18 May 2008
 
Slow Dance

Overwhelmed is the only way to put it. I feel like I have been doing The Freddie for a month in a non-stop session of musical chairs.
 
You may remember dance step, which was popularized (briefly) by one of the British Invasion bands of the late Sixties. Freddie and the Dreamers, was the name, I think, and “I’m Telling you Now” was the song, if fading memory serves.
 
To do The Freddie, simply stand in place; then, in rhythm with the frenetic tempo of the music, extend the left leg and left arm; then the right leg and right arm. Repeat until the music stops.
 
That dance step was a peculiar example of the palpable acceleration of the tempo of life. We are a long way from the Renaissance composers, whose basic tempo was connected to the beating of the human heart. We live our lives inprestissimo these days- extremely fast- frantically extending our limbs in an imitation of a grand mal seizure, slowing only to Allegrissimo — very fast- to take a break.
 
The talking heads this morning are it in presto- quick time-  this morning, Some of them are advocating an armed humanitarian incursion into Myanmar-Burma. The answer to the slow-motion response by the paranoid Junta is to kick in the door and force the distribution of aid to the tens of thousands of survivors, and those left homeless by the cyclone that ripped the Delta of the usually lazy Irrawaddy.
 
No one is advocating anything of the sort in Sichuan Province. Reports out of China are saying that three million homes were destroyed in last Monday’s earthquake, and another twelve damaged structurally. Thirty thousand were killed- at least- and the total lost in the two events is at least half of the quarter million who died in the Andaman tsunami four years ago.

That was a chart-buster of a catastrophe, and the international response was quick and up-tempo. There is much more to come on these linked disasters that cut an arc across the most densely populated continent on earth.
 
Some of my pals who follow China closer than I do have mentioned that a good chunk of the PRC’s strategic weapons arsenal, and many aging nuclear power plants are strewn across the region, as if there was not enough to be concerned about.
 
It is enough to give you the willies.
 
I have been too busy to pay more than passing attention to it all, which tells you something about priorities and life in this particular lane in the road.
In the midst of it all- I was reviewing a business document and listening to a repeat of a Prairie Home Companion last night.
 
The cast apparently had the good sense to take the week off to plant tomatoes, or at least that is what the lugubrious voice of Garrison Keillor claimed. I was strongly of a mind to do the same thing when I got a call from a pal is facing something that puts the assorted horrors of the Daily Bugle in perspective.
 
The news machine specializes in Top Forty format. The hits just keep coming, the same story worked to death until it drops off the charts and no one cares anymore. “Don’t care for the lyrics, but easy to dance to, I’d give it a 75,” is how one of the earnest teens might have said it on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.
 
It is not my business, nor anyone else’s for that matter. But what is confronting my pal is a matter that features the chill intimacy of an awful slow-dance to music no one should ever hear.
 
I have always been of the opinion that things work themselves out, and generally for the best. It was a good working theory, and enough to get one out of bed and launched on the business of getting through the morning.
 
But I am finding that it is not the case at all. Sometimes the frantic tempo of the music slows to larghissimo, a pace so agonizingly slow that you can walk right around the notes, and see the sequence for what it is.
 
The stark formality of the real melody is perfectly in tune with the human heart. The music we do not deign to hear slows  and eventually stops, leaving no place at all for the dancers to sit down.
 
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com