Singular Experiences
Tonight Isaac and I had dinner with our favorite engineer and said engineer's son; both are men with enquiring minds willing to play tag with silly and frivolous topics, in which we nevertheless try to find meaning or at least amusement. It's a game we enjoy.
RT (the engineer) offered crocodile-tear regrets that he had not been to our most recent tap-dancing class. His loss, I put forward. I then related some of my feelings upon two special events: 1) buying my first pair of tap shoes (last Saturday); and 2) doing tap class wearing my first pair of tap shoes.
Sometimes I contend that there are [at least] two things I've always wanted to do: 1) sing countertenor; and 2) learn to tap dance. The first doesn't look so likely at this point, although I still sometimes belt out a very creaky verion of "Sound the Trumpets", the most fabulous countertenor duet from Henry Purcell's (1659–1695) "Come Ye Sons of Art", a birthday ode for Queen Mary, when I am certain that no one can hear, e.g., while I'm mowing the lawn. What it looks like to the unhearing observer, I couldn't say.
At any rate, through happenstance, I'm taking tap-dancing classes. Our musical-theatre troupe (very amateur, but significantly improved after 9 years and 18 productions) is planning to do "Crazy for You" in the spring of 2006. In preparation, our energetic choreographer (who first worked miracles turning six middle-aged Methodist men into tap-dancing cowboys for "Oklahoma" — a phenomenon, to be sure) is giving tap classes in preparation. (It is, of course, known as the church's "tap ministry".) The classes are fun and my doctor will be impressed by this new exercise regime.
So anyway, last Saturday I finally went and bought my tap shoes. It felt like the fulfillment of forty years of expectations, mixed with a hearty dose of "who do I think I am buying tap shoes" humility. Nevertheless, I did it. They fit beautifully, and the weight is balanced so nicely that one's feet almost can't resist doing f-lap-ball-change all by themselves. Finally, I got audio feedback on my steps and their rhythm. Finally, I was tap dancing.
Unless you've tried it, you don't really know what an unusual but satisfying experience it is to be doing real tap-dancing figures.* I explained to RT & son that I think tap dancing appeals to me because it is so synthetic, so artifical and stylized an activity, this idea of playing percussion with one's feet.
Tapping is certainly unique. However, the experience that struck me as singular was being in the midst of a group of twenty people, all executing the same steps in syncronization (more or less — we are mostly beginners, after all), moving as a group one way or the other. There's some sort of gestalt thing that happens, which is difficult to explain. You really need to try it for yourself.
That led us for a few minutes to talking about singular experiences. One other that came to mind was the time that I went with Isaac and his [English] handbell choir to a regional handbell workshop. Here, if you can, you should try to imaging a gymnasium filled with two or three dozen handbell choirs, each choir having some 15 handbell ringers. Now, try to imagine the sound (and the volume!) when all these people start ringing their bells in performance. There's nothing that compares.
Two singular experiences remembered in one night: not bad.
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*… and not falling over, in most instances. I don't want pity or anything, but I am nearly fifty, and probably because of my diabetes my balance is not always quite what it was in my youth. On the whole, the effect is probably somewhat comic.