10:36 pm - Sun 3.08.2009
Singing The Body Electric

Yesterday I was doing dishes (A chore I joke about doing "a couple times a year" - Only, sadly, it's not really a joke), and I decided to put on some music, to make the task a bit more enjoyable.

I chose the Fame soundtrack.

The movie came out in 1980, the year I graduated high school, and had moved to Lansing, MI.

As a 19 year old on my own in "the big city" (The biggest city I'd lived in, anyway), with dreams of future stardom dancing in my head, a movie called Fame was right up my alley - I saw it six or seven times, at the old Campus Theater in East Lansing (These days, if I see a movie more than once while it's playing in theaters, that's really saying something).

Watching the movie, I remember wishing I could have gone to "The High School Of Performing Arts", instead of drifting aimlessly through my years at Durand High School.

I remember being innocent enough to be shocked and embarrassed (And titillated) by the R-rated language and flashes of nudity.

(And I was such a sensitive soul back then that, on subsequent viewings of the film, I would actually leave the theater and go out in the lobby during the casting-couch scene between "Coco" the the sleazy "director", it made me that uncomfortable.)

I can't objectively tell you if it's a good movie or not, but it sure made an impression on me; whatever the characters went through during the course of the film - and it's not always a pretty picture - it was a much more exciting world than where I was coming from, one where, whatever the difficulties, I could actually imagine fitting in.

Flash-forward 29 years...

Now it feels vaguely embarrassing to even put the cd on - Nineteen was a long time ago, the Campus theater is long gone, and "fame" as something to aspire to has been deeply devalued over the years - but I do still put the cd on.

And I sing along.

And I dance around, pretending I still have moves that can make people stop what they're doing and take notice (Like "Leroy" during the dance audition).

And I remember who I was, all those years ago.

And I dream.

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