The music sweets me so 13


The music sweets me so is a line from a children’s book, The Dancing Granny, written by Ashley Bryant.  That phrase is an appropriate one for how music impacts me.

I love music and dancing so much that I pretty much can not listen to any music except jazz or classical music if I want to get out of my door.  Music with a beat compels me to dance.  When I dance I am a different person.  In my “girlish” days – I went to Biff’s nearly every Saturday night for years.  (Yes, I was a Biffette.)  I never had a drink other than Perrier or club soda or orange/cranberry juice mixed.  I was there to dance!  And, oh boy, did I.

Today I walked to the post office while listening to my ipod.  (Thanks hubby for this wonderful gift.)  Sometimes one song or a short sequence of songs will captivate me and I’ll keep playing them over and over.  Today Phil Perry’s version of Hey, There Lonely Girl captured me.  I must have listened to it ten times on the walk home.

I made plans to grab my husband when I got home, put one ear plug in his ear, keep on in my ear and dance to this song.  In the meantime, I sang the song softly to myself and avoided the urge to just walk up to a guy and ask him to dance.  I wish we lived in a world where it was acceptable to just break out dancing.  The need to dance was a physical ache/demand for me.  All I could do was just sashay on home – do the things I needed to do (check emails, fold a load of clothes, put a second coat of paint on an art deco style umbrella stand I’m refinishing, prepare dinner, finish reading the paper).  So, I did all these things and waited to ambush my husband with a slow dance when he got home.

Attached is a short piece that I wrote almost in one sitting during my Biff’s days.  The longing expressed in the story is something I really felt.  

About Candelaria Silva

Candelaria Silva-Collins is a marketing, community outreach and programming consultant; writer; and trainer/facilitator who lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She has designed and facilitated workshops on a wide variety of topics including communication, facilitation, job search skills, team building, and parenting issues. She currently coordinates the Community Membership Program of the Huntington Theatre Company. Her work as Director of ACT Roxbury was profiled in several publications, including The Creative Communities Builders Handbook. Candelaria’s children’s stories, short stories, essays and reviews have been published in local and national publications and she is an active blogger. Her publications include the booklets, Handling Rejection; Pushing through Shyness: Networking Tips when You’re Shy, Slow to Warm Up or Just don’t Feel you Belong; and Real Questions about Sex & Relationships for Teens: A Discussion Guide for Parents. She has served on the boards of Goddard College, Wheelock Family Theatre, Boston Foundation for Architecture, and Discover Roxbury. She is currently Chair, Designators of the Henderson Foundation.

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