I am a truthful man from this land of palm trees.

Before dying I want to share these poems of my soul. –Guantanamera

People are always telling me I’m too much in my head. I think I know what that means now. I think it means that I hold myself apart from things as they happen, from people, so that I can analyze the moment while it’s happening. The majority of my being is focused on this analysis, instead of being in the moment, as they say. It’s like, I don’t trust myself to simply respond to things as they arise, but you can’t look at it and be it at the same time. Wave vs. particle.

Sometimes, I could let go and be it when I danced. I think I do that when I’m teaching dance class as well. I can clearly see when the dancers are too much in their heads. But when the music stops, back in my head I go. Maybe it would be useful to think of everything as a dance. Well, it’s one thing to think it and another to dance it. Thoughts are things but they are not the thing, I’m learning.

Tomorrow, I’m going to try that. I’m going to have my coffee like it’s a dance. I’m going to go to work like it’s a dance. I’m going to listen like it’s a dance of sound. I’m going to eat a turkey burger like it’s a dance. I’m even going to let my thoughts flow like they are dancing.

Maybe that’s why people listen to music with their earphones all the time these days. They want to be in the dance. The only quarrel I have with that is that it seems a bit isolating. You are not dancing with others, but I think that’s when the dance gets really interesting.

I did an ayahuasca (shamanic drug) ceremony once and I could feel how energy moves in waves. I could actually feel it moving through the room and could witness its affects on people. By observing others, even the dog and myself, I could follow the energy’s path and see how it connects us all. We become individual expressions of the wave but we are connected by it at the same time.

I never wear headphones because I know about the wave. I want to see it coming. You can’t do that with headphones on. I mean, talk about being in your head! I don’t like being out in the world, yet cut off from it at the same time. We have to stop and ask ourselves what are we cutting off?

Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of things I’d like to avoid in this crazy rag-tag world of ours, but I just don’t think that’s useful or healthy in the long run. What we resist persists. And as one of my teachers, Ken Ludden, said: “The lessons we avoid in life come back around with interest and the interest is pain.” Yeah.

I look upon those ever-present ear-buds, generally, as a numbing mechanism. Same thing with those hand-computers we call phones. Sure, they are useful, but we are often on them with no real use in mind other than to escape. Everybody, Tai says put down your phones. Put them down. Well, it was worth a try.

There is something in me that wants us all to look in the same direction, even if it’s just for a moment. But oh, what a moment it could be. Like when Michael Jackson first did the moonwalk. Like when Obama got elected. Like when the wall came down. Maybe in that terrific moment we could all just look at each other. Really look. The music that unites us is the music that is shared.