Make Joy You Fool
Dance This Mess Around
Dance your life is the other subtitle, but, let me start with storytelling in films.
I often talk about choreography with my film students. Not actual dancing, but, the dance of life. Every scene should be a dance, a tango of sorts, a push and pull of conflict and resolution. If the scene has two characters, one takes the lead, then, may pass the lead to the other character to play more of a passive role.
This is also referred to as status or power dynamics. We love shifting power dynamics when we watch films, when we read books, when we listen to a comedian take us through a routine and subvert our expectations to elicit a laugh.
We play with status all the time and most aren’t aware of it. We go through life with a status. We have a status quo, which is also a film term for the first beat of every film in Act 1, what is the status quo?
In life when we break our status quo, it confuses people. If you order coffee from a barista and timidly ask for whole milk and purchase your order, your barista may take a higher status because you’ve allowed them to.
There’s no bad status, there’s just status in these situations. Then you get your coffee and stand very tall and let the barista know she needs to make another coffee because this coffee sucks. Demand it. Even the next person in line is confused by this status shift.
What will the barista do? She’ll be confused because she had a status quo of you in mind and you changed the status quo. She may also think you didn’t take your lithium today. There will be a shift in status, and part of that shift will be how to I get rid of this pesky customer, and part of that shift might include the customer you just interrupted while giving his order.
Shifting status isn’t comfortable, but, when we’re telling stories, and sometimes, when we’re dancing through life, which I’ll get to in a minute, it’s the fuel that’s needed.
Check out the last scene of Swingers (1996) below and watch the status shift between the characters. For most of the film Mikey (Jon Favreau) has been low status among his friends, or, sometimes he closely matches their status. In this scene there’s a status shift that makes Trent (Vince Vaughn) lose the high status he’s had throughout most of the film.
For Trent this scene is an utter tragedy, for Mikey, the scene started with almost equal status, and then Mikey is high status. They cut out the last part of the scene where Trent asks Mike what he was talking about, almost begging him to get back to his story and Mike just looks out the window. Fade Out, end of film, and we’re truly satisfied by the status shift because we’ve seen poor Mikey take a beating for about 90 minutes.
Dance your life.
What does that mean? I go about my day in Los Angeles, often around Los Feliz and Silver Lake and there’s a status quo of the neighborhood. These days the status quo feels angry. I used to say hi to people I walk by and before covid 1/2 the people would say hi back, some would stop to talk. But, the others, they’re all hurrying through to get to that next thing, their brows furrowed, their life so serious, like they have to get back to their house so they can press the red button that stops the Moon from crashing into the Earth in ten minutes.
These people, brows furrowed, busy just trying to get home to watch Netflix and sit in their sad chair are trying to portray a high status.
I remember when I used to work in the legal department at Visa in Foster City. I brought joy with me. I couldn’t believe I actually had an office job. I felt like I was cheating life. I was a law clerk, but, no one knew how many graveyard shifts I worked at UPS for less money, how many Walgreen’s floors I mopped before that, or how many spatulas the baker would throw at my head when I washed dishes at a bakery.
My life status shifted, sitting in an office and making money was like winning the lottery. I fooled everyone. And to even be able to stop and talk with the paralegals about movies we watched or books we’re reading. To even close their office door and chat for 30 minutes about it before I went back to filing legal documents.
I was buoyant. I was also a threat to the miserable legal secretaries that despised their jobs. The only reason I wasn’t fired immediately was because the head legal secretary liked my energy.
The miserable tried to find ways to trip up my step, to yuck my yum, to disturb my joy.
They had no clue how much I was just happy to be there. Frustrating them even more.
Looking back I learned a lot from that job. I learned that even though an office job seems much better than mopping Walgreen’s floors at 3 a.m., it’s the attitude we bring with it. The status quo of the department of legal secretaries was to be miserable and I disrupted that status quo. It made them uncomfortable. They wanted me out of there.
Dance your life.
Walking through my neighborhood is an example of these furrow browed, miserable people avoiding contact with anyone around them just makes me sad. It’s like they have a mental disorder. We all have mental disorders, but, it’s like they’re leaning into it.
These days when I walk Los Feliz for my walks I say hi to those who cross my path, and it’s Los Angeles, the never ending suburb, so it’s not like we’re in any actual city where saying hi to everyone is a possible threat, like when I lived in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, where keeping your head down is a very good idea, we’re in suburban paradise, yet, the status quo is miserable legal secretaries. And misery loves company.
But, I don’t stop saying hi because one in every ten says hi back. And, then I sometimes see them again and we talk. That’s way more fun than that poor fella who has to get home to push the red button every 30 minutes to stop the Moon crashing into the Earth.
Have you been to Trader Joe’s Silver Lake? Anyone visiting Los Angeles, let me tell you the parking lot is a tourist attraction and should be in every guidebook. Once inside most of the people furrow their brows to make sure what they’re doing is very important and they are not to be disturbed.
I smile at everyone. I say hi. I talk to people, sometimes they’re more insane than me, but usually they have opinions about olive oil, or eggs, and we both dance along to our next scene in our lives. I’ll dance between two people taking too long to decide if tuna has saturated fat in the ingredients to grab a bag of quinoa. When I make my little dance move, it’s not a big one, it’s usually a swivel of the hips, a jiggle of the shoulders, and a wavy arm going in between two shoppers as I say, don’t mind me.
If their brows remain furrowed I usually speak in gibberish French, mon dieu le sip oof lahzayfaire donne moi avec ami. If one smiles I ask if they’re looking for the tuna without transfat.
This isn’t to make lasting friendships, or to network (yuck), or to spread joy, oh, I hate people who intentionally spread joy, or worse, anyone who says pay it forward just needs to be hit by a bus.
This is to create fun for myself in life. It’s utterly selfish. Often, I’m creating myself as lower status to engage in this fun. I harness the power of the fool.
The fool usually wins. The fool is open. My instructor in my clowning classes* (yes, I said that in all seriousness) says the archetype of the fool always wins. The fool is fun. The fool is curious. The fool engages. The fool is open.
A grand fool is Lucille Ball. She’s utter beauty because not only is she attractive, she’s the fool, but, the fool usually wins.
We live on this planet for 4,000 weeks if we’re lucky. What’s wrong with little dance moves sometimes? What’s wrong with switching that furrowed brow to a smile?
The fool is also an artist, allowing themselves the wonderful openness to totally screw up in order to craft an idea into a something. More on that later. Until then let’s Dance This Mess Around.
Love,
Tony