On the Remedies of Getting Down

Or, If You Hate Tuesdays too, Look Here.

by Marcello Cortese

I have been thinking lately about an article I read in The Atlantic a few months ago.

Its subject? Why Americans need to party more. It’s a rather astute and refreshing social analysis of the reciprocal and communal nature of throwing—and being received at—fabulous parties. The article was everywhere around the time of its release in January, so you very well may have seen or read it already. If not, check out Ellen Cushing’s brilliance HERE!

I thought of it when I went dancing on a Tuesday night. Not clubbing, not bar hopping. Dancing. A friend and I had made plans to grab a low key drink, which turned into a sweetly spontaneous dinner at an Italian hole in the wall à la Lady and the Tramp. Naturally, by then the two of us had accomplished drinks and dinner, and everyone knows that both comedy and tragedy come in threes. Being young and restless in Manhattan, we decided that a bit of spectacle was warranted for its own sake.

This is what I adore about New York: the unspoken social understanding that no evening, no moment, no day of the week is off limits for doing exactly what you feel like, to its fullest possibilities. Everything is game, even when it’s not. So that’s just what we did: exactly what we felt like.

It was one of those accidental fabulosities that you stumble into when you’re deep in the headspace of unspecified love. We finished dinner, frantically called a few friends to see who would want to race us to our destination, and started a mild trek down to the Roxy. Paul’s Baby Grand would be the only proper haven of mid-week revelry, even if ironic (in the Chloë Sevigny way, of course). Arriving just after ten, we were the only couple inside, save one other fabulous group. Frilly flamenco skirts and neck scarves, they were just having the time of their lives in a corner. Against the palm leaf wallpaper, under the feathered chandelier, it was a surreal sensation to sit and have a chat. The two of us might have discussed philosophy, literature, or compared and contrasted indie films (I have been back on the Donnie Darko kick as of late). It felt like we were ghosts in an after hours back bar, pondering all the crowds that would certainly be in our place on a “hot” night, but were away since it was Tuesday. We—two little dust bunnies on a striped divan—should have known better than to misjudge how much people want to remedy their hatred of Tuesdays.

This is something I derive a great deal of pleasure from: arriving to a scene with few expectations and allowing yourself to wait to be dazzled.

Friends arrived. Music pumped. Tables filled up and all of a sudden my elbows were jostling against servers and dancers alike. Jostling! On a Tuesday evening! I recall that one specific moment, probably around 11:45 or so, when I looked up and could no longer see spatial gaps anywhere in the room. People were alive and out, that much was definite. Then the stranger thing happened. Cliques started to appear.

A glance over to the far end of the room illuminated a horde of skater guys, all decked out in cargo pants and designer hoodies. One of them had one of those faces that surely convinced you he’s a well known nepotism baby. Or an actor. A switch of the hips and suddenly those professional party girls weaved their beeline through the crowd and to their prepaid table. All slicked back hair, all leather jackets and thigh high boots. Near to them, also sitting down, was that one middle-aged straight couple. You know them. They’re a handsome and sophisticated pair, sipping quietly on their vodka sodas and observing the crowd with determination. They seem equally cool and boring, which is a refreshing combination amidst the throngs. Are they there to experiment? Who knows. Point being, they want stimulation of some caliber. Then there are the aloof club staff, slightly dancing on the sides and keeping watch over the flock in cashmere cardigans and oversized, double breasted suits. They’re cool as hell and they know it, but they’re still on the clock.

It became a whirlwind of that same Gatsbian notation of “Gossip columnists alongside gangsters and governors exchanging telephone numbers, film stars, broadway directors, morality protectors, high school defectors!” Though, unfortunately, Ewing Klipspringer was not in attendance. The night continued to conjure trope after archetype. Suddenly I had that vivid realization that, while I had been chatting flippantly with a friend or two, waiting endlessly for that atmospheric shift, the world had already built up an entire party around us. Right under my nose! The vines of the social jungle had climbed up to the ceilings and suddenly everything was set in the evening’s ways. The room buzzed with intention. Somehow nothing felt accidental.

It was clear that ulteriority was a foreigner there. He would have no one to talk to, no chance to exercise his uninteresting wiles, because none of us were interested in paying him attention. Everyone was there for one thing: the music. Atmosphere, too. The social aspect came out as a direct result. In between songs, I found myself exchanging compliments with a few eccentric passersby (I was wearing a very Jagger look, which I was thrilled was put to proper use). Chatted with a friend of a friend about Buddhism and the different types of meditation. Someone even asked me for the time! And I checked my watch to tell him. Imagine that! And, while we were dancing like we had never danced before, I might have shouted over to a friend through noise—a jumpy Italo-funk beat—to ask her if she thought we’re ever truly forgiven.

