Slow Dancing in A Burning Room

*Inspired by the song "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room" by John Mayer*

I am alone, on a Thursday evening. I feel free with the lack of sorrows, as would an ordinary man. I am an ordinary, mediocre man. The kind with the hope that with every passing day he will be richer for the experience, ready to hop over the thresholds that he believes to be hurdles today, but despises the time this process takes. Yet with the same deficiency I feel burdened. Sorrow gives me the freedom of pretense of hope that activity will follow. But on that Thursday evening, I decided to play fate with my destiny of monotony.

I enter the restaurant and witness the want of people for it's survival. Ideating extrapolations of my sincere concern for humanity, in the process conceiving images of my own destruction in the process frightens me for a moment. The most magnificent of bounties that nature provides to a man for the ocean of attention he has to offer, in the corner sipping the glass of Pinot Noir as I would like to believe, however, cannot help but distract. My hesitation kills me. I am alone, on a Thursday evening with the prospect of making it into something meaningfully uncommon. Recollecting my resolve, I stopped reasoning with myself. I walked towards her and sat on the chair next to hers.

Awkward silence. After a few perplexing minutes of staring at each other, I believe we decided independently and concurrently not to speak for the rest of the evening, but acknowledged our existence as separate from the remainder of the universe. I don't remember her blinking or lifting her glass of wine, which I know by now not to be Pinot Noir, but I wasn't looking for signs to consider or ignore. In fact, it would be comfortable, but inaccurate to classify my being as aware.

A few grungy notes of music prompt John Mayer to begin. It's not a silly little moment, it's not the storm before the calm. Incognisant of the blur beyond seven paces of where I stand, I stand up and ask her for the dance that was always meant to be. I can't seem to hold her like I want to, so I could feel her in my arms. She takes proverbial charge, as if she knew everything I didn't. She did. Flames light up in chorus somewhere in the midst of the blur I still don't notice, but I can feel the heat. Sweet sweat beads collide with each other in harmony with the music to remind me if I ever forgot. I follow her step, one by one. We liquefied into something abstract and took proverbial charge to direct John's tempo. He never complained. I take her hand, she takes my shoulder and we exchange whatever we never had before, but had developed. One little bead tells me we're slow dancing in a burning room.

I was the one she always dreamed of. She was the only light I ever saw. After what seemed to be instants separated by intoxicating fumes, but were minutes we hear the riff and trust it's time. It just is. We're going down, she could see it too. She knows that we're doomed. As the flames slowly engulf us completely, we come closer to avoid getting burned. Should we? I think we ought to have known by now. When we were close enough to feel the last few deep and dying breaths of the love that we had been working on, the music fades.

Slow Regression

The other day, during that awesome Electronic Music and Beer festival at Bandra, I had a little bit of an introspection-cum-forecasting session in the midst of it all. The music was thumping, the alcohol flowing, and nobody really cared about anything other than just having fun. And I don't blame them. It was self-indulgence time.

Point one. It's absolutely mind-boggling what holding a bit of money in one's pocket does to him. Never thinking twice before ordering that extra bottle, never thinking once about the 300 Rupee entry-charge. I feel entirely free at times, then entirely miserable for wasting my hard-earned cash away. Then I start to ponder what it's really meant for. But no, this is not a socialist pondering debating the intricacies of "to each his own" and the general idea of philanthropy.

Point two; and this one, though it may come as a surprise to the reader, is about music. Background. Currently, anything in the vicinity of Western/Indian Classical Music, John Mayer or Electronica/Techno (as many galaxies as may exist between them), I would pay to hear (in the context of ready availability at a single click). And so at the gig, I was swaying away to glory to the evil, Satanic visuals and heart-incapacitating beats - basically dying a slow, excruciatingly painless and altogether fun death. Hours no bar. Exhaustion preceded the impending disintegration, and we stopped. And then there was this moment. Am I going to be doing the same thing twenty years down the line?

More importantly, would I be listening to the same music twenty years down the line? Different generations like different genres of music. Uncontested fact. But over the years, as one regresses on to be a part of the previous generation, do choices and tastes in music, art, film, food and the like alter? Within the personal paradigm, I find that I have a lot in common with my future self. Connoisseur of alcohol and music, advocate of a welfare-state, *WB in general. And that isn't going to change. However, the general question is still at large.

Is it a question of our body refusing to respond to certain external stimuli? Does the mind stop shaking to the beats of Electronica, rather subjects its moods to some flowing Philharmonic pleasures? Do taste buds and stomachs jettison the idea of infinite beer and embrace the grace of silvery wine? And if so, when and how, exactly?

Then comes another thought. You are only as young as you want to be. Age is hardly the factor determining youth, isn't it? It is your outlook, the way you think, that makes and keeps you young. No wonder creams, no self-help books, nothing. And no amount of Electronica, beer, hair-gel or stupidity can prove you to be youthful either. If one has such tastes, but not the angst, he's just plain ol' vanilla silly, or as the youth terms it today, a wannabe. Urrgh. And on that ugly word, let's just call it a night, a very beautiful night at that.

PS: There's a vowerld of a difference between being 'deft' and being 'daft'. Irrelevant, but just wanted to keep it on record. Just don't leave me alone here, it's cold, baby, come back to bed. Irrelevant, again, but, wow. John Mayer. Personal insecurity. Wow. What will this fix? Enough, now, enough said.