Outdanced by a chameleon, after putting in all the hard yards
THE guitar stands forlornly in a corner of the spare room. I steal a quick glance at it as I pass by.
If guitars had eyes, this one would be shedding a tear for me.
If it could talk, it would whisper, accusingly: “Just one line. Just one line of Smoke On The Water… and you couldn’t.”
I look back at it as if it HAS spoken, and I whisper: “Shut up.”
I look to my right, and there lies my Hohner Echo harmonica in its elegant green case. I pick it up and unclip the case. I fondle it.
I remember my one moment of triumph with it – when I played the first line of Silent Night. It was the only line I ever managed to play.
I smile proudly as I return it to its holder. In front of me are two hard drives packed with music. I think back to the time I wanted to sing like Jimmy Engelbrecht of Big Daddy and Little Wing.
I smile again as I remember my many massacres of perfectly good songs – You are the Sunshine of My Life, Little Wing, White Room. It’s a long and distinguished list.
Thank God for Leonard Cohen, I muse. I make a mental note to record myself singing Famous Blue Raincoat and asking Mark Fredericks to do a YouTube thingy for me with it. I’m sure my grandson, Ethan, will love it when he’s old enough to understand how his grandpa battled.
But listen up, folks, this is not a piece about my struggles with musical instruments and singing. It’s about me and dancing. I love dancing – but, alas, I’m the one black guy, probably in the world, who doesn’t have rhythm. Practice, they say, makes perfect. But damn, I’ve put in the hard yards. I’ve danced alone in my home office at night – to the beat of Badfinger. I’ve practised in my office at work to the beat of my own rendition of the Beatles’ Happy Just to Dance with You. I can move my feet and arms. But here’s my problem: I just don’t have the swagger of the dancefloor maestros. And here’s another horror story…
Last week, I came across a Facebook post that destroyed me. It was a video clip with lekker Latin music in the background.
The object of the piece, though, was… something that looked like a lizard or a chameleon, standing on its hind legs and swivelling its “hips” in perfect rhythm to the beat.
I almost cried into my glass of OB. Bloody hell, I thought, outshone by a chameleon.
How low can a basically nice person like me drop? How much more ignominy do I have to endure, I wondered.
But being an analytical type of person I started delving into my past to try to find an explanation. And I think I have. I believe my troubles started when I tried to learn to waltz – out of a library book. It had drawings of the soles of shoes, with arrows showing where the shoes should move in the course of a Victor Sylvester tune.
So there I was, book in hand, doing “one-two-three-turns”.
The snag was when I had to do it to music: try as I might, when the music was at “turn”, I was still at “two”.
Anyway, so I went to the centre in Innis Road, Wynberg, to learn to langarm. It was not a success – right from the start. The partner they gave me was a guy.
I had nothing against guy partners, but there were at least three beautiful young women who were more or less my height.
And size should not have been a factor, or what? So I left after one lesson. There was also the time I went to a New Year’s Eve langarm dance during a Leap Year…
Here’s a warning to guys who can’t dance: don’t go to a New Year’s Eve langarm dance in a Leap Year.
In a night when women asked men to dance, I was not very comfortable.
Friends told me afterwards that I had a wonderfully demure expression every time I said, “no, thank you”, throughout the evening.
So there you have it: that’s me and dancing for 2017. I have scars that are going to take many years to heal.
Meantime, in 2018, I’m going to learn… to swim.
Have a great year, my friends.