Posts Tagged ‘Tiesto’

Go Out Dancing

December 5, 2022

Is my new favorite acronym for God.

Others I like are:

Grace Over Drama.

Group Of Drunks.

Great Out Doors.

Good Orderly Direction.

But for the moment, go out dancing is my current fave.

I have made a new friend and she has gotten me out twice now in the past week.

We went out to the Polyglamorous party “Left Overs” last week, Thanksgiving weekend, with Dee Diggs from Brooklyn at The Great Northern, and to date myself, I hadn’t been there since it was Mighty, so, like, um, fifteen or sixteen years?

A very good friend and I used to go there in early recovery.

The sound system there was out of this world.

I don’t even remember who I saw.

Once I went there with a room mate to see a famous rapper, who, I really didn’t know, I had never heard of the guy before, but my room mate had a hard on for him and an extra ticket and so I went.

Much to her chagrin, I got pulled up on the stage at the club to dance with him.

I don’t remember the artist’s name, but I do remember my room mates look of incredulity as I was on stage.

Heh.

Sometimes when I went with my good friend and the acts weren’t that great and we’d just go hang out by his car.

He had a ridiculous sound system in his car, a convertible Mercedes Benz that I don’t even want to know how much it cost, and he’d pop the trunk and we’d just dance around the car.

I can remember more than a few times when the best party was not what was going on in the club, but what was going on out in the street.

We weren’t alone dancing around the car.

Last night I went with my new friend to Public Works and saw John Digweed and his opening set DJ Kora with Set Underground.

Kora was beautiful.

It felt like a glorious sound bath.

There was this gorgeous alter with disco ball lights and lanterns and incense that the DJ was playing behind.

Now.

Normally.

I’m not into this kind of spiritual hoo ha.

But.

His music was lovely, deep, soft trancelike house with some Middle Eastern Influence.

The crowd was diverse, older, dreamy, community.

I saw people I knew from years and years ago.

In fact, I told my new friend last night that I recognized the way that she danced, she has a unique style, that I know I must have seen her on various dance floors and clubs in San Francisco back in the early 2000s.

And later when Digweed came on and the floor got too crowded for her, she bounced out to the Mezzanine, and I found her dancing with an old acquaintance, that I knew from back in the day.

In fact, I used to be in awe of this man.

He was the best club dancer I have ever seen, and twenty (fuck my life, really?) years later, he is still a marvel on the floor.

I remember being in the back room at 1015 for Tiesto? Donald Glaude? Scumfrog? Jonathan Ojeda?

God, only knows, I wasn’t sober then, but I had danced like a crazed person and was taking a break with a drink and my friend who had come up from San Jose to dance that night with me, also a very accomplished dancer, and I saw this gorgeous African American man and a white guy with dreads dancing across the club room.

They were dancing so hard.

Enthralled I watched for a while and then got up the nerve to join.

It was magic.

And I was blown away by their beauty and prowess and grace.

I think I held my own for twenty minutes, they were going so, so, so hard, before I had to bow out.

Literally.

I bowed out.

And they both smiled, and bowed back.

Every time I have seen said gentleman since, his dark eyes always smile at me, and he bows.

And sometimes, still, we dance, before my knees give out.

He is tall and slim, almost slight, well dressed, in his own glorious interpretation of club clothes, and last night he had an afro mohawk.

Seeing him and my new friend dancing behind the sound booth in the mezzanine, I knew, I knew I had seen her before.

She was surprised when she realized that I knew him.

Ah, the club world.

So big and sometimes so, so small.

And I don’t know how it’s twenty years later and I’m suddenly back in the scene and dancing.

Granted, I go much earlier than I used to.

I gobble Ibuprofen.

I only drink water.

I’m completely sober, spiritually centered, and drowned in the ecstasy of dance.

I get lost.

It’s exquisite.

It doesn’t always happen, but more often than not, it does.

I love music.

I listen to music all day long.

When my ex in my twenties and I broke up we discovered something interesting–he owned the tv, stereo, VCR, and most of the cds (mostly because for five years when I didn’t know what to gift him, I gave him stacks of cds for birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays, which bit me in the ass when I realized he owned most of the music).

I owned the furniture, bed, and all the kitchen ware.

He moved out.

And I had no audio visual.

