The Furious Spinner

Mario and I were sitting on the couch listening to a song on the stereo, when Mario said, "I have no idea what this song means." (It was one from the Dido album.) I tried to explain it to him. "What's the white flag mean?" "She isn't going to surrender." "Isn't going to surrender to what? And what about the ship? Why is she going down with the ship?" I was laughing by now. This poet was asking me what the words to a song meant. We have had similar conversations over the years about rock 'n roll. (Yes, some may argue that pop isn't rock 'n roll, but that's another discussion...) I have had a stock answer for the last twenty years, but I temporarily forgot it this afternoon. A few minutes later, I went and found Mario (not that he was lost) and said, "Mario, rock 'n roll is about one thing." "Drugs," he said. I shook my head and put up one finger. "One thing," I said. "Love," he said. "The love of drugs. Or the drug of love." "Sex," I said. "Rock 'n roll is about one thing, and that one thing is sex."

Sex—or maybe, more accurately, the search for ecstasy. Maybe that's what the rush of first love, the excitement of meeting someone new, or the feeling of being high is: they're all a search for ecstasy. I believe this is a primal, instinctive, necessary need in human beings. The word ecstasy comes from the Greek ekstatis to display, drive out of one's senses. I think it's more than that. Achieving a sense of ecstasy is like having sex with the universe. Not ordinary sex. Not just getting off sex. It's a supremely-natural (supernatural) connection with oneself and the other. Who makes you feel like I make you feel? Who loves you and knows you the way I do? Who touches you and holds you like I do? It's surrendering to your natural rhythms, to the rhythms of the other. I think it's so strange when religions talk about getting closer to god by abstaining from pleasure. I want to whisper, "Honey, you can't touch the Divine by abstaining. You've got to luxuriate in the sensual." Who makes you feel like I make you feel?

And our beloved bodies are made for ecstasy. We are built to connect with each other and the universe in profound, ecstatic, and maddening ways. Maddening because when we don't connect, when we can't connect, the world can feel like a black hole. It is those times when we need to dance. Dance ourselves into ecstasy. Although we are pack animals, humans are not the only ones who are part of our pack. Dance, dance freely, and you'll discover some of the rest of the pack.

Women expressing their ecstasy—and their sexuality—has terrified the dominant (patriarchal) culture for hundreds of years. The Melissae—from meli meaning honey—took care of the bees, gathered the honey, and made mead. Women would gather when the mead was ready and dance, drink, and drum. These same women may have been the legendary Maenads (meaning "she who is mad") who were said to tear a man to bits if they caught any spying on them. (Most scholars believe that part of the story is apocryphal. I say the Maenads and Melissae may have encouraged this "exaggeration" as a way of getting some peace and solitude. Sometimes when people are afraid of you they leave you alone.)

See, the seeds of rock 'n roll were sown on those rocky mountains where the women danced to the beat of their own dreaming...and drumming.

I need to go out and help Mario clean off the back porch. We'll probably dance a little, too.

Here's a piece I wrote several years ago about dancing—and finding ecstasy within my own body. (It was originally published in The Beltane Papers.)

The Call

How often am I in my body? Always, of course. Yet I cannot feel myself. Do not feel at all. Are my emotions locked into the diseased, inflamed, hurt parts of my body? I crave to be in Nature, but isn’t my body, my self Nature? Should I send out a search party? See if I’m still wild? Am I still viable? How badly damaged are my ecosystems? Have I been desecrated by clearcutting? Pollution? Garbage?

I turn on music. Big Beau Jocque playing accordion and belting out “Nonc Adam” on the CD The Real Louisiana. Zydeco. At first I am too sick and unsteady to move. I just sit on the floor and rock to the music. My husband Mario sits on the couch reading. He looks up and smiles. He is with me, with me. Even in my most profound misery.

I turn up the music. The floor vibrates, stroking the shins I sit on with sound waves.

Don’t think. Don’t think.

I try to imagine my consciousness moving down from my head. To where? My heart? My hands begin moving on their own to the fast upbeat rhythms of the Cajun music. My fingers and hands make shapes in the air, lovely mudras pulsing with my blood. My energy.

Shhhh. Don’t think. Don’t think.

I realized yesterday with a kind of benign devastation that I had no idea how to get well.

Now I watch my hands, feel the music, and am certain healing lies in the dance, in the love of the movement. In the passionate desire for my own body. Another false hope?

My hands and arms move the rhythm down to my chest. My hips. I stand. I keep my feet still, anchoring me, while the rest of my body dances, moves, feels the music. I try to consciously feel my self. To sink into my flesh. I feel the carpet beneath my bare feet. Flannel against my knees, the elastic at my waist. Constricting almost. So I pull my pajama bottoms off.

“Nonc Adam” ends. Santana’s “The Calling” comes on. Slow and rhythmic at first. I start remembering all the times I have danced to this song in this room, by myself and with other people.

Shhhh. Out of my head.

I need to to go out of my mind...

Not a long trip.

My consciousness slips to my knees.

The beat of the song intensifies. My feet move apart, and my hips create an invisible figure eight in the air as I drop closer and closer to the ground. My thighs ache. I like the feel of that ache. The feel of it...

Shhh...

Be

In the Dance

I close my eyes and am outside dancing under the moon.

No, no. that is going away, too.

Be here. Here. This is good enough.

In my living room. With Mario sitting on the couch. Santana’s music shaking my floor, tickling my feet, up my legs, thighs, inside my vagina, up my spine, along my arms. I feel The Calling.

I reach my hands up into the air above my head, then bring them down slowly until I touch my hair. My face. My swollen nose. My tired cheeks. My soft lips. My tiny sweet ears. I massage my arms, my lovely breasts, my sore tummy. Lovingly. Lovingly. I’m so sorry you are sick. So sorry I am ill. Sometimes the grief of it is shattering.

Tonight, I feel a brief joy as I inhabit my body. Luxuriate in my own habitat. As I answer the calling.

The call of the wild?

I take off the rest of my clothes.

Mario smiles from the couch. He loves to see me free. Wild. Hopes for healing as much as I do. I laugh.

My feet move. I am no longer unsteady. For an instant I feel as though I am surfing the wild energies of the planet.

Or my own being.

My heart beats

I dance

I feel

I am.



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