The End Of Yet Another Era...

Last week I found out 'my' dance school (that I attended full time from 2009-2013 and then again 2015-16 and part time until Pandemic) is closing at the end of this month.

It hurts.

I've gone through so much change and upheaval already -- leaving my parents' picturesque house for good, leaving everything and everyone I ever knew, marriage to a man that in all honesty I barely knew before the ceremony... but I held onto that one constant that once the pandemic was over, once we could move out of the literal pit we currently live in (the town is in the bottom of a valley), I could go take Mrs. Clark's ballet class again and I could drive to class listening to White Heart as I looked at the streetlights and drive back home listening to Daniel Amos as I looked at the big dipper in the endless Alberta sky. That hope fueled me through much of this difficult first year of marriage and the pain of being separated from my friends and family back home. And now that hope to relive those wonderful days again, when everything was possible and everything was beautiful, is gone forever. I won't even get to take one last class at that studio. I don't even get to make that drive one last time.

I didn't know my last time was the last time. It's like a sudden death, in a small way.

I essentially quit dancing in the fall of 2019, despite being at my parents' house (read: within driving distance of the studio) due to the damage that my college professors did to me. They convinced me I wasn't good enough to even bother trying, so I stopped. I was too depressed to get out of bed, let alone go to class and feel even more inadequate about my abilities and myself as a person. I remember even texting the teacher and apologising for my patchy attendance, explaining that depression was kicking my butt. True to form, she was completely compassionate and understanding -- she always is. I thought I would come back. I really did.

I did up until last Sunday, when my sister told me the news.

I met M there, among other great people. I got my first pair of pointe shoes there. The teacher graciously watched and gave feedback on multiple choreography pieces I've done -- she even let me teach one to the ladies' class and let my sisters and I perform another in one of their shows. She hired my dad and I to build what turned out to be her last studio space. For most of my teen years, that class was my only joy in life. It quite literally kept me alive more than once. It wasn't just 'dance class,' it was that specific dance class, taught in that specific place by that specific person, surrounded by those specific classmates. It is irreplaceable, and now I can't go back. That dance school was quite literally a part of who I was, and with that gone -- among so many other things I've lost in the past two years -- it feels like my soul is untethered from me, floating aimlessly through space. I have no anchor left for it. I feel lost and alone in a world I don't recognise and never wanted to be in.

There are other dance classes and other studios. But dance will never, ever be the same again.

Music Day - Sanctuary

Having been a DA fan for a year now (it was a year last week), having at least listened to all of their catalogue (excluding the self-titled debut), and experienced the shades of their work amplified by/contrasted with the work of the Swirling Eddies, Terry Scott Taylor's solo/production work, and the Lost Dogs (it was a really expensive year), I think I can whittle down the list of DA songs to a (slightly) smaller list of personal favourites.

Certainly, storied cuts like Hollow Man and The Double appear high on the list, as well as the epic and soaring Dig Here Said The Angel, the infectious Darn Floor - Big Bite, the stunning When Worlds Collide, and the haunting Pictures Of The Gone World. (And, you know, pretty much everything else they've ever recorded.)

But I think this one may be my favourite Daniel Amos song of all time. (At least until their next album.)

I suppose this album came at the right time of my life. It was just starting to sink in just how drastically my life was about to change. The depression that had been lying dormant in my soul for two years saw its chance to get its hands round my neck again. In times like this, I need two things: humour, and to brood. Vox Humana provided both. Songs like (It's The Eighties, So Where's Our) Rocket Packs, Home Permanent, and Dance Stop made me smile, if only at their ability to turn a phrase, while songs like William Blake, When Worlds Collide and Sanctuary were soothing, poetic, and deep, with a touch of melancholy to keep them grounded.

Sanctuary in particular has made an indelible impact on my life. Sanctuary is the only song to which I have choreographed a dance, yet every time I hear it I get this intense desire to choreograph it again. It is that captivating. Sanctuary is the song that takes me back to that still, open summer night in Alberta when I think I really heard this song for the first time -- the night that the first choreographic puzzle piece fell into place (developpé kick, step side and back attitude turn). It was another solo drive home from town as the indigo sky stretched out above me and the poplar tree stands faded back into shadows, as the summer night dew fell on the grass and the last sounds of the frogs and crickets echoed through the ravine near our house. I remember imagining what it would be like to dance this beneath the velvet sky with the moist grass rustling under my feet. That's still what I think of when I hear this song.

