Not getting out of breath

Subject: Not getting out of breath.

It's a grey Saturday morning immeasurably lightened listening to 'Forever in blue jeans' sung by Neil Diamond. It transports me into party mood and memories of some of those parties we used to go to. I'm envious of those wizened old rock stars who can still get on stage and transform themselves at the touch of a cord or two.  Their memories are still relevant, their actions are the actions of someone who still can.
Life's journey, which for the most part we squander in lost opportunities, tied as we were to the conventions we accepted at the time. The rock we lived under, squashing our desires and checked our every move, only occasionally to escape before creeping home in the early hours to the conformity of our tiny lives.
Parties were a time when we allowed, or were allowed a bit of slack, to let out into the light that happy crazy self which lay just under the surface which our Presbyterian up bringing had subsumed at the insistence of conformity both at work and play. Forever suppressing that zany side to our character, that risk taking carefree side which so many voices around us told us was not healthy. The music unlatched an exuberance, a rhythmic foreplay to our sublimated passion, an opportunity to show off (always discouraged) and promote ourselves if for nothing else but the way we danced. And dance we did like dervishes around a fire, the fire usually being some pretty girl who felt similarly inclined. The exotic was our norm whilst the music lasted, the blood ran to the head as you transported yourself into some sort of demented bird of paradise strutting in front of the hen, keen to out perform any competition. From the bars with a jukebox to the parties amongst friends the music stoked up the tribal fire and off you went gyrating to the sound of your favourite band oblivious of the consequences.

Each era had its dance. The jive and the twist of the 50s and 60s also the slow smoochy creep around the dance floor to the slow music when a very different type of partner was sought.  The evolution to the sexless jigging about in the 70s and 80s to the sound of singers equally eager to promote themselves sexless or at least an alternative to what they appeared. People seemed to dance with themselves, joining and leaving the dance floor melee, hardly seeming to communicate  in this unisex environment.  It was all a far cry from the waltz and the quickstep of my youth.
Anyway the sound of the old music is enough to stir the bones if only in the imagination and at least this way I don't get out of breath.