Duran Duran came over today

I followed millions and watched Thriller. I sat with my heart in my hands because it was my childhood sitting there in the room with me. The childhood that has been coming back to me in strong emotions in recent months, crying, “Look at me, feel what I couldn’t feel when I was 12, when I had to focus on staying safe.” I watched the whole video. I could see again clearly that Michael Jackson has had a great influence on dance(among other things obviously). I also realized that life on earth in America was painfully difficult for youth in the 80’s. Seeing it from the perspective of a 37 year old mother of 2, from the perspective of someone who was half real and half created for the audience of her peers until 11 years ago. After Thriller I watched Beat It and parts of a few other of his videos. Then I wanted to hear Duran Duran. I wanted to remember those long sunlit afternoons in Allison Utech’s living room listening to The Chaufer, Hungry Like the Wolf…dancing because we had this energy, this creative energy and no guidance, no help in channeling it to good. Oh that those who can may connect with those who are lonely. I look back and think we could have been connecting with our elders. I’m idealistic about this. I see these lost eyed people wheeling themselves slowly around nursing homes and I wonder who would come out and live again if there were more dancing. Not necessarily to Duran Duran. I wanted to hear the Chaufer even though I know not what it is about. I know that it sounds like beauty and longing. I don’t listen to the words and I don’t intend to. I listen to the sound of the music, the shadow shape of the words as if they are not words at all and that’s how I found meaning to it when I was younger. It was longing and love, wind on my face and I was dancing in to it. I haven’t talked to Allison in years. I miss her. That’s what I have done this afternoon. I sit on my couch, earphones in, traveling the swift distance between then and now. The tears come, I am enveloped in a memory of dust in the light that streamed in her front window in the room next to the record player. The room with hardwood floors, the room just for company that needed to be dusted regularly. But in the afternoon, before working parents came home it was ours, we were alive and we were happy.