Dance the Dance

Image by Andre Hunter

So, I’m sitting in Starbuck’s working on a Mss. While waiting for my car to be detailed.  As always, Starbuck’s has music playing, and it is contagious. Instead of tapping the computer keys, my fingers tap counterpoint to the drums on the coffee cup – you know the kind, a lid with its little, rounded rectangular hole you sip your personal complication of coffee you have invented or they have invented for you, you know, not just cawf-fee, your name and order printed on the side, in my case, “Mike” with nothing fancy but extraordinarily ordinary, double shot of espresso with latte no foam – and so my fingers tap the fantasy of leaping up and dancing and what would everybody think if I dared to do that?

What would it take to get them to dance?

The movie in my mind starts its reel, and I see them leaping up and dancing, the clerks taking orders and collecting money, the baristas calling the Jaime’s and the Preston’s and the María’s, their names becoming the lyrics of the Starbuck Song blasting everyone out the doors to Vermont Avenue and soon all Vermont is dancing and traffic stops and people pop out of their cars and dance and then it’s not just Vermont but Western and Normandie and Wilton and Wilcox and Hollywood and Sunset and Los Angeles, the whole world of North and South, East and West and all about the town, all dancing!

And then the music stops, and with it, my fingers and my movie. But I know in the lull before the next song there is a waiting within the sippers and the  tappers and the texters and the talkers,  indeed, all of us, for that one, Magic Song to leap us to our feet and dance Lennon’s All the People.  All of us! Dancing, dancing, dancing!