like the violin

Julia walked me to the tram stop a couple of days ago, after the last night of the Gothenburg Lindy Exchange. We talked about how Herräng and the Lindy Exchange had complemented each other to improve our dancing:
- Herräng showed me that I'm actually a very good dancer, I said, and the Lindy Exchange has shown me what wonderful amounts I still have left to learn.
She nodded. I paused.

And then it dawned upon me, not suddenly like something falling, but rising inside of me, like something waiting underneath, something that I have known for a while, maybe since my first six months of lindy: I need to stop hiding behind the fact that I've only danced a year and a half. I've been using that as a shield, a safety, so as to make it easier for me to accept failure; like when I don't follow something, I have been thinking that it's okay because I've only been dancing for a year and a half. Why can't it be just okay? Not okay because. I don't always follow everything. It should be okay. I should be able to accept it without needing to explain it. Why do I always need to have a reason - no, more than that, an excuse - for every mistake? I am human after all, we make mistakes!

And the reason I cannot hide behind that fact, any longer, is because it doesn't fit. I don't fit in that part anymore. I am better than that; I am better than most people who have been dancing for the same amount of time. This is hard for me to say, I am not used to talking about myself as better than most; nonetheless it is true and it will not do me (or anyone else, for that matter) any good to deny it. I need to know it and accept it, to be able to move on from here.

Naturally it is easier for me to learn faster since I've danced since I was ten, and also because I am a musician, it is not at all difficult for me to feel the music, and become a part of it. I can choose to step inside it, sometimes. But the reasons shouldn't matter: what matters is that I am on an advanced level - in classes quite obviously, I did the audition and they didn't put me in indermediate-advanced, they put me in advanced, I earned my place in that class - but also when social dancing.

It's a suit I've been wearing, the "I've been dancing for eighteen months" excuse, which I need to step out of; into the "I am an advanced dancer" way of thinking. It is time. Because I need to know where I am, to find out what to work on. And like I said, this weekend has given me wonderful ideas of all the things I need to work on. I love that feeling so much, that I could dance forever and still be learning, evolving, growing.

A drawing of la Victoire de Samothrace that I made at the Louvre when travelling in France and Italy last summer.