Title: Sanctuary
Artist: Daniel Amos
Album: Vox Humana
Year: 1984
Label: Refuge Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.
Buy the album from DA's website here. (You'll have to scroll a bit to find it -- look for the yellow album cover. I've purchased through the site several times now and the service has always been great.)

Sit back. Close your eyes. Let this swirl around you, sink into your mind. The final minute, when they finally release up into the sky all the brooding tension that's been building for the previous five minutes, is perhaps one of the most beautiful passages of music ever recorded.


Should the stars get in your eyes tonight
Remember
Remember
Love


Should you come into the promised land
Remember
Remember
From where you came

And if your greatest fears are realised
Remember
Remember
Your sanctuary

What I Miss

You know what I miss the most about being at home?

All the driving.

No, I'm serious. It's always mystified me how much people whine about driving -- be it commuting to work/school, going on vacations, or doing errands. People hate driving. I've never understood this, but it's become even more weird to me now that I haven't driven anything in nearly two months.

See, my mother decreed that the rattletrap was not coming to Saskatchewan with me. It eats coolant and the vital systems of the thing are slowly failing. She didn't want me to wind up stranded on the side of the Trans-Canada highway in the middle of December with nobody within a nine-hour drive able to come rescue me (this was before we got here and found out several people in my hall did bring vehicles and probably do care for me enough to come rescue me from the side of the road).

I miss a lot of little things about driving. I miss watching the sunsets as I cruise down the highway. I miss seeing the streetlights stretching out before me on the way to tap class. I miss slowing down to forty and studying the buildings in the small town near my home out of the corner of my eye. I miss feeling the steering wheel under my hands and the solid click of the turn signal.

I miss the peace that came with driving... of not having to do anything else, just drive. And think. And maybe sing. You don't have to pause what you're doing to change over the laundry, or write something down, or check your email, or any other combination of ten things at once. You have one task and one task only. Just drive. I miss that assurance of knowing that if you keep going, you will get there all in good time.

But I think if I'm honest, most of all, I miss the music.

I miss JAG on the way to Bible study. I miss Daniel Amos on the way back from my friends' house. I miss Prodigal on the way back from ballet (Electric Eye) and the other Bible study (Just Like Real Life). I miss White Heart on the way to tap class and dance team. I miss Crumbächer on the way to get groceries. I miss listening to Michael W. Smith's Christmas whenever the heater's running and the snow is dancing in the high-beams.

Basically, I think I mostly just miss music. And streetlights. And dusk. And home.

Dusk

My favourite time of day is not night (as many assume due to my tendency to stay up till four in the morning), it's actually dusk.

At dusk, it's not completely dark and you can still see the trees and the outlines of the clouds that only a few minutes ago reflected the sunset.

Dusk is the centre of all the magic. The sunset is just fading, the streetlights are just beginning to be visible, the air is just becoming cool, quiet is just beginning to settle over the land. Dusk is the rare time of day that is equally gorgeous both in the city and the country. And it's fleeting enough that you can never get too used to it.

Around this time of year a lot of my driving happens to take place over sunset and dusk. It's all at the same time on the clock, but thanks to the changing of the seasons I drive around at sunset now and not in the dark or in full sun.

Driving is one of the few times I'm well and truly alone. Sometimes I enjoy it, though sometimes it kills me that no-one is with me. Today I enjoyed it.

Initially I hadn't wanted to go anywhere, but I needed to be at a practice at the church and so I (rather begrudgingly) drove to the church, in full sun. But by the time I left the church to drop off one of the others at her place, the sun had dipped behind the buildings and the trees. By the time I drove up to the last intersection in town, the pale pink sunset was already beginning to fade.

There are two ways home from this intersection. You can turn right and go straight, or you can go straight through now and turn right later. My parents prefer going right at the intersection and then driving straight home, but my love for city lights means I often go straight through the lights.

If you go straight through the lights, just beyond the halfway point between the lights and my turn, there's a little town. At dusk it's mostly closed, but the streetlights are on, the two gas bars are still open, and there's a little pub on one corner which always has coloured lights to stand out against the grey-blue sky.

