I don't dance. Not really anyway. Which is weird considering my obsession with music. Hays told me yesterday that as women, we are unique in the fact that we are music geeks. I'd honestly never thought about it before. Music is such an integral part of my life that I'd never considered it as a male or female attribute. I'm not sure I totally believe or agree with her though. Film geeks, sci fi geeks, we're all the same, no matter our sex, race or creed.
So last night I invited a few mates round for drinks. I don't think they got the whole quiet night in with a bottle of wine idea and turned up with a crate of beer. By midnight we were dancing in the kitchen to Vampire Weekend, cans littering the table. My idea of 'dancing' normally consists of bobbing my head up and down at a gig, tapping my feet and wiggling my legs and occassionally jumping up and down. Last night I was doing my imitation of a drunken festival goer. It was fabulous.
I missed my school reunion last night. On purpose mind. Couldn't think of anything worse than going to a so-called 'club' in my home town and having to make small talk with people I no longer have anything in common with. I've kept in touch with those that I consider friends - and they are friends, some of the best - and don't understand some people's desire to reach back ten years into the past. School was school, for the most part. Just because we're older it doesn't make any difference to how we were or how we acted then. G said he'd love to go back to his to prove to himself how much he's changed. I told him I didn't see how that would help me. Yes I've changed since I was 16 and yes most of the others probably have too. They've certainly all got families and children to prove it. But that doesn't mean I need to sit and discuss what I've been doing with my life. The whole reason I left was to make something more than what that place offered me. I felt suffocated and though in the schemes of things I haven't really moved very far, my life couldn't be further away from what it was back then. I don't need to see those from the past to see how much I've changed because I already see it.
Sometimes I think they see me as this big hotshot who works in the city who is constantly on the move and never looking back. In reality I couldn't be further away from that stereotypical view that falls upon those when they think of London. In fact I think I'd be more lonely if I lived back home. And I wouldn't want them to think I deem their lives less worthy because I don't. We just took different paths at the fork in the road and somehow I don't think they'd understand that.
I could have spent last night dressed up in uncomfortable clothes, dancing in some concrete hut to terrible music and pretending I was enjoying the company of old friends. But instead I was dancing in my turreted kitchen with my weird and wacky pals to my favourite music and celebrating all the good things that have come my way. As much as I hate country music and westerns, I could have pictured myself in an old barn dance in deep south America and thought how at home I'd feel. Maybe I should dance more often...
