cliff.

This game, man.

It destroys lives.

(And souls)

2. Last Tuesday night I went to see the band Jungle in concert.

It was AMAZING.

Due to my slight crotichiness and very busy life schedule, it really takes a lot for me to stay out past my bedtime on a school night.

So to find me at a club downtown (on a Tuesday no less!), waiting for this band to storm the stage at the ungodly hour of 11pm, I was beginning to question whether or not my choice to come out and see them had been the correct decision.

My dance mate (my very good friend Chelsea, whom I had invited to accompany me as a “Holy crap you just published a book” gift) was equally as skeptical – she being of similar mind and crotichiness.

But sweet mother of pearl, I’ll tell ya. As soon as the first strains of their song “Platoon” propelled forth from the stage, I knew we were in for a treat.

This band is very, very good.

For the next hour we danced our little hearts out to the most epic of new soul-funk-rock tunes, dazzled by the most brilliant of accompanying light shows.

It’s not often you’ll go see a new band (they formed in 2013) that is so tight, and polished, and all around AMAZING.

They were playing at The Imperial, and I doubt they will be playing such a small venue the next time they roll around in Vancouver.

They will be selling out the Commodore in no time flat.

And I will be there.

And I won’t question that decision for a second.

Young Scamps

That’s me on the right and my big sister Kate on the left.

Ah love.

Would you look at us?

As ridiculous as it would seem – I remember that outfit so well. I was absolutely mesmerized by the plums!

I am also fairly certain that this photo was taken somewhere in the east coast of Canada, during one of our many summer sojourns in and around Nova Scotia – only I cannot for the life of me pinpoint the exact location.

I’ll probably bolt out of bed sometime around 3am tomorrow, having remembered the date and time, and also the fact that I forgot to pre-set the coffee and switch the laundry into the dryer.

The stuff of which my nightmares are made!

But until that time, I’ll just enjoy it for what it is.

Unbearable cuteness.

And joy.

…

So that’s a couple of things swinging about our corner of the jungle.

Vancouver has been having the most inconsistent and mind-boggling weather of late – one minute it’s raining so hard I keep expecting to see kayakers navigating their way along our roads and side streets, and the next it’s so hot, entire hordes of people find themselves simultaneously engaging in the terrifying practice of frantic and communal disrobing.

(It’ll be a trial sport in the next summer Olympics)

I am becoming a champion of layering all of my outfits, all of the time.

Halloween is also coming up, and I’m having a hard time getting into the spirit of things.

I think I may have done myself in on the creativity front last year – I don’t think I am ever going to top my Samara from The Ring.

However, should things change, I’ll keep you posted.

I hope all of you are warm and dry, wherever you find yourselves tonight.

And beware of dark souls (of any form).

So light a candle. Or two.

You want fries with that?

Sometimes when I am riding skytrain into work, and I am feeling particularly Dostoevskian, I am apt to conclude that life is just one ceaseless and ever-growing French fry craving.

This is grim.

(And McDostoevskian.)

But it is also completely symptomatic of what it’s like to be navigating the throes of my personal, and very inconsistent existential life crisis.

One day I’m just fine.

And the next, I’m expecting Inspector Porfiry Petrovich to board the train at Joyce-Collingwood and arrest me in front of all the other semi-dazed travellers, proclaiming me to be a student and murderer in equal succession.

(I think some people just call this melodramatic malaise “being in their late twenties.”)

Plus my arrest would probably be for fare evasion.

Or maybe, anti-social behaviour.

I’m no ax-murderer.

To combat this insanity (inanity?) I have been listening to a lot of ridiculously fantastic music.

I know I just wrote a post about movies that highlighted a few of the different films that have impacted my life, but I’ve really been thinking quite a bit of late about all the things that up until this point, have made me, well, “me.”

During the summer between first and second year of my undergrad, I lived in Halifax and hung out quite a bit with a fabulous lass named Kathleen.

Kathleen had a touch of the nihilism in her (as are wont all twenty year-old self-styled academics), but she was also greatly distressed by the thought of all of the books she would never read, all of the movies she would never watch, and all of the songs that she would forget about and never hear again.

So in an effort to ensure she would remember as many of these things as possible, she would carry about a small notebook and write the names of anything and everything artistic that she would encounter throughout her daily meanderings.

Her scribblings were to her, a sort of literary, musical, and cinematic catch-all.

Of late, I too have begun to employ this system.

For the past few months, I haven’t been able to leave the house without the small pink notebook that is now chock-a-block of semi-flushed out blog post ideas, daily to-do lists, and half-cocked philosophical musings.

I just hope that nobody murders me and this is the first thing that CTV finds on my rapidly cooling body.

Nobody wants to be remembered by their inability to remember to purchase both dish detergent AND QTips.

(Why can’t I remember QTips!?)

But it’s also been super helpful.

