And it came to pass

When I was in high school, I didn’t really get the opportunity to miss anything until my senior year. I didn’t know many people who more than one year older than me except my friends from church, and church people never really go away (hi, Jeff!) On the other hand, my scholastic circles were chock-full of elder-by-one-years, so I took a rather big hit going into the fourth quarter (I took another rather big hit going into my senior year, but that’s a different story altogether.) All of a sudden, our goofy doo-wop men’s ensemble was down to a quartet. Our knowledge bowl team was shorthanded and almost didn’t almost take first place. Our lunchtime conversations were no longer dominated by Mario, famous assassins, and prideful pseudo-socialism (Okay, so we still talked about all those things. But without the conviction of those who had gone before.) Of a sudden my dependence on the status quo was exposed and I found myself missing.

In college, missing has come a year early. I’m not that surprised; my relationships here span generations instead of classes, and (as is the case for most everybody in college) I am no longer bound through my coursework to fraternize with my own class in preference to any other. But, though it is not a surprise, it is still a sad thing to realize that a time has passed that will never come again. There are activities I will never again take part in. Things I will never again experience. Spectacles I will not witness. To be specific, I don’t expect to ever again be present at a Dancing Birthday.

I always loved Dancing Birthdays; they have been a part of Stanford life ever since I came here. Nearly every person I look up to here and every person I knew here before I came is a dancer, and thus at a Dancing Birthday all the great thinkers and wise counselors, all the sympathetic ears and careful critics, in short, all the heppest cats I knew would gather for a few hours and talk and laugh and eat Asian cake and, yeah, dance.

Now, most of my friends assume that simply because I a) think performance dance is one of the least appealing art forms devised by mind mortal or eternal and b) stubbornly and unreasonably refuse to even think about taking a social dance class - that I don’t like dancing. In most cases, this assumption is completely accurate, the one exception that I am aware of being the Dancing Birthday. Something about this hallowed event, whether it is the extremely high regard in which I hold the participants, the good nature in the air, or the fruit in the middle, sanctifies. I love the pivots. I love The Waltz; I love seeing the birthdayee dancing with his or her closest kith in turn, and I love the notion that the event gives that this is something extremely special that only happens once a year. Perhaps it is and perhaps it isn’t, but that’s the impression I always get. Moving, I find it.

Or found it, because this year there have been no Dancing Birthdays. The immortal Dancing Set has moved on as one to bigger and better things, things that are usually located off-campus. Things that show increasing partiality towards formality of dress. Things, that is to say, that I am incapable of attending.

On the other hand, look on the bright side: I have a really keen yodeling teddy bear.



Music of the moment: “Self Portrait” by Max Roach. You can download a live ensemble rendition of this piece on Pete Lockett’s webpage (as advertised in the sidebar. Ooh, sidebar.) but the original Roach recording is the best I’ve heard. It’s a very understated, tight, and musically beautiful solo that comes off much better than even the flashiest fireworks that Roach is capable of. If you’re out Bellingham way you can check out the CD “Max Roach: To the Max!”, a Max Roach best-of, from the public library. If you’re not out Bellingham way you can pick it up used for like a bajillion dollars on Amazon. It might even be worth the price.

CGR: 0.7