Dancer in The Sun
The Sun’s out today. Days like this make life worth living. The sky is a brilliant, piercing blue - not a single trace of a single wisp of cloud in sight. I sat on the roof and drank in the sunshine, accompanied by an espresso and “The Metamorphosis” by Kafka. The air is crisp, the morning still. Smiling, strolling couples and red-faced joggers made rounds past my perch.
It's like the roof scene in Shawshank - a sunny, Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and suddenly I feel like the lord of all Creation, the world’s pleasantness a spectacle just for me.
I remember when I first came to Michigan - even though the fall weather was nice and even though the trees popped with color - I missed the mountains like hell. I missed them even more when winter came. What growing up in Denver, constantly exposed to views of snowcapped peaks, had given me, that I came to appreciate, was a consistent source of daily beauty. Growing up, the beauty of the mountains was so normal and common that it was almost banal - pointing it out just as often filler in a stunted conversation as genuine appreciation. Their position was, and is, constant, unchanging, stable. They provided utility and function, serving as a reference point for the cardinal direction of West. And just like all things that we take for granted, you don’t know what you’ve got till they’re gone.
In contrast to Denver, Ann Arbor provides no towering cathedrals of earth by which to navigate, no equivalent source of utterly constant beauty. As a freshman this was unnerving, and it can be even now. The winters are gray and windy, the sun a rarity, and the trees skeletal shades of their fall glory. So, I’ve learned never to take a sunny day for granted, or dismiss the effect it can have on your mood.
This morning’s sunshine gave me the requisite burst of energy to consider a potential solution to a question of my own making: What if The Dancer reclaims their Self?
In “Wherever You Go, There You Are” I tried to illustrate through the example of The Dancer the idea that conformity to established standards can distance one from themself. Formulating it this way has left me somewhat perturbed. After all, what does this alienation of expression mean for the way we conduct ourselves in the world? Or for the value of what we do and how we behave? The concept of a near-infinite mesh of interwoven and interrelated customs, ideas, standards, and expectations bearing down, structuring, and governing our lives, decisions, and expression can be disorienting - especially with reference to a desire to exist as an individual and an agent.
However, it seems possible, carrying on with the logic of the dancer, that the forms and customs they learn could then be used as a base upon which to innovate - thereby restoring their authenticity. It’s still a break from the established norm, and therefore nonconformist, but it also represents a “going through” as described by the essay’s (current) ending: The dancer learns to dance as they are expected to, separating them from themself, but then perhaps they use what they have learned to find new ways of expression, reconnecting with their estranged being. I suppose what I mean is that in order to become more themself the dancer can synthesize the elements of repressed authenticity and learned performance. There remains the possibility for self-expression even though they have previously conformed.
I had a Spanish professor who was fond of quoting Borges to say that “there are no new ideas,” and I knew what he meant when he would say it, but of course there are new ideas! As the saying goes, “history doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme.” Rhymes abound, and “newness” always deserves interrogation. But insofar as each person is a unique individual, formed in a perfectly singular way, there will always be distinct, authentic expressions of self waiting to be made.