The Circle Game

Los Angeles, California


I was a passionate Joni Mitchell fan. A teenager when her album, Blue, was released, I listened to it so many times that I may have worn out the grooves. I am certain I am not the only one who memorized every word of every song on both sides of it. All I Want was the anthem that carried me into my first, doomed love affair. I listened to Blue when I was elatedly in love, and then I listened to it incessantly when I was heartbroken. For a couple of decades after I had left my teens behind, I avoided it, as I couldn't listen to it without reliving heartbreak, Pavlovian-style. Such is the power of anthems. Finally, slowly, I came back to it, after purchasing the CD in the summer of 2001. And again, heartbreak followed, though of a much more universal, and less solipsistic nature.


I was never a big fan of Joni's song, The Circle Game. It was from an earlier album that hadn't really spoken to me, and I never really got that particular song -- something about that merry-go-round melody. That is, until a few years ago when I heard Christine Ebersole sing it at a small cabaret concert in Costa Mesa. It was one of those weird moments, when Wile e Coyote appears out of nowhere to drop an Acme anvil on your head. Tears formed and flowed. Quietly; discreetly. But, nevertheless.


Now I get The Circle Game. Probably because I'm older, and have learned to assuage much of the heartbreak in my life, through dance. As a dancer, I spend a lot of time with partners making patterns on the dance floor. We circle, and move across. We glide, turning sideways; back and forth. We never get anywhere. It's all about nothing. Dolce far niente.


I often look around a salsa club and think about what it is that brought us all to learn and live this thing. We're so diverse. We live; work; probably in many ways we think differently, and often in different languages. But we come together on the floor. For whatever reason, we are drawn to dance. To move in circles; to pass a portion of our time and lives in this way.


There has been loss in our salsa world. And there has been new romance after loss. There has been drama (are you kidding me?), and recently, a car accident that has rendered a member of our community onto crutches (no dancing for a few months yet after a knee surgery). Time circles and passes. We dance.


Summer will soon be over. I started to dance salsa one August afternoon, now quite a few years back. We stood in two concentric circles; ladies inside. We watched, learned, practiced, then changed partners. Occasionally, I will run into one of those early partners at a different club; that first one having closed several years back. We will say hello; sometimes we will dance. Moving to music as always; this way, then that. Round and round.


We're lucky -- even my friend, the car crash victim. Could have been worse. And dancing will wait for him, just up ahead. That's the thing about dancing. In dancing unlike life, you rarely look back.


We can't return, we can only look
Behind from where we came,
And go round and round and round,
In the circle game.


Thanks for reading my blog, and sometime please, as Ray Davies implored, Come Dancing. Life is short . . .