Friday, October 10, 2008

Why art is great.

I went with my wife to this dance recital tonight. We had both had terrible days, neither of us wanted to go. This was a fund raiser for this professional dance company. The Doug Varone company, and it was in a theater on Broadway.
My wife's Pilate's  teacher is one of the dancers and she really wanted to support her.
Anyway, we got a baby sitter and went out for dinner and the whole time all we can both do is get ourselves more and more depressed about how much money I just lost in the stock market this week. How the wheels are coming off right from under us. We ate in Hell's Kitchen in the cheapest place possible, and my wife still offered to not eat if it would help us to make our next mortgage payment. I started to go on a rant about Darwinist Economics and how that the people we'd bought stock in would all survive and get stronger. It was wishful thinking I know.
Anyway, we go to this dance which we'd already bought tickets for, and we sit in this old, beautiful theater and the lights go down and the music starts and the dancers start to dance, and my whole mood started to get so much better. I really felt great and I wanted jump up and start dancing too. My mind was drifting away and I started to feel so overwhelmed with happiness, I started to think that all of the men and women on stage there all looked so tremendously happy too.  I started to think to myself..."How come I never became a dancer?" How come I never pursued a career like that. I looked at all these gorgeous girls and thought that they'd be my co-workers. I would get to know everyone. And the guys, they all seemed like nice guys. Sort of different from me physically. Kind of like stretched out versions of me, but with hair on their heads and not all over the back and shoulders. Then I began to realize that no one wanted to see me dance. And maybe that is why no one ever encouraged me to dance either. It was as if some sort of Darwinian experiment had taken place on me without me even noticing. No one had encouraged me to dance so I eventually faded into the T-ball league and then onto smoking pot in High School. 
I started to wonder how I had gotten to this place in my head, all the way from the economy, and I started to remember what it was that I love about art. Somehow all of that panic about money that I had had just a few moments ago had quickly dissipated into thoughts of me jumping around on a stage dressed in little more than tights.

4 comments:

Lorrie Veasey said...

Totally brilliant post Mr. Kramer.

Sorry about the stock market--here's another thing:
If you had purchased $1,000 of AIG stock one year ago, you would have $42 left.
With Lehman, you would have $6.60 left.
With Fannie or Freddie, you would have less than $5 left.

But if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all of the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have had $214.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

But thinking about dancing works too.

XO

david kramer said...

Lorrie-And I used tro think I wasting all my money on alcohol...
I was just investing in the future.

Luckily all my stock was in Iceland.
David

Bj in Dallas said...

David
Are you a Pisces? cause the get lost in the moment when the moment is good is kind of our thing....I can forget alot of shit when I hear a good old song..
I think we should vote whether or not you are a good dancer, by having LV video tape you getting down with your bad self and putting it on your site...
and title it 'who the hell cares?'
rock on
Bj

Racie Lover said...

Having just peeked at my (dwindling) Morgan Stanley accounts and become suicidal, your post was a welcome relief and helped bring me back in off the ledge. We need to remember there is still beauty in the world and we can all be dancers, even if maybe it's only in our heads.

The mac and cheese I am making tonight no longer seems like an act of desperation to fend off the bank or my loan shark. We will wash it down with our usual Cheap House Chardonnay and count ourselves lucky. Beauty reigns!