Gotta Dance
by Janet Berliner
For those of you who have not seen “Singing in the Rain,” abandon this essay at once and buy, rent, borrow or steal it. Pay particular attention to the incomparable Gene Kelly’s “Gotta Dance.” It’s about passion.
Which has what to do with writing?
Everything.
The late film reviewer and interviewer Stu Kobak wrote:
“Creative juices can flow in most any circumstance. … Today, waiting in the hospital’s ambulatory surgery wing… an old woman limped by with a walker. She bumped into my wheelchair. I noticed she was wearing red shoes. I thought, The Red Shoes, what a fantastic dance movie. Dance, movies, inspiration._..[for] an old woman trying to capture the flair of youth with a pair of colorful shoes. I whipped out my notebook like a gunslinger in a B western, ready to take on the world with words.”
Like Kobak, I am captured by artistic dedication, whether or not it requires sacrifice–as it most often does.
There’s an old joke that goes something like this:
Tourist to New Yorker: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?”
New Yorker to Tourist: “Practice, Man. Practice.”
To which I would add, be passionate about what you do.
Out of passion and practice grow the flowers of skill. I cry equally when I listen to Chopin’s Preludes, hear Jascha Heifetz play the violin, watch Baryshnikov fly across a stage or see a master carpenter run his fingers over a piece of his finished work.
Talent, you say. How lucky to be so blessed.
Yes, but–
Frédéric François Chopin lived for only 39 years. By the time he was seven, he was composing and by eight he played his first concert. While his love affairs are well known, it is his passion for the piano that lives on.
Jascha Heifetz started violin lessons at age five. It is said that, around the age of 25, he told Groucho Marx he had been earning a living as a musician since his debut at the age of seven. Groucho apparently answered, “And I suppose before that you were just a bum.”
Ah, but these were geniuses, you say. Perhaps so. In no way do I compare myself with them, but I have passion a’plenty. And I “Practice, Man, practice.”
Example: Ten years or so ago, I was in intensive care, tubes coming out of every orifice; doctors Saying, “Get ready for your Maker.” I covered my bases and asked for a Rabbi, a priest, a Jesuit monk. I also asked for my computer. I had a deadline to meet. At any time I was vaguely compos, I pounded away, which was a good thing because the doctors were wrong.
Another time, confined in an old hospital near a beach in South Africa, I had an idea that wouldn’t let go — an idea born of Morpheus, morphine, my own wheezing and the machinery keeping me alive? Again, I asked for my computer. The story itself died. The passion that drove me to write under those circumstances kept me alive.
No matter what else happens or doesn’t happen in my life, I remain compelled — PASSIONATE — which segues back to where I began with “Singing in the Rain?”
If you wake up in the morning and sing out, “Gotta Dance,” put on your dancing shoes; if your first thought, before sex or food or going to the bathroom is, “Gotta Write,” DO IT. When the dark times attack, DO IT. If you don’t, you’ll lose your passion, and without that, there is nothing.
