An article by Sha'Tara, local writer and friend.

Life is a Dance

[thoughts of     ~a burning woman~    Sha’Tara]


It’s said that life is a dance.  In my experience, this is true , but it is not however a choreographed happening.  Every participant must learn to create and execute his own particular set of steps, dance to his own music, form his own words.  Each life dance is intensely personal.  That is not the toughest part to accomplish.  The most difficult aspect of one’s dance is, once created, to make it dovetail perfectly within the existing ‘Song’ for whatever insists on being out of step will be disavowed.

There are those, of course, who never create their own steps due to fear, selfishness, laziness and neediness or combinations thereof or more often because they adhere to an exclusive belief that emphatically forbids personal expression.  They find it safer and easier simply to emulate whatever is popular; to follow the Piper.  Where large groups come together to dance the impersonal steps of whomever wrote the music, that is when life turns to death, for as life is intensely personal, so death is utterly impersonal.

There are systems – certainly systems of power – that require all participants to dance their choreographed steps.  Woe to those who dare otherwise as history demonstrates.  And yet to not dare otherwise is to accept the worse kind of death: the living death in which every movement, every step, is dictated by a Power over which one has no say.  In our world this living death is touted to be the essence of the good life, safety or salvation.  Conformity, whatever the price.

When the dance is a celebration of life, then the dancers are expressing their own truth.  But if it is a celebration ordered, demanded, organized or promoted by the system, then they are dancers in a 'danse macabre'—a dance of the dead.  So how is one to know?

That is like asking, ‘How do we know when something is true , when it is false?  Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?’  It would seem a conundrum indeed, there being so many choices on the world’s menu.  But perhaps it is not as difficult to figure it out as it seems at first, and I won't be the first to recognize this.  Mark Twain said: “Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.” 

That is the key to understanding or knowing what is true , what is false.  If a majority does it, believes it or supports it, it’s false.  Turn the other way and go think your own thoughts; figure out your own way of doing things.  Listen to the voices in the Wind.  Each voice has its own music and forms its own words.  If you listen carefully to the voices you will note there are missing parts in the song and that’s where you come in. 

Now you understand why the collective song is false.  It is mind-numbing, loud, vulgar, repetitive phrases making no sense,  signifying nothing because everyone who participates in it is barred from adding his own part to it.  It is rock n’ roll and commercial country music.  It is a pointless, vain exercise in futility, a music video, a soap opera.  

Ever wonder what drives people to create grafitti on every available flat surface?  I won't speak for the grafitti in Cro Magnon caves, for them it may have been art.  But in today's world it’s a subconscious expression of anger at being denied one's voice; anger at the grafitti of the rich and powerful, the billboards and the ads that constantly assault the eyes and the mind with their lies, broaching no counterattack, to confrontation, no questioning of the right to impose empty values with such terrible force.

Ever wonder why there is so much ‘other’ stuff at parties beside the dancing where individuals are meant to come together to enjoy the close proximity of each other’s bodies publicly and in a way permitted by an otherwise judgmental society?  Why is the so-called music too loud, the wording incoherent, often promoting violence?  Why junk foods, alcohol and drugs are ‘de rigueur’ to create ambiance?  Because the ultimate goal is not to simply enjoy the dance, the event is used as an opportunity for some to show off and others to ‘score.’ 

But life isn’t about scoring, nor about winning.  It’s not about walking away with the prize but about participating in an intensely,  personally meaningful, performance without end. 

I quote again, this passage from Poul Anderson’s book, ‘The Avatar’ – “Life is not a thing, it is a way.  It is a series of happenings, it is the evolution of patterns which carry information; it is growth and decay and re-growth.  Wherever the possibility of this exists, life will be.”

An evolution of patterns.  Why are we not more eager to add our own pattern to the mosaic rather than meekly and dutifully obeying the masters of deception whose dance is nothing more than an endless commercial?  We must ask ourselves constantly, ‘What kind of ‘life’ are they offering us?’  Then we must take our collective head out of the sands of time and after blinking at the unusual brightness of staring into reality for the first time, dare proceed into the unknown, dare dance our own, and totally new steps without jumping back into corporate denial to feed blindly once again at the corporate trough.