Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Start Jumping To The Next Thing
“You gotta dance with the one who brung you” is one of those phrases that’s been floating around my head for so long that I can’t remember where I first heard it. If I had to guess I’d say it probably came from an episode of The West Wing, since that show seeped into my brain in my formative years and fundamentally shaped how I talk as an adult. But in the years since, I’ve heard it all over the place, loitering in the corners of conversations like my own personal Baader-Meinhof Gang.
It’s a phrase I like very much. Like the word “brung” that sits at its end, there’s something wonderfully old-fashioned about it; a kind of “aw shucks” corniness hiding a kernel of real sincerity. It speaks to loyalty, fidelity and other virtues that most people would say are worth having. I certainly do. The problems come when that philosophy starts bleeding over into different parts of my life; particularly my creative life.
Many of my most avid reader friends seem to have at least half a dozen books on the go at a time. They can flit effortlessly back and forth between a trashy romance, a biography and a tome of economic theory, depending on where the mood takes them. I never seemed to develop this superpower. Every time I try, one of two things happens. Either I get paralysed by indecision and end up abandoning all the books once, or I find myself focusing on just one to the exclusion of all others.
Part of it is a question of memory; I find it much easier to get engrossed in a narrative if I’m reading it continuously, and reading multiple stories at once means I risk getting them all muddled up in my head. But equally prevalent is the voice in my head that keeps returning to that old refrain:
“You gotta dance with the one who brung you.”
Those are the times when it loses some of its charm. Instead, it starts to feel condescending and paternalistic — like a parent standing over you at the dinner table to make sure you eat your vegetables before you’re allowed dessert. (That really used to annoy me as a child; I often found that my vegetable compartment was overflowing and yet my pudding compartment was painfully empty). It leaves me with a feeling of obligation, which is frankly the last thing you want to feel when you’re engaging with a piece of art. Life is far too short to read crap books, after all.
Even worse, though, is the way that it spills out into my writing. I’ve got so many ideas in my head, desperately trying to get out. Yet every time I log in to my computer and see the novel I’ve been hammering away at for the past few years, sitting impatiently on my desktop, tapping its feet and staring out at me through the monitor.
“You gotta dance with the one who brung you.”
I’ve desperately wanted to try other dances, to different music, with other partners. but there’s a part of me that has always felt like I’m being unfaithful to the story I started writing first. And unlike reading, creativity is a fickle partner. If I don’t read a book now, I know it’ll still be waiting for me when I get back; I don’t know if that’ll be true of my ideas.
Recently, however, I found hope in an unexpected source: one even more old-fashioned than that phrase that’s been rolling around in my brain. I’d heard people in films and books talk about their dance cards being full, but I’d never really stopped to think about what it meant. Turns out, they’re pretty exactly what they sound like; in the 18th and 19th centuries, women attending a fancy ball would be given a card with a list of all the dances that would be happening that evening. Next to each one, they would write the names of the people they intended to share that dance with.
The first time I read up on this, it felt like someone had kicked open a door in my head which I didn’t even realise was closed. First of all, it’s pretty interesting that this was an avenue where women got to exert a rare amount of control, at least a century before Sadie Hawkins dances became a thing. But more importantly, it made me realise something crucial I’d been forgetting this whole time: there’s more than one dance, and I can pick the order.
That novel I’ve been writing isn’t just a separate person who I’ve been waltzing with. It’s also the music, and I’m the conductor. If I put down my baton — or step away from my keyboard — it stops, but it won’t go anywhere. It can’t. And if I pick it up again, the music picks right back up from where I left off.
And once I realised that, the possibilities felt endless. Last month I started a new project: writing a new short poem based on a random word every single day. As I write this, my streak currently sits at 32 days. I even wrote a short story, about a zombie apocalypse where the virus is Dad jokes. Ask me nicely and I’ll share it with you.
The waltz can wait, for now. I’ve got rumbas and tangos and sambas to try.
Shame I can’t do anything about my two left feet.
And now… a poem
The Word of the Day for May 14 was Seal, and this was the poem I wrote. I think it’s one of my best so far. Let me know if you want to read more, and I’ll think about sharing them.
“In vino veritas”
The old saying goes.
I find it works just as well
With gin.
A few drinks in
And I start to break the seal.
My amygdala cracks;
Hardened wax begins to crumble
No longer able
To dam the flood
Of thoughts and feelings
Too damn hard to express sober.
A stream of consciousness
That flows from my mind
And pours from my mouth
Like a rainstorm in the desert,
The torrent only
Slowing
to
a
t r i c k l e
When I realise I need to piss
For the umpteenth time.
Phil W. Bayles 
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