It made me consider that mere congregation, per Cushing’s point, is not necessarily the inherent solution. Something far simpler is: music. This beauteous thing that infiltrates everyone’s lives is in some way the clearest form of relief. All matters of the social seem to come secondary to and are distilled from the pleasure of twitching out on a dance floor. It is there in every context, honestly. That fantastic urge.

This mini insight into the problem of social lethargy, it was a surprisingly soft thing. Modern social strifes demonstrate themselves to be control-based, especially in a city where everyone is expected to hold everything together perpetually. Sometimes the relief comes in just that: a physical relinquishment of slack. Dropping the shoulders and shimmying to “Copacabana,” throwing up an arm to the Buena Vista Social Club, and then bouncing out a bit of a dead dance to the Mamas and the Papas… there’s the rub!

There is something to be said about the immortality of dancing. It transcends every genre, historical era, culture, and even species. It’s the beautiful impulse we’re all given. That one intrinsically good response to stimuli. It also has everything and nothing to do with humanity. We’re temporal. It is an ageless agent, one that supersedes reason, convention, sexual innuendo and, yes, fear. Music, and the result of music, is the simplest of miracles in life, and we should be so lucky to know it as the alternative to silence. If alcohol is God’s apology for making us self aware, music is His apology for expecting us to endure silence.

Especially now, uninhibited dancing seems more ritualistic than performative. Arriving at a space of pure instinctual vibration, apart entirely from thought or worry of perception, is a full and present kind of meditation. It’s also one of the easier methods, in most cases, in the development of presence. Presence, you know it? That age old grounding technique that usually is mastered by focusing on the physical and metaphysical elements of being in a moment? It’s easily forgotten in the hustle and the bustle, secondary to the excitement we’re meant to prioritize in the name of productivity. Which inspires me to think…

Have we forgotten how to be properly weird? Dancing has this air around it, this esteem, that seems untouchable to those not properly trained. There are the disciplined aspects of the craft itself, as with everything that becomes an art form. Yet, it’s also this weird, instinctual thing. Dancing should be weird. Point blank. It is literally a bodily response to unexpected or overly compelling stimuli. It keeps the beat and then loses it. It contracts and swings. It dips and shimmies and kicks a little bit, almost like you’re fighting! You get the idea.

All the best dances in history have been weird, especially those made famous in film. Pulp Fiction. Singing in the Rain. Risky Business. Sweet Charity. Dirty Dancing. The Breakfast Club. The Man From U.N.C.L.E… the list (and the beat) goes on! Paulo Sorrentino is the king of the party scene, I’m convinced, entirely because of how unconventional the dancing is. Baz Luhrman is his proper competitor, but there is something better and weirder that Sorrentino just gets.

At any rate, not one of these examples is interested in the “nice” or the “impressive” idea of dance. Not entirely, at least. They’re all about understanding and exploring vibe. The space of a moment. There is something exciting about that, something real and silly in the fashion of singing loudly in the shower or sliding around your bedroom in socks.

These moments touch a little deeper. They bring up exhalations that are fuller. Reverberations become better. Dispositions are lighter. Existence is a little bit sweeter. The saccharine fruit of a dance is something not often tasted anymore, and yet entire social quotas used to be built on it. Romances initiated by it. Intelligent company piqued in curious and unexpected ways because of it.

When was the last time you went to a sock hop? Or a cotillion? Were you ever a debutante? And where are the jazz bars that people get up at and twist an ankle whenever they can?

Dancing used to be a spinal institution of social architecture. One of my favorite things to think about is the development of universally learned dances. Periods in history where everyone in any given milieu knew a handful of common dances for the sake of using them on a regular basis. The charleston, the waltz, foxtrot and cha-cha. Tangos, flamencos, jitterbug and polka! Oh my! What opportunities everyone had to get up and shake a leg at the drop of a hat, perhaps just because they were alive and music was playing.

What’s the issue nowadays with being alive and dancing just because music is playing? Have you noticed that unspoken, silent stigma that has grown around the thought? Or am I just being overly dramatic? In many ways, dancing for its own sake should be the common agreement. It has tremendous psychological and physiological benefits for you. Dancing is an excellent way to improve flexibility, stamina, lung capacity and heart health, not to mention alleviating symptoms of depression and anxiety. It lowers cortisol levels and replaces them with endorphins, which helps reduce chronic stress.

Dancing might very well be good for your hair, even! What a thought!

It seems like this is the integral answer. All roads may lead back to Rome, but at least the Romans knew how to throw a killer party. Where did we lose focus in terms of having a good time? Have we? Or is it just about the shifting of priorities and the redefinition of “cool” and “worthwhile?” All this is an encouragement from me to you to go and get down. Properly. With friends, with yourself, who cares? Tuesday, Friday, the whole week… Work tomorrow? You’ll have to get up anyway, it may as well be best to have some nice memories greet you upon waking. After all, a little party never killed nobody.

Not many times, at least.