I was a broke student working at a brewing company getting by on student loans and suddenly faced with paying double the rent I had the previous month.

I had enough to either buy a tv or a stereo.

There was no debate.

I bought the stereo.

I have not owned a television since.

(“I just realized something!” A friend said to me recently as we were hanging out and drinking tea in my living room. “You don’t own a tv, your living room is arranged so that people can see each other when they talk, not a tv!”)

23 years now.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I have HBO Max (pandemic buy) and Netflix–I do watch videos on my laptop, but music, music is where it is at for me.

I dance every day.

Not always for very long, but every day, mostly in my kitchen.

I was dancing before writing this.

And I will go out dancing again this upcoming Friday.

Dimitri from Paris at the Great Northern.

I could even go out Saturday night too, a friend offered to gift me a ticket to a show at the MidWay.

I’m not sure I can do that, but I am tempted.

Go out dancing more, I tell myself.

Between six and a half years of graduate school (three years in my Master’s program and three and a half in my PhD–yeah, I got that faster than the average bear) and the pandemic, it’s been a long while.

I am happy to be back.

My knees are sore.

And I’m a lot older.

But that’s ok.

I plan on dancing until I die.

Music is one of the many ways I connect to God.

And thus, it is paramount to keep listening, keep dancing, keep drowning in the love.

“I love you,” he shouted in my ear, “I saw you up there, you kept it moving, you didn’t stop, you are beautiful.”

He hugged me.

Some stranger in a sweaty t-shirt with a happy glow on his face last night at the club who grabbed me before I left the dance floor.

Grateful to be seen.

Grateful for music.

Grateful for dancing.

Grateful for this rich, full life.

Even when my knees hurt and I rue the nights I danced for hours in platform heels for six, seven, eight hours, when I was young and anesthetized on cocaine, even when I can’t drop it like it’s hot, or even like it’s lukewarm, even when I can’t stay out late or all night long like I used to, or that I have all sorts of laugh wrinkles around my eyes, even when my hips hurt (gah), and I can’t believe I’m weeks away from turning 50, even then.

I am so grateful

So, I’ll continue to go out dancing.

And if you want.

You should come.

I’d love to see you on the dance floor.

Although I might not see you right away as I will be standing in front of the DJ with my hands raised to the heavens and my eyes closed shut in my own private ecstatic moment communing with God as I understand God.

Go out dancing.

It’s good for you.

Seriously.

Yes!

April 27, 2017

I made it through the financial aid rigmarole.

I had to fill out one more piece of information when I got home today and finally, all of it is done.

I will be getting an award and I was notified that I would get it once the last form was filled out and sent it, that it would take 24 hours to process, I would get an award e-mail and then I hit accept.

The school will receive monies to pay for my summer practicum internship and supervision–$2380.

There will be a little left over from the award, enough to get me two more months of therapy over the summer.

I don’t have to touch my travel savings and I will have tuition paid for.

Thank God.

It all worked out.

I never really thought it wouldn’t, it was just some unnecessary stress that I got to work through.

I also spent some time checking in with my employer about summer hours, I’ll be working a little more than I do now.

Currently I’m pulling 35 hours a week, three weeks a month.

The other week during the month I work 28 hours–the week I’m in school.

During the summer I won’t have school on Fridays.

I won’t have official classes, I’ll be doing my internship at nights and on weekends and my outside supervision and therapy two days a week before work.

I ain’t gonna lie, it’s a lot to juggle.

But I see all the pieces coming together and it should work.

For my work schedule I’ll change-up to a slightly early start on the days I’m not in supervision or therapy before work and I will work 8 hour days on those days.

I’ll go from working 35 hours a week to 38 with the flexibility to go to 40 if the family needs me to.

I’ll do my internship in the evenings after work.

Four nights a week I’ll be doing the internship, and one day, Saturday.

I’ll be putting in a lot of hours, but the investment is worth it and although I am sacrificing a lot, more of my social life than I can imagine, as it’s not much at the moment, although, got to say, proud of myself for hanging out for an hour between work and doing the deal tonight.

I was so tempted to blow it off and just do my homework, but I made myself put down the books and walk to Java Beach and play a hand of Speed and socialize for an hour.

It was really much-needed.

I have been told repeatedly this week to have fun.

