Elizabeth G: Dancing in the Streets
I’m going to bare my soul and confess that I’m one of those people who simply can’t dance. I tell myself it’s because of my big feet and my bad knees, but the truth is I’m just not very coordinated. Never have been.
Heaven knows I've tried. I signed up for modern dance lessons back in high school. (An unmitigated disaster.) In college I lost out on the role of Ado Annie in “Oklahoma” because I couldn’t dance. (I could, however, belt out a song all the way to the back row of a huge auditorium without a microphone, so I made it to the final round before being eliminated.)
For a while I planned to run off and become a Broadway musical star, hoping that my singing and acting talents would make up for what I sadly lacked in the dance department. They didn’t, and Broadway became one my "roads not taken.”
So imagine my surprise and delight when I opened the newspaper one morning last week and discovered “Dancing Matt.”
Who, you may ask, is “Dancing Matt?”
Well, apparently he’s Matt Harding, a thirty-year-old video-game developer and internet phenomenon who has traveled the globe doing a sort of awkward jig, a jig which has been video-taped and broadcast worldwide via YouTube, a jig even I could do. Matt has danced anywhere and everywhere from the giant tortoise-inhabited Galapagos Islands to the sand dunes of Namibia, from Easter Island to Kilimanjaro, from the Antarctica to Zanzibar. Meanwhile, someone — his current sponsor is Google Earth — snaps Matt’s photo or takes video footage that is then shared with the rest of us.
I want to be “Dancing Matt.”
Yes, I realize it’s wishful and wistful thinking on my part. Yes, I know it’s utterly unrealistic. Yes, I’m aware that traveling today is often more of an endurance test than a mystical experience. But some part of me — the vagabond in my soul part — wants to take the night train to Katmandu, climb up into the remote regions of the Himalayas, explore the mysteries of Angkor Wat, and sleep under the starry skies of the Serengeti.
Sigh.
Right now, of course (referring back to those gimpy knees of mine) I’m making do by watching “Dancing Matt,” and reading one of my bedtime favorites: 1000 PLACES TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE by Patricia Schultz.
So Inquiring Minds want to know: Where are some of the places you would still love to see in your lifetime? Do you have a “road not taken” in your past?
And here’s to "dancing" in all its myriad forms!
EG
Heaven knows I've tried. I signed up for modern dance lessons back in high school. (An unmitigated disaster.) In college I lost out on the role of Ado Annie in “Oklahoma” because I couldn’t dance. (I could, however, belt out a song all the way to the back row of a huge auditorium without a microphone, so I made it to the final round before being eliminated.)
For a while I planned to run off and become a Broadway musical star, hoping that my singing and acting talents would make up for what I sadly lacked in the dance department. They didn’t, and Broadway became one my "roads not taken.”
So imagine my surprise and delight when I opened the newspaper one morning last week and discovered “Dancing Matt.”Who, you may ask, is “Dancing Matt?”
Well, apparently he’s Matt Harding, a thirty-year-old video-game developer and internet phenomenon who has traveled the globe doing a sort of awkward jig, a jig which has been video-taped and broadcast worldwide via YouTube, a jig even I could do. Matt has danced anywhere and everywhere from the giant tortoise-inhabited Galapagos Islands to the sand dunes of Namibia, from Easter Island to Kilimanjaro, from the Antarctica to Zanzibar. Meanwhile, someone — his current sponsor is Google Earth — snaps Matt’s photo or takes video footage that is then shared with the rest of us.
I want to be “Dancing Matt.”
Yes, I realize it’s wishful and wistful thinking on my part. Yes, I know it’s utterly unrealistic. Yes, I’m aware that traveling today is often more of an endurance test than a mystical experience. But some part of me — the vagabond in my soul part — wants to take the night train to Katmandu, climb up into the remote regions of the Himalayas, explore the mysteries of Angkor Wat, and sleep under the starry skies of the Serengeti.
Sigh.
Right now, of course (referring back to those gimpy knees of mine) I’m making do by watching “Dancing Matt,” and reading one of my bedtime favorites: 1000 PLACES TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE by Patricia Schultz.
So Inquiring Minds want to know: Where are some of the places you would still love to see in your lifetime? Do you have a “road not taken” in your past?
And here’s to "dancing" in all its myriad forms!
EG
posted at 7:16 AM
