I know I am a day late. That’s what the DVR is for.

So, in case you didn’t notice, this is {sort of} about So You Think You Can Dance.

The show.

That I watch unapologetically and cry over at least once a week. Twice, tonight, in fact.

Now, usually I don’t write about it. But a young man said something profound, something that resonated all the way down to my thirty-three year old, decidedly suburban, and very nonrhythmic toes.

I wanted to share it.

This is Shane Garcia. He dances. {Spoiler … he’s really good.} He also stutters. And in this video, he tells the world why he dances …

To speak freely.

This. A million times. This is why I write. To speak freely, to take my moments, my magic, and His grace and paint you a thousand pictures.

To be an artist. {A successful artist is another matter entirely … to be always upside down}. 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn had this to say about art in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech …

Archaeologists have not discovered stages of human existence so early that they were without art. Right back in the early morning twilights of mankind we received it from Hands which we were too slow to discern. And we were too slow to ask: FOR WHAT PURPOSE have we been given this gift? What are we to do with it?

And they were mistaken, and will always be mistaken, who prophesy that art will disintegrate, that it will outlive its forms and die. It is we who shall die – art will remain. And shall we comprehend, even on the day of our destruction, all its facets and all its possibilities?

Not everything assumes a name. Some things lead beyond words. Art inflames even a frozen, darkened soul to a high spiritual experience. Through art we are sometimes visited – dimly, briefly – by revelations such as cannot be produced by rational thinking.

Like that little looking-glass from the fairy-tales: look into it and you will see – not yourself – but for one second, the Inaccessible, whither no man can ride, no man fly. And only the soul gives a groan …

 

Beloved, find what makes you speak freely, shout it from the rooftops. Join me there. Own all the messy imperfections of your heart’s cry … Peek, just for one moment, at the Inaccessible. 

Speak freely.

~M.

Also bonus … this is the other reason I cried. Don’t judge me. {Skip ahead to two minute mark.}

Just listen to the little girl tell Nigel why she likes dancing with her mother. *tears.