I do this occasionally; I think myself much more artistically talented than I actually am. It’s like walking out of the movies from watching Step Up and thinking that by standing in front of a fan, you are this amazing dancer that can shake it like Channing Tatum on a bad day. Last night I went to the powerhouse and again I walked out with the self delusions that my potential for artistic endeavour is a soaring eagle rather than the bottom dwelling catfish it actually is.
Over the years I’ve taken up artistic endeavours before and it turns out my dad was right. While he never said no, he had doubts about my ability to hold it all together long enough to be truly good at any of it. Don’t get me wrong, he believed I could sell ice to an eskimo, talk my way out of a wet paper bag, construct an argument and lots of other things that make me creative in other ways but his thoughts about me ever learning to play an instrument, take up a performing art or a paintbrush where somewhat doubtful. ‘You’re creative with words, sweetheart’ couple that statement with the occasional nod and ‘yeah’ to my other attempts at creativity and we pretty much have the extent of my artistic talent.
But this is where things get messy. You see I want to be artistic. I want to pick up my unpracticed ukulele and be able sing soulfully with Julia Stone and the man on stage last night in a sequinned purple leotard. It doesn’t sound hard. I have a ukulele. I can play a C and a G, how much harder could it get?
I walked out of the powerhouse last night with a heart that screamed to dance. The show was inconsistently put together and Marcia Hines looked like a deer in front of a mack truck but that did not stop my dancing feet or my singing heart. There was a woman up there with not a tasteful glance of side boob but an eyeful of full boob. She wore nothing but fringed Brazilian knickers and diamond nipple covers. I loved it. She let her back fat wiggle, her thighs shake it like Will I Am and slowly removed her dress and let her whole body just fall out. (The whole ensemble came out in a later scene wearing black patent corsets, stockings and not much else but that’s for a whole different blog. I liked that bit too. Maybe a little too much.) She burlesqued her way down the catwalk and I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
My exposure to burlesque has been minimal. I am far from ‘in the scene’ but I pretend by hanging around the edges very randomly hoping to catch a glance of a woman wearing underwear I wouldn’t know how to put on holding a giant feather fan. I love all that there is about this stuff. I am jealous of their confidence, I am in awe of their restraint, I covet their outfits knowing all the time that even if I had them, I’d never take them from the third shelf with all of my other uncomfortable unworn underwear. I’ve seen them dance in groups, on their own and once I even tried to draw them in a life drawing class. And every time I walk out with secret images of myself with a giant, white, feather fan.
Apart from the burlesque bit, there were scantily clad women who twirled and flipped from the ceiling , fat camp men who hula hooped into my spank bank, curly haired women belting disco love laments and acrobats tumbling in sparkled spandex. There was nothing in that room that I didn’t walk out with the intention of learning. Until I woke up this morning. When I woke up and thought about the skills and talents those people had spent years practicing and then looked at the woman staring back at me in the mirror, I saw no hope. My hair flied freely from my skull resembling a purple minion, my fat rolls and excess skin danced in the morning breeze and my half lidded eyes blurred the edges of my own reality. I am not a dancer, a singer, a ukulele player, an acrobat, a burlesque boob shaker or anything else that I saw on stage last night.
I live in hope of the day that I love my body enough that I am willing to take my clothes off slowly and with intent rather than frantically clawing at zips and buttons in the dark before diving into my own bed. I live in hope that I’ll pick up the ukulele leaning on the wall one day instead of writing about it and that in some miraculous move, I’ll dance like Step Up on the way out of the cinema. But that’s all it is, a hope and a dream. What I can do at home, with minion hair, eyes welded with sleep and blurred edges? Dance. I can dance to the soundtrack of Studio 54 with loud abandon. I can vacuum in nipple tassels, I can shake my back fat down the stairs and bounce my booty like Beyonce anytime that I want. And I should. I miss dancing. I miss the pure joy and happiness that comes from being in the dark and loving the moment no matter how intoxicated and judgement impaired I really am. So I am going to. My job this week is to make a playlist of dance music that will make me wiggle, bounce and shake all of my rolls and do it freely. Then maybe soon, I’ll get myself a giant, white, feather fan and teach myself to take it all off, just for me. And maybe I’ll get some better blinds first.
But at the end of the day we need to remind ourselves what it is that we do that we love. What are the moments in your life where you can’t remember why you were there, just that you were and you loved it. So get a theme song, dance your way through the street and buy yourself some nipple tassels. How can any of that make you unhappy? Just looking at them will be enough to make me laugh.
life in big frilly knickers 