Shall We Dance

Those who know me fairly well might be surprised by the direction this takes.

There are at least three movies I know of that with this title. The Japanese film bearing this title is one of my favorite movies of all time. I have little affinity for the American version that followed. But it's actually the first movie made in the 1930's that's going to be the subject here; I've always loved Fred Astaire and the movies he made with Ginger Rogers but what makes this film even more special is the fact that the score & lyrics for the film were composed by the Gershwin brothers. Sadly, George Gershwin was already experiencing symptoms from the brain tumor that would claim his life only two months after the film was released.

A favorite song from the movie is "They Can't Take That Away From Me". Both Astaire & Rogers have said that it's one of their favorite songs, even though there is no dance scene associated with the song during the movie. However, they did dance to the song in their last movie together, The Barkleys of Broadway. 

What sticks with me about the lyrics is how well Ira Gershwin understood the human condition and love; we may be drawn initially to someone by qualities we find attractive, but it's the quirks that we find memorable and surprisingly, most endearing: "...the way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea...", etc.  When past relationships come to mind, it's typically because I've been reminded of some little quirk which probably drove me nuts at the time, but now allows me to remember them fondly. 

Little Children

The Scriptures tell us that before we can enter the kingdom of heaven (having been reconciled to God despite our sin and its consequences) we must become like little children yet still be mature in our thinking. What becoming like little children entails would take pages and pages and while I do expect to expound on that eventually, there's a loose thread in the tapestry I want to tug on.

As we embrace characteristics of little children, how then should we interact with those within the kingdom displaying mature thinking? I like how Chesterton expressed his thoughts about the idea in his essay "The Defendant":

The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect. We bow to grown people, take off our hats to them, refrain from contradicting them flatly, but we do not appreciate them properly. We make puppets of children, lecture them, pull their hair, and reverence, love, and fear them. When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children. 

The point is that we are probably unintentionally inhibiting others in their development of what God intends for them in reacquiring the qualities of little children. I personally believe that these qualities include having a sense of wonder about everything and when expressed by adults is usually received as naivete and typically belittled as a result - either outwardly or inwardly.

Dance

This'll be the first of many posts concerning the topic of dance.

When I use the term, I am defining it as partner dancing where the couple dance to music and the coordinated movements tend to reflect in some way what is going on in the music. Within this definition there will be three (3) types of dancing. Each types reflects a different set of skill required:

1) Dancing for an audience or judges. this typically involves a choreographed routine set to a specific piece of music. the figures chosen tend to be more for 'show' and are not used in 'social' situations when other dancers share the floor due to the risk of someone getting hurt. There is little to no emphasis on partnering skills, and each person focuses primarily on their own individual technique. Dancers seldom change partners.

2) Dancing for a judge, but with music and partner (within a specific genre) selected at random. This is done primarily in what is typically referred to as 'jack & jill' contests. Couples dance to exhibit their ability to interpret both the music as well as their ability to collaborate with their partners, etc. Partnering skills are a must, but there is also an arbitrary standard for posture/technique/footwork, etc. that prompts individual dancers to choose movements that bring attention to themselves.

3) Dancing for your partner. Interpreting the music is valued, but first and foremost, it's about partnering skills and using them to help your partner have the best possible experience during the dance. This category is the subset of partnered dance that interests me.

Social partnered dance observes etiquette, though specific guidelines vary from genre to genre. What follows tends to be true for all genres.

While all dancers are equal, within any partnership, one partner must assume the responsibility of choosing, suggesting & communicating the movement(s) of the partnership. This role is generally referred to as being the 'lead'. The other partner assumes a role that respects the other partner's choices, generally referred to as being a follow. While the dynamics of any partnership will vary depending on the individuals involved, in an ideal situation, the lead hears the music, notes what his partner is doing, and chooses movements/figures that reflect a sense of lyricism between the music and the movement. The lead, using partnering skills, then invites the partner to perform a movement or figure. It's considered good form for the follow to accept the lead's invitation, but it's subject to safety/discomfort and other concerns; the privileges of the lead are balanced by a responsibility to make 'good' choices. These choices generally involve:

1) how a movement fits the music;
2) the partner's technical ability to perform the selected movement;
3) floorcraft - analyzing if a selected movement or figure risks colliding with something else on the floor, animate or otherwise;
4) analyzing if the selected movement or figure is somehow likely to create a level of discomfort for their partner;

A lead whose choices reflect consideration of all these factors tends to develop a sense of trust on the part of their partners. Conversely, leads whose choices reflect a tendency to ignore these considerations lose trust, and over time, can lead to people avoiding dancing with that person.

It works both ways. Follows who over time demonstrate poor partnering skills or who routinely disregard or ignore the suggestions of the lead in a way that communicates a lack of respect for that particular lead may also find people avoiding dancing with them.

Both leading and following take time to develop, and it's considered good form to dance with people of all skill levels. Indeed, many astute dancers recognize that today's beginner often becomes a popular dancer that everyone wants to dance with - and they typically remember who was kind to them starting out. So beginners tend to be shown a great deal of goodwill and acceptance within the dance community. But that goodwill has its limits; there's also an expectation within a dance community that dancers work to improve their partnering skills to reach a certain level. When it becomes clear that a particular individual demonstrates no interest in improving their skills (all other things being equal - that is to say, not being especially attractive or having some other quality that would prompt people to ask them to dance for reasons other than dancing) the more experienced dancers will tend to avoid dancing with them.

Insanity

What does it mean to be insane?  Circumstances prompted me to grapple with that after an assailant severed the anterior branch of my carotid with a boxcutter and I nearly died. Said assailant went to trial where they were found guilty of premediated attempted murder but the court also found my assailant to be insane so the person who nearly killed me was sent to a mental hospital instead of prison. 

