All those who remember Jimi Hendricks, raise your hands! Oh put your hands down, you just look silly. (hee hee ~ heard that one on the radio station I listen to) Which is where I heard his song again. I haven't heard it for a really long time. A flood of memories came rushing back. I could picture him with that guitar, Afro, open shirt or no shirt, crazy hippie clothes but not really crazy so much since we all wore the bell bottoms and were oh so cool. But man could he play that guitar! Purple Haze was really big. It was new & the music was so impressive at the time. It's like, where did he come from? Couldn't get enough of his music. Then he was gone. But we all kept smoking the weed. Janis Joplin checked out but we all kept drinking. That happened a lot, too much I think. I didn't really make the connections at the time. I just kept on listening to the music & dancing.
I loved to dance when I was a kid. First it was ballet. When I was really small, and yes I was actually tiny at one time, I loved ballet. I loved it with all my heart. I felt special when I danced & no one could take that away from me. For that hour I was on my own away from my mother, in the studio with a flamboyant teacher & a class full of pretty little princesses all wanting to grow up to be ballerinas. I don't remember the other kids at all. My memory is like it was just me & the teacher, Roya Curie & her teaching assistant, Barbara Rhodes. I loved them. I loved the classical music. I love the wood dance floor. I loved the toe chalk flying up in the air like little clouds of white dust. I loved the ballet barre (I think that's the French spelling for it) Anyway you get the idea. It was a really special place for me.
Of course that all changed with our on-going family drama. I know there's a book to be written somewhere in there. I wasn't able to dance for about a year and a half, but I missed it so much I asked if I could start again. It was sometime in the summer after 4th grade. My mother said she wouldn't drive me to the studio anymore since it was "downtown" & too far away I think that was the reason . So I don't remember if she came up with it or I did, but there was a ballet studio in our neighborhood, but she still wouldn't drive me. Now I was only 9 I guess but I wanted it badly enough that I said I would ride my bike there if she would pay for the lessons. And so she did & so I did. I think that summer through 7th grade or close to it I rode that big old bike down & back. Or maybe I took my sister's bike. I'm sure she wasn't using it by that time. : )
Why did I stop dancing you ask? A number of things contributed. I couldn't get there regularly without any parental support. I started to get discouraged. I started getting really really awkward around 7th grade since, you know, it was the "blossoming" time of a little girl's life. The winter's were hard to ride your bike in the snow. It got dark earlier in the winters & I was afraid to be out in the dark after the lesson. Just a lot of stuff.
The dancing didn't actually stop. Just the ballet lessons stopped. My sister had a record player, I'll explain what that was at some other time, and she used to play 45's & 78's?? I can't remember what the bigger vinyl records were now. Senior moment. Anyway, she had all the new cool music. She taught me to dance in our basement. This was something else altogether. Certainly not ballet. But I liked it. It was fun. I love to play the records over & over. I'd sing with Bobby Vinton's Blue Velvet, Frankie Avalon's Venus, Bobby Rydell's Volare. Even Shelley Fabrares had a big hit record. She was the sister on the Donna Reed Show. Man, that's when my love for dancing & music really went wild. I couldn't get enough of it. To this day, I still love music. Everything. Oldies from the early 60's all the way up to today's music.
And all this because I heard Purple Haze on the radio tonight when I was driving home from work. Hmmm...remember when the music died? Well, it didn't for me. The old & the new I take with me wherever I go. Even on my way to finding out who I wannabe.
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