Dance With Me

Where the Hell is Matt?

All attempts to embed the video from the above link have failed. This means that I have to simply implore you to click it and watch.

“But why should I, Mike? I’m a busy person. I’ve got a lot to do. I came to your site, and I’ll be damned if I get whisked away in a storm of hyperlinks!”

Settle down, imaginary person holding a contrasting viewpoint! I’ll explain.

The video there is from Matthew Harding. I must say that I know little to nothing about the guy, except what I’ve learned from watching the video.

Apparently, Matt has traveled all around the world, and done a little jig-type dance at each of the 42 countries he visited. And even better, he invited those around him to join!

The result is one of the most heartwarming things I’ve seen in a while. Men, women, children from all different cultures in all different parts of the world join Matt in dancing for a few moments without any music or form, without any rhyme or reason to it. They just dance!

The fact that I love the idea of this dance-adventure may surprise a younger Mike.

You see, until about last year, I used to say I hated dancing. I couldn’t stand it. I also couldn’t dance (which I readily admitted). I just didn’t see the point in doing all of these dances, or moving your body really.

I would say that I would only dance if I were “joking around” or when “I didn’t have to be serious.”

About a year ago I started going to see Gogol Bordello shows, and then everything started changing. Gogol Bordello is a self-proclaimed Gypsy Punk band. Everyone at their shows jump up and down, just letting loose and dancing.

They don’t have a format to their dancing. You just move your body and smile. It’s a community of laughter, where a kid with a mohawk can wrap his arm around the shoulder of a 280 pound muscular athlete and dance together.

It’s all about releasing yourself from all the expectations that come with being human in our modern day and age. But it didn’t always use to be this way.

There was a time when you couldn’t be good or bad at dancing. There was a time when anyone and everyone can, should, and would dance together. There was a time that dancing didn’t just mean getting up to dance to Cotton Eyed Joe at a wedding.

People would just grab instruments, start playing, dancing, and drinking for days.

Gogol Bordello made an anachronism out of me by placing my modern self back into this world. And I loved every second of it.

I started saying I would only dance at Gogol Bordello shows. Still claiming when I didn’t have to “be serious.” A month or so ago, I said this to Katie, who, with her way of finding the sunlight hiding behind my dunes of self-doubt, replied with something that really made me think:

“When do you need to be serious when you’re dancing?”

I didn’t have an answer. I’ve never danced in a situation where I had to “be serious” before. Even if I was slow dancing I didn’t have “be serious.” I just had to follow my instincts.

It made me look back on the past year and realized that I enjoyed dancing whenever I got the chance to do so. As long as I was in good company, I had a great time. A change had been made, and younger Mike would be very confused by my current attitudes on movin’ to the music.

But younger Mike definitely wouldn’t ever be confused as to why I loved that video of Matthew Harding’s.

It’s about bringing people together. No matter what age you are, sex, no matter your skin color, your religion, your ethnicity, what country you live in, what pants you’re wearing, the hat you have on, whether you have glasses or not, if you went to college or you didn’t, junkie or beauty-queen, president or pauper, there’s no damn reason in this whole wide world why we can’t all dance together.

Thank you for helping us remember that, Matthew.

Keep the love alive, everyone.

- Mike