Changing of the Guard

Changing of the guard: that time when soldiers who have done their turn of duty are replaced by fresh soldiers to do the job.

I went to my old studio this past weekend to play the music for the South African Dance Teacher’s Association studio exam. As I sat in my DJ booth, I looked around at all the faces and it struck me that I was the Olde Guarde; that there’s a time in everybody’s life that they are phased out. I watched the teachers: new, young faces, run around and take charge under the guidance of my old coaches and new young students (and some old ones) strut their stuff on the floor. My mind drifted back a number of years to when that was me…

I started dancing at Johan and Sandy Hayes’ dance studio way back in 2001 some time, (the URL for the studio is http://learn2dance.co.za/).  At that stage I was also dancing (and teaching) at a social studio in the city, but I had a yearning to dance competitions. My social studio head was passionately anti-competitive and never missed an opportunity to put the competitive crowd down. He did his best to indoctrinate us but I don’t think he ever succeeded. He failed with me and the two women I ended up dancing competitively with from his studio.

I was recommended to Johan and Sandy by a colleague at the social studio and was pleasantly surprised to find that one of my work colleagues took lessons there too! I can still remember the day I phoned to book my first lesson: where I was, who I spoke to and more or less what time it was. I was very nervous; Sandy was very nice and professional about it all. I had my first lesson that Saturday and never looked back. I danced weekdays at the social studio and weekends took lessons at Johan and Sandy’s. I learnt a helluva lot at J & S in those first few months. The whole setup and atmosphere was different: these guys were professional and relaxed in the way they did things. More importantly, they knew what they were talking about and they were able to answer some ridiculous questions from me quite satisfactorily. I’m not plugging them; I don’t need too; their work speaks volumes for itself. I could spend pages describing everything I experienced but that isn’t what this is about.

At some stage in 2002 I started dancing with partner #2 and we quit the social studio. We were hyper-committed to our dancing and did fairly well in our first competition in July ’02. I didn’t realize that Johan and Sandy’s was undergoing a change: many of the old hands, most whom I didn’t know, were leaving for various reasons (none of them with any malice attached- it was just the natural erosion of Life). Number 2 and I were then the hotshots, the numero unos, in the studio and I loved it! Over the course of the next 12 months I changed partners twice, was joined by a number of new, very good and motivated guys and girls and we set about burning up the local competitive scene for the next four years. It wasn’t without its blood, sweat, tears and drama, mostly caused by me, but it was a damn fine time that we had. We were a great bunch of people. We had an immense sense of cameraderie and esprit de corps. We worked hard and we reaped the rewards. Johan and Sandy stood behind us and encouraged us to be all that we could be and I think we did them proud. We were all that we could be.

Fool that I was, I thought it would last forever, but Life’s Natural Erosion set in again and one by one the couples, my friends and comrades, split up or left. Some headed happily to newer pastures, others left with tears; their places filled by new, younger faces; faces I didn’t get to know and, to be quite honest, never really made an effort to get to know.

Mea culpa.

Without knowing it, the next generation was slowly but inexorably worming it’s way into the studio, into my domain where I once ruled and was, at worse, second in command. Very subtily, they filled the gaps left by my departing friends.

And before I knew it my time came too.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I too had to leave and relocate a hundred miles away. That was too far away to be part of the studio, too close to make a clean break. With that, the last potential couple from my group left the building to be completely replaced by another, newer, crowd of dancers. I don’t know if they have the same close-knit companionship that we had. My group was tight, really tight. We were family.

I’ve been back to the studio on a number of occasions in the last year and witnessed its move to a new premises from afar. It never bothered me like it did this weekend. Kids that were young 7 years ago are now young adults and doing their thing: doing all the things we did when we held the floor all those years ago. New faces have come in the time that I’ve been away and made themselves at home; couples have been forged and others have broken up. Luckily not everybody has left: some of our support structures- parents and friends who accompanied us to competitions- have remained to supervise and guide the next generation. One of the Olde Guarde still teaches and we had a twirl around the floor on Saturday which did nothing more than reaffirm how good we were and how much I miss the old crowd.

My visits now are marked by a feverish, rapid question and answer time to the old hands about who is who in the zoo. I have no idea who the new people are and feel like a stranger there.  “My” crowd are now in the minority. I am on the outside looking in and over the swaying of these new dancers dancing to the music that I danced to and grew to love, I see the ghosts of others who roamed that floor in another time, another age and another place with me.

I wonder whether the Olde Guarde think back to our Golden Days. I hope they miss it as much as I do.

Format C:

I formatted my computer a few weeks ago. It was too sluggish for my liking. It had gotten bogged down by all the junk that we load because we think we may need it. It was a real pain in the butt to do it and it was annoying, but I needed to do it; to start out on a clean slate with it again.I needed to recover some of it’s lost performance.