“Go get laid, have fun, blow off some steam!” My person told me when I met with her on Monday.

I’m trying to figure that out.

Not much by way of nibbles on the dating front and though there’s interest in me to pursue, I’m not really sure how to go about that right now.

Putting out to Universe.

I need to get laid.

There.

That should do it.

Hahahahahaha.

I actually reached out to an old lover last night and then immediately thought, ah, that’s not going to happen, why did I do that?

Not that I’m afraid of rejection, more that I can go bark up the wrong tree.

There is no squirrel there dear, go look elsewhere.

And there wasn’t.

As I have said to myself many a time, no response is a response.

My feelings are facts, but sometimes it feels like I either try to awful hard at this whole thing or I could give a fuck and I just bury myself in school and work.

There is an in between I’m sure.

Dating can also be a distraction from dealing with the thing at hand, but I am wanting to do it.

I am.

When have I not been willing to date?

I have tried lots of things.

Maybe this therapy thing will help.

Ha.

I can usually recognize when I am not on the right track, but sometimes, I get stuck and I go chase after someone and there is nothing there and I’m like, stop it, enough energy expended there.

Move on.

So moving on.

And being open to see whom God wants me to see, not whom I want me to see.

Those are different people, I am sure of it.

I’m listening to Lilac Wine as sung by Jeff Buckley.

I had to pause.

I had to sing.

I don’t even remember what I was whining about.

Luxury problems.

I’m alive.

Jeff Buckley is dead.

I saw him once.

At the Barrymore Theater in Madison, Wisconsin on tour for his album Grace.

It was one of the best concerts I have ever seen.

There are concerts that I remember because of the power of the music or that something momentous happened, or because of whom I was with when hearing he music.

Jeff Buckley touring for Grace.

Soul Coughing, Ruby Vroom.

Beck, Odelay.

Paul Simon and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Summer Fest in Milwaukee, 2001.

J. Davis Trio, at the Angelic, but also the show in Chicago where I got so trashed I was hung over for two days.

But my God it was worth it.

Anni DiFranco, Not a Pretty Girl, Civic Center, Madison.

Primus, Coliseum, Madison, WI, can’t remember if it was Sailing the Seas of Cheese tour, but I think it was.

Moby, Play, Civic Center, Madison, WI, and also Moby at Lightening in a Bottle three years ago, I was up front and it was amazing, I felt like I was on fire with the music.

Underworld, the Fox in Oakland and also two years later at the Warfield in San Francisco.

Paul Simon at the Greek Theater last summer.

Mike Doughty, three times, small show at Cafe Montmarte in Madison, his first solo tour after Soul Coughing broke up and he heckled my friend who was shrooming.  Then the show at the Fillmore when he covered Ruby Vroom and I was the only person in the audience that caught the Edna St. Vincent Millay reference, and got a smile and shout out for that.  And last summer the 2016 Living Room tour where I got to meet him in person, and talk about Burning Man.

Spearhead in Madison, Wisconsin, I forget the venue now, but they were on tour for their second album and Michael Franti pulled me up on stage and danced with me for a song.

Tori Amos, Little Earthquakes, Barrymore Theater, Madison, Wisconsin.

Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine, Coliseum, Madison, Wisconsin.

Sleater Kinnery at Union South, UW Madison Campus, holy shit was that amazing, they were just on the floor, no stage, four mikes and a couple of amps.

I went to a lot of shows in Madison.

Goldfrappe at the Fillmore.

Gary Newman, also at the Fillmore, here in San Francisco.

I’ve clubbed a lot here in San Francisco too, so many djs–Mark Farina, Teisto, Sasha and Digweed, Paul Van Dyke, Oakenfold, Kid Beyond, BT, Dmitri from Paris, Derrick Cater, Frankie Knuckles, Sunshine Jones with and without Dubtribe, Tortured Soul, Eric Sharp, Carl Cox, Armand Van Helden, James Ziebela, 2ManyDj’s, Basement Jaxx, fuck, I’m forgetting a lot of shows.

So much music.

I haven’t been out to enough shows.

Maybe I’ll focus on that instead of dating.

Heh.

Right now though, sleep she calls.

Homework is still on my plate and work has got to get worked out.

I’m still listening to the glory of Jeff Buckley.

Hallelujah.

 


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