Sweat Drenched Writing (music blog + playlist)

As music’s lover, dance is one the most tribal, healing things I know. As I am writing this, I’m lying on the floor of a sun beaten Dutch monastery’s attic, August-hot, all fans on. Around me sit about six writers I just danced with. Equally sweat-drenched, they’re pouring what’s left of them on paper. It’s a jaw-clenchingly beautiful thing, the mix of sweat and words and bodies and minds.

During five days we are tribe. We share meals, church services, writing prompts, words and silence -and at night, for thirty minutes, we dance. Movement and no-mind. Our rhythms reveal themselves in our writing and our dancing. Show don’t tell. We’re all different. I’m growing fond of that. It shows in dancing more than anywhere else. When I have trouble getting in sync with someone else’s movements, I am reminded that we don’t need to be in sync to be connected.

One of the writers moves a desk and chair smack in front of the fan. We’ve stayed in the heat for too long. Yet to stay in the burn, to keep moving pen on paper, is ultimately how we burn away whatever we no longer need. Whatever fabric of thought is sticking to our skin, whatever illusion that is keeping us apart Must. Melt. Now. Along with the rest of it.

My summer’s playlist is long due. It’s late summer now. Ripe summer. Leaves are preparing their goodbye’s, brown spots testifying of a job well done; their canopies are filled with spiky beechnuts. Soon their time has come to drift down into the earth. We may last a season more, or two. But make no mistake. One day, probably too soon, you and I dance one last round on life’s playground. One last song to find each other’s feet. One last chance for me to study your nail polish. One last chance to be surprised and delighted how two people can be so different and so alike at the same time.

May you enjoy this Indian Summer playlist. May it help you burn through the dust in your mind, into the fire of your body. May you dance, and with you, your wild and unknown selves, circling until you find yourself in another season.

Geertje

PS: Come dance-write with me and my darling friend DJ Maegan Melissa Honeybee from Berlin, November 12 and 13 in Club Lite, Amsterdam in our WILD MIND WILD BODY workshop.