BLURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (3)

By: Andrea Diaz
July 7, 2022

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, delivering brief remarks on mottos, mantras, speeches, slogans, and other words to live by. Series edited by Adam McGovern.

“Joy Is An Act of Resistance” — Toi Derricotte
(“The Apocalypse Is Now, So Let’s Dance” — Rob Brezsny)

It’s Wednesday, and I am dancing. My bare feet skim the glossy wooden floor as Monica plays a pulsing techno song. As I move, I see the familiar faces of strangers who have become a peculiar and nurturing kind of family, wordlessly moving alongside me week after week. Jane, a woman in her 70s, with soft white hair and twinkling eyes swivels past me in a bright turquoise shirt. Just beyond her, Kaitlin dances lightly, like a chiffon scarf waving in a breeze. Jason swirls in sharp and graceful lines focused with monk-like intensity. In this pseudo-post-pandemic era full of strangeness and uncertainty, this moment is a sweet salve.

The poet Toi Derricotte, who used the phrase “Joy is an act of resistance” in her piece “The Telly Cycle,” illuminated something which we, at our deepest levels, understand. When we choose to embody joy, in spite of the oppressive forces around us, this is an act of powerful revolution. Today as I shake my arms and legs to the rhythm, I toil through the latest deluge of terrible news and national tragedies. My body is an alchemist, sifting through the debris and the grief of this fragile existence, purifying it with my liquid movements, hoping to catch a glimpse of the gold I know still exists within me and my community: curiosity, courage, and delight. As the music morphs into a tribal cadence my arm becomes a machete, cutting away the fear and the pain which is too burdensome to carry alone. A disco anthem replaces the native drums, chugging steadily, whisking us together. My companions and I shuffle our way through space and time. The triangles of golden dusk beam through the windows, reflecting each dancer’s passing skin, flashing like fireworks against the off-white walls. We are smiling, whirling, turning, remembering the gift of our aliveness, the generosity of the body, and the power of our radiant togetherness which is our birthright.

Honest joy is our armor, our true will, our guardian against the forces which seek to disempower us. Unchecked capitalism demands constant sacrifice from our bodies, our minds, our time, our language… even our imagination, hypnotizing us with unending, shapeshifting forms of desolation and despair. Still, Joy is the trickster angel-god who knows how to bend, how to sway, and how to remain light — even in grief, even against all odds. It is no wonder that “liberation movements have a long history of communal dance,” as the author Barbara Ehrenreich noted. If jubilant hope is meaningful in solitude, then its potency is only strengthened by the presence of other exuberant bodies capable of both embracing the present and crafting a different kind of future. One marked by connection, rather than violence.

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MORE ENTHUSIASM at HILOBROW

BLURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (3)

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