Because sometimes inspiration strikes, or you hear a tune so brilliant that it’s everything you can do not to bust a move right then and there in front of Save-on-Food’s overpriced and under-stocked egg selection, or you see a character so desperate and strange that you can only assume that they fell out of a wormhole connecting our universe with whatever bizarro world exists out past the recesses of our equally wacky solar system.

You know.

The usual.

But to get back to the music of which I earlier wrote – there is so much stuff that I wish to share with you all.

The first being my latest obsession: Jungle.

A modern soul collective based out of London, UK, they are so absolutely groovetastic it boggles the mind.

I’ve been listening to their songs on continuous repeat for the past two days.

Check them out:

They are coming to Vancouver on October 14^th and I cannot wait to get my epic dance on. For this night (and never this night only) I will be the dancing queen.

Young and sweet.

Next, another British band of whom I am completely enamoured: Bastille.

Every so often I like a band so much that I will break my “no music EVER whilst training” oath, and stick in ye olde earbuds as I tie up my running shoes.

I have broken this pledge many times over the past month because of this band.

Every song of their feels as though they are speaking directly to me, and by speak, I mean mailing an emotionally resonant and personally impactful treatise express-post straight into my soul.

They are SO GOOD.

Finally, new Spoon.

(For those neophytes out there, the band is just called “Spoon” not “new Spoon.” They just have released their latest EP.)

And for lack of a more poetic descriptor, it is bloody fantastic.

I don’t think this band is even capable of releasing a crap album, because everything they release is delicious.

And inspired.

So there you are.

For all of you who are also currently conquering your own existential demons (or at least riding out the “what does it all mean!?” wave), I suggest you put on your dancing shoes and break it down.

One French fry craving at a time.

Dance, magic dance

I just spent the last half an hour or so watching highland dancing videos on Youtube.

You should probably do this too because, for lack of a more eloquent descriptor, THEY ARE AWESOME.

I love watching these videos because they totally jazz me up, and I remember the good old (olden) days when I too used to be a highland dancer.

No joke.

From the ages of five to twelve, I flinged, reeled, and jigged with the best of them.

And I loved it, truly.

In so many areas of my life, my passion for dance bled through: Instead of walking places, I just danced. Sitting at the computer, I would curl my feet up into tight points, always trying to strengthen my arches, and I would hum different bagpipe tunes under my breath while I wrote tests.

More than anything, I really wanted to be Canadian champion, and more than that I really, really wanted to get married in my National costume.

A little highland dance background:

National costumes are different from Highland costumes (Highland being the “traditional” outfits that will most likely spring to mind when you think about highland dancing.)

National outfits instead are much softer and, in traditional terms, much more “feminine.”

This makes a lot of sense when you think about how the dances you complete in the Highland outfit are the Fling, Sword Dance, Seann Truibhas, and the Reel, whereas the dances associated with the National costume are the Blue Bonnets, Lilt, and Flora Macdonald.

Not exactly hard core stuff.

I highly doubt any Englishman felt a quake or two in his boots upon espying a bunch of bonny lasses, heel-toeing about to the Blue Bonnets Over the Border.

The Sword Dance on the other hand?

There’s no way in heck you’d want to mess with the crazies jumping about on top of multiple, sharp sabres.

Anywho, highland dancing was my total jam pretty much all through out elementary school. I even spent two weeks away from home after the summer of grade four at a dance camp in Red Deer, Alberta.

I stayed in the college dorms all by myself, ate at the school’s cafeteria (I had a punch card that let me know how much money I had left on my tab!) and signed up for different activities through my dorm mother and dance lead (the oldest girl in my training class.)

Every morning I would put my hair in a bun, put on my tights and leotard, and walk across the campus to class.

I don’t know if to this day I’ve ever felt as grown up, mature, and accomplished as I did at eleven during those two weeks.

The pièce de résistance was when a young piper asked me out the night that we went to the carnival. (What was this, Dawson’s Creek!?)

I mean, the guy couldn’t have been older than thirteen, but this basically exploded my on-the-cusp-pubescent mind.

A BOY LIKES ME AND IS ASKING ME OUT.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT GUYS.

I didn’t think things could get any more epic until the last night of the camp: all the dancers participated in a big gala, and we all performed the group dances we had been practicing over the length of the camp.

(I loved my group’s dance SO much that I practiced it every day for the rest of the summer.)

At the end of the evening, they announced the dancer who had won the scholarship to return following year’s camp, free of charge. The winner would also receive free accommodation, food, and receive a small living allowance over the course of the camp.

And would you believe it?

They announced little old me as the winner!

I was so shocked I didn’t really know what to do, so I kind of just continued sitting there, smiling like the pint-sized loon that I was.

I remember two older girls sitting behind me said something like, “Way to go Vanessa! You totally deserve it!” They then kind of pulled me out of my chair and pushed me towards the stage.

