Dancing With Depression - Gene Kelly's Alter Ego Dance

I found this thanks to Operation Tap's Gene Kelly week on Facebook back in August. I had never even heard of it before.

1944. The height of World War II. PTSD is barely an acknowledged mental condition at this point, never mind depression. Yet Gene Kelly -- whether he intended to or not -- personifies the condition with more accuracy than thousands and thousands of modern dances for fundraisers ever have, even after depression started to be recognised as a legitimate mental illness. (I say this as a longtime sufferer.)

It's all here -- the whispers, the dark lonely alley, the feeble hopes, the self-hatred, the fear in his eyes, the tension in his shoulders, the careful drawing of breath, the double reeling him backwards on an invisible string, the double leading the dance -- controlling him, trying to wrestle it down but unable to get a hold of it...

It's the doppelgänger from the ¡Alarma! Chronicles stories. It's the ghost of the heart (wait, that's still ¡Alarma! Chronicles...). It's the Identical Twins, Paul's war on his own sinful flesh.

Words fail me. But this dance... it touched me. Very, very few dances do. But this was one of them (the others are Astaire and Charisse's Dancing In The Dark and Kelly and Astaire's The Babbitt And The Bromide).

Watch. Breathe. Don't focus -- not yet -- on the fact that it's 1944 and everything is rationed and money is tight yet Gene Kelly manages to film a dance with himself. Do that later. Watch the story, the feelings.

Title: Alter Ego Dance
Artist: Gene Kelly
Film: Cover Girl
Year: 1944
Columbia Pictures.
Watch here.

Even the very end illuminates how depression works (SPOILERS) -- he takes a trash can and throws it at the double in a last-ditch attempt to destroy it. It disappears, but there is shattered glass in its wake. (And how long is it really gone?)

Likewise, depression can be beaten -- but only temporarily, and often at a price. And the shattered glass left around us when we've managed to win one fistfight often sends us farther down into the dark alley, wondering why there isn't a way to beat this thing without completely destroying ourselves. Sometimes the trash can is alcohol. Sometimes it's drugs. Sometimes it's food. Sometimes it's suicide. But there are always pieces to pick up. It never just 'goes away.'

Music Day - Central Theme

I don't mind music with lyrics that praise God. Really, I don't. What I can't stand is music that tells you, very explicitly, that they're worshipping God. (If, by 'worship,' you mean 'repeating the same two phrases over and over and over and over and over and over again, ad nauseam.') (What was that Jesus said about those who pray with vain repetitions? Oh right... "do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them." -- Matthew chapter six.)

No, I like music with intelligent praise lyrics. I'm not generally a science nerd, but when it comes to worshipping God, science is probably one of the best things to look to if you want to stand in awe. I mean, God created some seriously cool stuff (the spectrum of light and colour and sound alone is freaking cool).

However, Christians have by and large decided that science doesn't exist. Their loss. Now they've reduced themselves to repeating the same two lyrics over and over and over and... so on, ad nauseum. And since Christians have also decided, by and large, that art in almost all forms also doesn't exist (or is pure evil), they also don't have the creativity or the language skills to even come up with anything more creative than the same two lines (and three chords).

Good praise music, with actual intellectual meaning behind it, is almost impossible to come by -- simply because it almost doesn't exist. I could count on one hand the praise songs (that I know of) that fall into the 'not-insipid' category. One such song comes to us from -- who else? -- Daniel Amos.

Not only is it different from everybody in today's praise-and-worship music machine (I won't mention Chris Tomlin or Hillsong by name), lyrically it captures part of the sheer majesty and size of God by comparing it to space (as in starts-and-planets space, not empty space). It's an infinitesimally small part in real life, but it's a lot bigger than most of us think about on a regular basis. Plus, the syncopated guitar picking in the chorus (Jesus in the centre / Revolving around Him...) is absolutely wonderful.

Title: Central Theme

Artist: Daniel Amos

Album: ¡Alarma!

Year: 1981

Label: Stunt Records

iTunes here; YouTube here; full album available from the band's website here (scroll down just a little bit).

Lyrics here.

More Daniel Amos lore: This song is the kickoff point (the prelude, really) for DA's four-album series collectively entitled The ¡Alarma! Chronicles, a huge artistic undertaking that saw the band move from new wave to rock to synthpop to ethereal keyboard arrangements. Although the Chronicles covered (broadly) apathy, deception, technology, and death, they begin and end with God -- the central theme and the beautiful one.

Solar screams

(I am nothing)

Vibrations under the rings

How great You are

Moon like a gong

(I am nothing)

Deep hollow song

How great You are...