My dance coach, who happens to be a competition adjudicator, always maintains: “If I look and you’re dancing out of time, I’m going to look away. If I look again and you haven’t fixed it, I’m going to penalize you.” What he implies is that if you make a mistake and fix it, chances are it won’t come back to haunt you. Leave it and it will. People (everybody from the judges to the spectators) notice when you stop and restart. It’s embarrassing; but you have to do it.

And it’s the same in Life.

Starting over is no shame. We tend to go boldly down a road only to discover that it’s not the one for us or what we expected it to be. Making a u-turn is a hard decision; we tend to look back at the  the time, money and effort we invested to get where we are right now, which is nowhere. Might as well make that u-turn.

We learn from experience and if it doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you stronger (and wiser) they say. Life is a series of journies: adolescence – when we know everything and can’t understand why nobody else gets it, adulthood – when reality, new frontiers and endless possibilities are opened up to us, our friends – some good, some bad and some just plain stupid, our jobs – which we all hate but do nonetheless, the list is endless but they’re all designed teach us awareness about Life. We trudge on wearily, regardless of the opportunity to change things and instead of pulling ourselves out of it and onto something that is fulfilling, we end up becoming sick and tired of everything and slow down like a car without fuel. Too much to do and no time to do it. We get bogged down by all the minor stuff that we sometimes miss the big opportunities. Sometimes we need to turn around and start over with a clean slate.

I’m not implying that you blindly make the turn, forsaking to look at the pros and cons, because that would be stupid. Weigh the options, think about it and then make the decision. Stop, smell the roses, take a deap breath and then decide. Who knows, you may not have to start over, in lieu of tacking in another direction.

I find myself at the beginning of a new road and it stretches endlessly in front of me. I’ve tossed out some old baggage and taken on some new ideas as fuel.

Now THAT is exciting.

Derailing my train

I write.

Lots of things.

Mostly screenplays, with other things thrown in when I have WB or I’m just too lazy to work.

I tend to get lost in an imaginary world full of heroes, villians and everything inbetween. So I write what I experience in the deep, dark recesses of my mind. Writers are the most selfish people in the world. They’re up in their minds all day (and night) and nobody else can get in there to experience their stories with them until the stories either hit the big screen or a Barnes and Noble near you.

“Honey,what are you thinking about?” she asks. “Oh nothing much,” I reply, a little irritated that I took my focus off the stick of the latest Russian Hi-tech jet for a split second to answer her and crashed it into the snowy slopes of an Alpine mountain. The Russian pilot will no doubt take the credit for shooting me down, but doggone it, she interrupted me! She of course meant well, but I doubt very much if the Pentagon will see it that way. Trying to recapture the train of thought that just crashed and burned in that snowy Alpine hillside isn’t always possible.

Her innocent intrusion into my imaginary world wasn’t a good thing.

Or was it?

Writing is what I do, or want to do. I can’t wait to sit in my chair, put my feet up over the corner of my desk and fire up the old PC to start writing. It’s supposed to put money in the bank and food on the table, but it hasn’t yet. So I write diligently until that day comes. And because of that there has to be sacrifices, and the sacrifices tend to be those closest to us. I have to think and re-think every aspect of my work, sometimes using her as a sounding board, asking oblique questions without giving too much away and making the best of an answer based on no information. I haven’t learnt to share my work with her yet, something of which I’m very embarrassed.

I could’ve written The Great Adventure that far, or further, and suffered the same fate. Come to a screeching halt with a gut-wrenching moan. Hindsight always shows up the unstable trackwork over which my train was blissfully racing. Sometimes I run with an idea in great detail and forget where I was headed in the first place. That would’ve meant countless hours and days wasted. It also allows the brain to clear from the overflow of information that may have been clouding my thinking and affecting my perception of where the story was going in the first place. Step back, take a deep breath, smell the roses and consider my options.

I know myself and how I operate and I have a rule: never throw away stories, or even parts of them, I’ve written for the simple reason that I could always return and revisit (sort like a writer’s R ‘n R) at some later stage. I have countless bits and pieces lying about- I really should begin to cataloge them somehow for later use. If I’m lucky I can work bits into another story with minimal changes and proudly proclaim that I wrote 20 pages today- which is far from the truth if you consider that 15 were simply a cut-and-paste job.

To do that I have to climb back into my mind, the very place she just intruded into and yanked me flat onto my ass into reality, and hope I can repare the damage before she climbs in there again. Twinkling her baby-blues at me, and derailing my train again…

Oh, the life.

My first Blog

I’ve never bothered with blogging before, simply because I don’t have the time. But for everything in life I guess we have to make time and I plan to make time for this too. I’ll be back within a day or two to add more info. I’m in the midst of setting up my website at http://writestuff.synthasite.com so if you’ve got nothing to do then mosey on over and have a look at it.

T

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