Sometimes I need to dance and sing it out. “It” can be anything—grief, anger, joy, energy. Right now as I am typing this, Yarbrough and People’s “Don’t Stop the Music” is blaring through my house speakers.
Don't you stop it, don't you stop
Don't stop the music
Don't you stop it, don't you stop
Don't stop the music
Don't you know you've got me mesmerized
With the beat I always fantasize
Don't stop the music cause it tends to soothe
I can tell you want to groove
Yeah, I do. Movement unlocks something in hyper-dependent-on-verbal-communication me that must be expressed but cannot be spoken. Do you ever feel a keen awareness of that need? What do you do about it?
I grew up afraid and distrustful of the messages my body sent me, an accidental adherent to a violent gnosticism that pried my body from my soul, in an attempt to leave my soul unsullied. It was a Christian practice that took Paul’s words about willing spirit and weak flesh and ran with it. Flesh was to be feared—especially women’s flesh: flesh that tempted innocent men, flesh that could be impregnated, flesh that was damaged like chewed-up gum if a girl had sex with a not-husband. Walking around like an immorality bomb was tense.
Enjoyment of my body—what it could do, what it could feel—was shrouded in guilt or impending doom, so I tried to leave it alone.
Growing up in this body was complicated. I grew up when it was impolite to talk about periods, but got mine before I turned 10, and could have used help navigating tiny elementary school bathrooms with no disposal areas, how to deal with blood leaking through my clothes as I played double dutch (I learned to layer that year), and how often to change my pads. Budding breasts were cause for alarm and not celebration; a clarion call to cover up. I can testify that covering up is not a solution.
I have never in my life been propositioned by men and boys as much as I was between the ages of 14 and 18 years old, wearing my lil neon socks and stirrup pants and baggy tees.
Selah.
I didn’t want to bring attention to myself for decades. I am still this way: cringing and hiding and figuring out how to relate to this body that has held me and protected me and loved me so faithfully.
I was no athlete (maybe I could have been?), but remember distinctly a dance module sometime before 6th grade. The feel of stockings and leotard was a sensory signal of freedom that uniform afforded me to stretch, bend, leap, kick, prance. In a day full of “sit still,” dance was salvation (and because of the era, we rehearsed to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” which is perfection). I felt a connection to the floor and to God and to myself that lifted me like I was floating on a wild, tender river when I danced. I got out of myself; I got into myself.
Also, my heritage is Jamaican, so no matter how I felt/feel about my body, I had to learn how to wine. (I could NEVER sit down when this was on. Meh nuh dead yet) It’s culturally sanctioned sensuality, like carnival and beach days, that remind me that our bodies are not earthly appendages to be ignored, but instead are us, are ontologically us, and co-conspirators of embodied celebration. I am so grateful for callbacks into myself from my diasporic culture. Grateful for tactile reminders that shame is a thing that happened after the Fall and not before.
There’s a lot to dance about these days1. As of this writing, there are people burying their loved ones in Jacksonville, FL and Chapel Hill, NC. Half my country thinks that a predator-crook-racist with multiple impeachments and indictments ought to be our next president, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more than half of us think it’s more impolite to merely state this than it is to vote for a predator-crook-racist with multiple charges.
I’m watching Black women wade through the hypocrisy of the powerful in order to pursue that more perfect union and receiving abuse with every step. I know that part of the vitriol against them is doused in misogynoir. Just seeing Judge Chutkan and District Attorney Willis exercise power is enough to trigger the ancestral ire of skads of good ole boys (and good ole boy-adjacents). I know that their moving through the world in those bodies is an act of resistance and of faith at times, because Black women’s bodies have never been protected here. Never. I pray for their safety.
I hope they’re both wining at home, music blaring.
Alice Walker said “hard times require furious dancing.”
A few things:
1. Sis, the hair is HAIRING in that picture!
2. Your writing, as always, pulls me in and holds me close. I'm grateful for you and your words.
3. Have you ever gone salsa dancing?
Thank you for sharing this. Once again, I'm blessed to learn from your writing.
And I am praying with you for the safety of Judge Chutkan and District Attorney Willis, and for the complete prosecution of the predator-crook-racist with multiple indictments, as well as his co-conspirators. And I am praying for God to grab hold of all the crook's followers who think they're following Jesus, even as they profane his name with hatred and brazen idolatry.