Even before the town, though, the highway is beautiful. It's lined with trees most of the way. There's one short piece just before the town limits that's nearly closed in with tall pines on both sides of the road, then the trees open up just as the road drops and you go around a bend and over a creek. I often think I've wound up in the mountains, due to the view. It may be nicknamed the highway of death, but at least it's a lovely place. (This was the highway where I had my accident, and I know of at least four others who were also in serious wrecks along this stretch. One was fatal.) On the other side of town the trees thin out, but by then you're preoccupied with the beauty that preceded it.

Songs like Walls Of Doubt and Ghost Of The Heart were playing on my stereo as I headed into (and out of) the little town, complementing the scenery. But then that was the end of that CD and I put in my (shiny brand-new) Dig Here Said The Angel CD, hoping I could hear the title track before I got home.

With some careful speed-limit finessing (which can only be done in the country because city people get angry when you drive slower), I not only got to the third track, I managed to make it last for the entire stretch of road from my second turn to our driveway.

Driving along a gravel road, with headlights barely doing anything to illuminate it (I narrowly missed hitting a porcupine), and listening to that song while watching silhouette trees rise up into the steel-blue sky as a yellowish green light (a remnant of the sunset) illuminates a few sparse clouds to the west is a magic moment. Getting out of the rattletrap right after the song ends and letting that gorgeous chorus melody echo through your mind as you stand in open stillness at the edge of dusk is perhaps even better.

Music Day (Or, A Probably-Pointless Trip Down Memory Lane)

Last fall and early winter, this was my driving-to-tap-class album. The dance studio is far enough away from our house that I can listen to an entire album on the way there, and another on the way back. Tap was on Monday nights and while the album on the way back would vary, on the way there it was always Don't Wait For The Movie.

The first couple songs were me setting the speed, getting to the highway. By the time I got to the first city lights (I skirt two cities on the way in and enter the third), Fly Eagle Fly would be starting.

Here the magic began. Not so much the song (it's actually kind of a really cheesy song), but the visual... velvet black nightscape dotted with oncoming headlights and the streetlights of the city up ahead. And as I took the ramp onto the main highway, Convertibles would always start to play.

Let The Children Play and King George would mark my time on that highway, following the streetlights for part of the way, and then as I approached the second city and got onto the exit for the ring road I would get to listen to No Apology, and then Maybe Today would always just start as I went under the first overpass on the ring road and into the beginning of the curve. It was always a glorious sort of moment, not in that it was a big dramatic thing, but because the tinkling intro and the quietly-soaring keyboard backing Mark Gersmehl's brooding vocal seemed to be so, so perfect with the glittering streetlights in the endless Alberta night sky. I think this moment was the reason I always, always chose this album on that drive.

As I got to the halfway point on my trip on the ring road, Dr Jekyll And Mr Christian would start, and it would always just be ending as I was coming up across from the second city's skyline. (About halfway through the tap session I noticed that and holy crap I almost had a heart attack the first time I saw it... It was all lit up and so so beautiful -- red and green and blue and purple and streetlight off-white. I hadn't realised you could see the skyline from that road.)

And then I would exit off into the third city (well, not technically a city, though it's big enough to be one) during this, the final song on the album, to kind of calm me down and gently lead me into the dance school's little parking lot. Often I would pull into the parking lot with one chorus left to go, and if I wasn't running terribly late I would stay out in the rattletrap and let the song finish.

Title: How Many Times (Seventy Times Seven)
Artist: White Heart
Album: Don't Wait For The Movie
Year: 1986
Label: Sparrow Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

This album so quickly became my soundtrack for winter night city driving, following the string of streetlights along the highways, stars against a black sky. Several times it was snowing during the drive and I seem to remember one time where it was raining. Once the fog was just so that it caught the streetlights and scattered the light everywhere, lighting up the entire road and the sky above it. It was almost -- though not quite -- like driving in the daytime, so spread around was the light. There was one section on the ring road that randomly didn't have streetlights (still can't figure out why not), and driving through there that night was almost terrifying... the rattletrap isn't exactly known for its great headlights (actually, it's not really known for its great anything, but I digress), and without the light to scatter around, the fog pressed in and blocked the streetlights ahead and the streetlights behind almost completely from view. It was almost completely dark there for about a minute.