I found my answer in the writings of G.K. Chesteron, specifically in the essay titled "The Maniac" in Chesterton's "Orthodoxy". I find Chesterton's writing to be efficient if not profound in his turn of phrase, so I paraphrase Chesterton at my own peril, but the gist is that anyone we might consider to be mentally insane has not lost their ability to reason; their ability to reason is the only thing they have left! The issue is a limited universe of 'facts', and with only these facts to bear, one cannot help but draw the same conclusion over and over.  I find this explanation to be entirely plausible. However, some (including Chesterton) would have you believe a lack of imagination is the root cause - the inability to imagine that some facts are actually true. Others suggest that the root cause is pride, which results in the need to be right about everything. Perhaps the causes are over-determined, but I submit that they can all be boiled down to a single root cause: fear of loss.

Sometimes the loss is material, in other cases it can be pain in the form of mental anguish, physical pain, or a potential recurrence of an event that resulted in some sort of pain an individual is desperate not to re-experience.

The main point is that fear is not rational. Therefore, it is not possible to 'cure' fear with a rational argument. I would further submit that the most effective way of helping those trapped in fear is to be kind with the goal of making them feel safe enough to consider embracing the pain when it's necessary to do so. The irony is that safety is often just an illusion. Even so, it occurs to me to stop here and take stock in how safe I feel, and why.

Salt

I'm reading a relatively new cookbook called Salt Fat Acid Heat written by Samin Nosrat. She might be cooking's answer to Jacob Collier's impact on music. She's taken a fundamentally different approach to explaining how to cook by defining it into four basic categories in the use of:

- salt; 

- fat; 

- acid;  

- heat;

I'm currently reading the section concerning salt. There are a lot of concepts about salt which I understood/assumed instinctively but never could articulate in any coherent way. For example: Salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient, and the flavor of salt should be clean, free of unpleasant flavors. 

This brings to mind the biblical metaphor of salt when it comes to flavor. Salt contaminated with impurities cannot be effective, and I suspect that that is the most common interpretation when believers elect to apply this teaching. 

But it occurs to me now that there's possibly a lot more. Salt's contribution to flavor is multidimensional: it has it own particular taste and it enhances the flavor of other ingredients. It minimizes bitterness (which is why some people add salt to coffee), balances out sweetness and enhances aromas. 

Moreover, salt's qualities are dependent on how it's formed which have an impact on its shape, size, color and taste. As a consequence, the same measure of different types of salt can result in under or over salting a particular dish. This is even true of different brands of the same type of salt. In other words, as salt, it's possible to be too much of a good thing, or to be undereffective due to being applied too early, or too late.

Having said that, the biggest mistake in cooking typically is under-salting, and as a result, foods are relatively bland. So the main imperative is to be salt. But even so, some discretion is involved in optimizing salt's impact. More on this later.

What is a Secret Asian Man?

 I and someone named James Woo (and it might have been James who thought of it first) adopted the name Secret Asian Men when we joined forces to run a monthly ballroom dance in the San Fernando Valley. That venture lasted no more than a year or so and we went our separate ways and I ended up co-opting the phrase Secret Asian Man as a response to how asian males are typically portrayed in American mainstream media by the following (and sometimes overlapping) categories:

1) grocers who speak bad English
2) martial artists (including gang members and spies)
3) homosexual
4) geeky lab tech/academic type

I recall back in the 90's when the CW created the series "Vanishing Son" and series star Russell Wong (who is only half asian, BTW) had a caucasian girlfriend, and would connect with other caucasian women when he was on the run. It was a big deal and a topic of conversation amongst my peers. We also noted that there was a fear that the mainstream would somehow assume that all asian men sought to have sex with caucasian women, so in later episodes the character merely befriended women that he met. Even recently, Asian American males have made it a big deal when a Korean actor had (simulated) sex with a caucasian female on the series The Walking Dead.

We can be smart and great at sports like badminton and table tennis, but by and large we remain marginalized by mainstream media. 

We are the secret asian men. We hide in plain sight. And we change the perceptions of the people around us one person at a time. 

Do Ga Ni Tong Quarantine version

We've hit 100+ degree highs all week - not exactly hot soup weather. But here I am, enjoying do ga ni tang this morning in a world where nothing is normal anymore. The ritual of seasoning my soup has been disrupted by the lack of black pepper. None was included in my takeout order. I've ordered takeout because seating is only allowed outdoors, and it's going to be 87 degrees outside by the time I'm done eating.

It's not all bad, the view of the back yard from my window is a serene one. I'm pleased when I see that they've packed a double portion of spicy radish kimchi along with a container of spicy green onion kimchi. The chunks of tendon in my soup are huge. A chunk fills the container with the dipping sauce to the brim, and as I slowly chew through several pieces, I am greatly comforted, perhaps even more due to the contrast of the crunchy radish kimchi, assertive if not downright intrusive in its garlicky spiciness. But it's the spicy green onions/chives that force me to break out in a sweat after a mouthful, and I find myself chewing them longer than I'd expected to. 

The thin plastic takeout bowl has served its function; I've gotten my food home without incident, but it lacks the ability to retain heat the way a regular serving bowl would, and my soup has gotten cold. But I plug on, and after consuming the last large chunk of tendon, I'm pleased to discover much smaller pieces of tendon among the noodles and green onion left in the bowl and i consume them without bothering with the dipping sauce. I finish the last mouthful of rice, discovered that I've reached critical mass, and combine the remaining banchan into a single container, seal it, and contemplate how to spend the rest of my weekend.