Dearest heart, I hold your broken pulse.

They say that smell is the sense most closely linked to memory. And, indeed I’ve experienced the fast rush of a flashback brought on by opening a box of spices, cinnamon, cloves. Suddenly and oh-so-briefly, I am transported to the kitchen of our house on Glen avenue. 70s sunshine pours through the kitchen window. I’m up on a chair, still in my nightgown, reaching for for the ingredients to make french toast. I can’t remember anything else, just me on the chair, reaching. There is no guarantee that the next time I take a whiff of cinnamon, I’ll get back there, but the snapshot is burned to my hard disk.
But sounds, oh how songs effectively time-travel me to the same places over and over again. I thought of this today as I watched a clip that’s been circulating online: a woman dancing by herself at a bus stop. The person who caught her public yet private moment has deftly set her shoulder rolls to Abba’s Dancing Queen. Has ever a more melancholy dance song been written? This song always tightens my chin, sets my chest heaving, even as I feel the beat and bop along, I am mostly very sad. I remember a lovely man, I barely knew. He was a punk like me and we were already aging, ten years ago. He was always very friendly and I admired his style. At our haunt, a dive that had not yet been overrun by students, he always requested the song Dancing Queen. I knew he had some disease that caused him to limp, but had no idea that it caused him such pain that it would drive him to hang himself. And so everytime I hear that song – “…anybody can be that guy” – I think of that delicate balance between what we have and what we’ve lost, the sweet recollection of a friendly smile, the pain that is neverending, the ephemerality of it all. Today is International Dance Day. Let us be seventeen today, with a spot on the dance floor opening up to welcome our moves.

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