Oh, the song? Well -- Rick Florian. That should tell you everything you need to know. It's a good lyric too:
How many times
Have You wept from the anguish of all my shame
How many times
Have I nailed You up on that cross of pain...

It starts out with the concept of protagonist trying to come to terms with the concept of forgiving someone who's wronged him -- knowing it's what Christ has commanded, but struggling to lay aside his pride in order to do so.

But then after the interlude (a lovely simple keyboard bit that capitalises very well on the 'quiet struggle' mood of the song), the protagonist's point of view shifts to his precious Christ on the cross -- did Christ not forgive me of things far more grievous? Who then am I to withhold the grace that shouldn't have even been mine?

The ending is gorgeous. Protagonist is still wrestling with his desire to not forgive and is halfheartedly trying to convince God that 'no really, this is unforgiveable' when he knows better. And to each one of his arguments, a soft voice comes back to him: Seventy times seven.

And finally he is silent in the face of the reminder of simple, powerful love.

Seventy times seven.



(For those wondering what 'seventy times seven' has to do with anything... once, Jesus' disciple Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive somebody who's wronged him. Peter asks, "Is seven times enough?" Jesus (God in the flesh) says, "No, not only seven times, but seventy times seven." The term 'seventy times seven' has since come to be, for better or worse, a 'sacred buzzword' of sorts, a code phrase within the church meaning 'forgiving.' You can read the account of Peter's question and Jesus' answer in Matthew chapter 18, starting at verse 21.)

Music Day

Since Canadian Thanksgiving is on Monday (usually I don't make such a big deal out of Thanksgiving, but this past year has changed my perspective a lot), I decided to feature a thankful-type song.
Naturally the first one in my head was a Petra song (look at the Music Day tab just under this blog's heading and you'll see what I mean), but there's also a very nice Silverwind song of gratitude as well... actually, two, now that I think about it. (There's more, but I struggle with indecisiveness enough without consciously looking for things to be indecisive about.)
(Now that I look for one of the two songs on YouTube I find more good thankful Silverwind songs...)
(And a Petra song. I CAN'T GET AWAY FROM THEM!)
(Yes. It's late. I get a little daft when it's late.)
(This is why I do most of my writing at night... then I'm too hyper to notice (or care) if it sucks.)
(Neither of the Silverwind songs I thought of are on YouTube. I should just put them on myself.)
(...If I wasn't so lazy... er, that is, if I didn't already have a thousand things to do. Like go to sleep and do this in the morning.)
(Well, later in the morning.)
(You know what I mean.)

Anyway, the song's on iTunes and that's the main thing. Now that they've switched to a minute and a half long preview, that gives you a pretty good idea of whether you'd like the song anyway (even if it takes entirely too long to preview albums now).

Title: Thank You Lord
Artist: Silverwind
Album: By His Spirit
Year: 1985
Label: Sparrow Records
iTunes here.

I have always loved Betsy's voice and in fact, it was thanks primarily to Betsy Hernandez (of Silverwind) and Agnetha Fåltskög of ABBA (similar sound, completely different outlook), that I taught myself to sing. My dear childhood friend could tell you stories... many were the times when she'd grab me by the shoulders and say 'Will you STOP TALKING about MUSIC?!?'

Obviously I didn't -- I just redirected it.

Music Day

This is another story that could be filed under 'I bought a whole album for twenty dollars or more just for one song because it wasn't on iTunes and the song had memories so I was sort of desperate...'
The good news is, this wasn't nearly as dramatic as the Amazon ripoff back in March. Better news: it was only twenty dollars and it was a double album (both albums are all right, although aside from this song I probably wouldn't have bought them).
Even better news (for you, anyway): the song is now on iTunes, thereby making your potential acquisition of it much easier than mine was.

As I already mentioned, this song does have nostalgic value for me. Specifically, it reminds me of going to laser tag with a few church friends years ago; of the vehicle driving down a steep (and narrow) descent into the northern part of the city. It was already dark out and the skyline just before us was all lit up -- a sight I don't think I will ever tire of.
The crazy part is, I don't think this song was even playing at that point in the journey.

Title: Beautiful Love
Artist: The Afters
Album: I Wish We All Could Win
Year: 2005
Label: Simple Records
iTunes here, YouTube here. (As I was watching the video, I was fairly strongly reminded of Relient K. So if you like them, you might like this...)