melodies and desires

Lykke Li - Dance Dance Dance

Let’s worry about truth later, because I can see some things that you can’t see.  I can see a magnifying glass as it helps a lost family get to Cape May and then Phoenix, Arizona; I can see the broken handle of a fridge door and the hands of the broken man who won’t dare fix it because it was the last thing his wife broke.  I can see a lot of things that you can’t see.

One of these things is a club in a midsized American city.  It’s got a clever name that’s now a cliché, and it sells $2.25 Coronas every Friday night in the summer.  It owns a rusty dumpster in the back in which, every night after close, someone comes and puts the trash.  It has concrete steps which lead up to the door and a black railing which does the same.  If there is a God (and this one thing I can’t see), it would never cast a light upon a place like this, simply because there are better things to cast a light upon in the world we’ve come to know.  I’ve seen the rhododendron of Japan, and those would be a better place to begin.

In the bar there are people of every kind you can imagine, and they are dancing.  They are not dancing like the rhododendron of Japan dance to the sea breezes or to the rhythm of the rain — they are dancing to Top 40 radio.  Top 40 radio is nothing like the sea breezes or the rains of Japan; it is a much different thing, but this is a comparison which would mean nothing to the people dancing because none of them have ever been to Japan.  None of them have even tried.

There is a girl and she is dancing by herself.  She is dancing by herself because she hates it when the boys come and touch her, and because there is a boy who is hidden inside of her head with whom she wants to dance, but cannot.  He is not available for dancing.  But by dancing she is highlighting the map for him — to bring him outside, up the stairs of the club and through the doors.  She is reeling him onto the dance floor and into her proximity.  She is luring him into the range of her perfume.

But on this last point I am only guessing.  There are some things I can’t see for sure.  Your guess is perhaps as good as mine.  To you, the dance is maybe a ritual; it is maybe an act to keep the hope of return attached to the unreturnable.