It was such an unbelievably happy moment for me walking up there to receive my certificate. I had just spent two weeks doing something I loved more than anything in the world, with a new group of friends, in a setting where I felt incredibly grown up.

Over the years I have definitely enjoyed other similar moments – different iterations of that pure joy and incredulity – but this one was definitely my first.

And watching these amazing videos is a great reminder of the brilliance of that feeling.

I hope so much that you too have a similar memory.

And if you do, take a moment and just sit back.

And press play.

My Christmas List

1. Memory

In grade eleven four of my best friends and I did a lip sync to the opening credits of Sailor Moon.

It was pretty epic. I even did my hair in Sailor Moon’s weird ball-pigtail things.

During the musical interlude, five of our guy friends came out on stage dressed as aliens and monsters, and we kicked their butts (in classic Sailor Scout style, of course.)

This, weirdly, is one of the performing highlights of my life.

2. Weather

This happened:

I was going to go for a long run yesterday, but with all of this white stuff on the ground, and my Yak Tracks nowhere to be found, I swallowed my pride and schlepped myself to the little gym located just down the street from my house.

(Schlepped really being the operative word here, what with the high degree of slippery-ness I was contending with on our absolutely treacherous sidewalks. Say what you want about us west coasters, but the majority of us really can’t do winter for crap.)

Anywho, I was feeling pretty dejected about this decision, what with how vehemently I claimed I was never, EVER going to return to a gym (especially that gym), but as I really wanted to move my body I girded my loins and went.

Oh dear me.

I really do loathe gyms.

For starters, a drop-in pass cost me ten dollars.

TEN DOLLARS!

What the what.

Second, nothing is sillier to me than running on a treadmill. Anytime I do this, I always think, “Man. What are the aliens thinking as they watch us do this crazy stuff?”

But mostly I just really can’t stand the clientele that frequent these establishments because everything they do just completely grinds my gears.

The thing that I hate the most? When dudes feel the need to one-up me after I’ve performed an exercise.

For instance, many times after I’ve used the chin-up bar (and am totally proud at the 5-8 chin-ups I’ve managed to crank out), some schmuck feels some strange compulsion to prove just how much stronger he is that I, and will ask if he can “work-in” (despite the fact that he hasn’t finished his reps on whatever other machine he has been using) and then do as many chin-ups as he can physically handle.

All of the barfs.

But in the end, the gym did serve its purpose and I felt all the better for having a chance to work out on such a wintery, snow-filled day.

3. Music

It is kind of a dream of mine to be an extra is a Bollywood music video.

No joke.

I really, really love Hindi music.

This is one of my faves, from a movie I really, really loved. (Song starts around 1:30)

Sometimes when I am baking or cooking, I stick on a 4-hour long playlist and just dance about the house.

Plus – the outfits.

THE OUTFITS!

4. Washing

I haven’t taken a bath in about fifteen years.

I’m just not really into them, you know?

I remember taking baths just when I was learning how to shave my legs, and I would shave my legs whilst SITTING in the tub.

GAH. I did so many crazy things as teenager, I sometimes don’t know how I made it through that decade of my life in one piece.

Anyways, I’m not exactly sure if there is one determining factor behind my decision to never take another bath ever again in my entire life (unofficial decision of course – it has never been formally decried), but I think it’s mostly just because I love showering SO MUCH and really, who has the time for baths? Let alone the fact that there is about a five minute window where a bath is amazing, and then you have to contend with the ever-cooling water, rogue body oils, and the realization that this is neither as relaxing or romantic as you were originally led to believe.

Plus, I always hated trying to read a book in the bath because my hands would always get really cold, and then I’d put them in the water to warm them up and then my book would get all wet from my wet hands.

GRIM TIMES HERE FOLKS.

5. Christmas

As I get older I cannot help but think that the majority of Christmas songs are just absolute garbage.

(Please note that I wrote songs, and not carols – most carols are epic and badass, and I sing them all at the top of my lungs every time I am in the shower, in celebration of the fact that I am showering and not taking a bath.)

But seriously – so many of these tunes that we are inundated with ad nauseam at this time of year are just ridiculously awful in the extreme.

For instance, topping my most hated list?

DO THEY KNOW IT’S CHRISTMAS.

Urg.

Oh I think they bloody-well do! Because I think it’s Africa and you know, not THE MOON.

Damn you Bono! What a bunch of condescending, tone-deaf, privileged jerks.

Seriously, this song is pretty much the musical equivalent of “but it’s okay – I have a black friend!”

It’s just the worst.

AND IT’S NOT OKAY.

6. Excitment

FOUR MORE DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS!

Marc and I are finally going to today to procure a little tree for our house, and we’ll be decking the halls with care.

Yay!

What are all you fab chaps up to tonight?

Do let me know. I’d love to hear as I dance the night away.