dance hall days

the early 80's-there was an air of "anything is possible" mixed with "leave no stone unturned" or "live every day like it's your last" i think. there was so much creative energy flowing everywhere. cultures were mixing, gays and straights, whites and people of color, skinheads and fashionistas, and agreement fields were mobile and so were lines drawn in the sand.

techno pop was making a real thrust into the heart of american culture. it was supplanting traditional hard rock on many of the airwaves and disco in many clubs. a new wave of music and culture was being heralded in. i heard orson welles declare that he didn't care for the drum machine because it didn't create a rhythm or a beat that was connected to a human spirit. that a mechanical beat had no soul.

i don't remember feeling that tho. it seemed to me that much of the music that was playing during my dance hall days was soulful. it had soul and it had smarts. at least the tracks i liked- homosapien by pete shelley, pretty in pink by psychedelic furs, add it up by violent femmes, bizarre love triangle by new order, and of course, almost anything by yaz.

we held court in dance halls. we watched parades and we attended wakes. we cheered teams and we got rained out. we witnessed theatre and we laughed and cried. we became chameleons and changed our colors to suit our backdrop. and with much going on in the outside world that held very little allure, it was always a pleasure to slink into the darkly lit arenas throbbing with bass and packed with fashion victims, storytellers, bohemians, and freedom riders. goth seemed so quaint then because it was very appropriate to dress up the idea of death and darkness.

i remember visiting my friend paul for the last time in the hospital in 1985. he was a shell of the beauty i had once known. a skeleton really. he had suffered with thrush for over a year 1/2. food hadn't tasted good to him for a long time. he wasn't able to keep what nourishment he did eat down for very long. he was tired. he was weak, he was frustrated, and he was preparing. i had tested positive about a week earlier and he knew. he was in his third bout of pneumonia but he was always happy to see me. i read to him and told him some gossip about the club and the club kids. he died later that week. thanksgiving day as a matter of fact. but the music continued and the dancing remained. as it should i dare say. and the last words he spoke to me were "you take care of yourself".

funny, i didn't even know how to do that really before i was positive. and i knew i had no clue now. but is shook my head indicating that "indeed i will".

in my world, the 80's really did herald in quite a "situation". and of course so many us were screaming "don't go" silently to many of our friends. we didn't know what this tidal wave really was washing over us and we didn't want to know. let the rhythm take me cuz i don't know if i can take much more of this.

so paul my friend- all these years later, maybe i am finally getting a clue as to how to take care of myself. it feels good to finally get it. i still miss you.

pssst- dance halls days is a series of posts. if you are interested in reading more just type "dance hall days" in the search bar at the top of this blog. and i have embedded an "alternative" dance hall days playlist in finetune in the sidebar. click it and hava listen if you like.