Hey, it's COLD today.

I spend this summer salsa dancing in washington sq park and on pier 47 I cannot overemphasize how the ability — and fear — of salsa must have altered some chemical in my brain. I look forward to moving my hips, to asking a stranger to dance with me, leaning on each others bodies, feeling the movement of someones weight with mine, meeting their eyes, and yet no expectation of a long conversation, a date — just dancing to dance. The wind tunnels on 8th are whipping me these days... And I started swing dancing in the cold winter months. I learned again there's so much magic in learning to move your body. I firmly believe everyone should dance.

I also recently came along a little video that said during the Russian Revolution, the state "professionalized" folk music. Put theory and practicality behind songs sung around the dinner table, professionals in a field that had music taught — typically — within a literal field of like corn. This meant that people who had been playing folk music for years all of a sudden were no longer "professional" and that there was a top-down hand in creating folk music. No crazy political deep dive here, it's all related I promise. 

So with the profession and study of music, song, and dance people stopped participating. It was not longer a form of expression, as much as it was an academic venture to perform music. To express your feelings through music is a close and personal experience, to perform is to connect, and mostly, if there's no expectations of "greatness" it turns out that you can actually be a great musician. 

Endless thoughts hit me now, after typing that sentence, but it reminds me mostly of the idea that some musicians are really quite incredible live performers, while some are better in the studio. There's an art to the connection that music gives you — and if you ever experience an artist that's truly incredible on stage, you shared a moment that cannot be replicated really by any recording of it. 

So, wrapping up this idea, "learn" to dance... or really, let go of the control of what "good" is, what "cringe" is. Dance, dance, dance - because at the end of the day who the fuckkkk cares >:)