I imagine him standing there, he’s there watching for me, if I could fly I would – beyond that star, beyond a moon, beyond a doubt, my heart will lead me there soon … we’ll meet beyond that shore – kiss just as before happy… we’ll be beyond the sea … never again go anywhere else … my captain …
Dear friends and readers,
I went to the Dance Fusion Workshop for the first time in what seems weeks. The second song we danced to made me long to join my admiral now “beyond the sea:” I remembered how we used to kiss and that I never wanted to sail away from him ever:
Until now I had not realized the song is about loss: the singer longs someday to meet to someone now gone.
For a second time I felt out of it at the fusion workshop while dancing. She had chosen several of the oldest well-known Beatle songs and “Jude” to end on, but inbetween she had some of this “hip hop” skipping stuff, and for a second time imitated someone doing a dance slowly yet in rhythm and thus “sad” said at one point (seemingly I thought to me as I ended in the first row today — usually I’m in the second –), some sharp quip about sadness, and then a little later, asked, “what are you trying to convey.” Her songs were “carefree” said she. That is an artificial mood. I dance from the heart. Her gestures and steps for “Beyond the Sea” were too much of the ballroom dancing type; for “Jude” though we sculpted the air and flung out arms and moved body and legs in slow criss-cross rhythms.
How do I get beyond the sea? I’m like a bird and the scraping of my breast (also at these two OLLIs) is becoming very sore.
Constable, Derwentwater, Cumberland (1806)
Sylvia
Under the Sign of Sylvia II 
A friend: Yes, about loss. And he himself died so young. And so did Sandra Dee his wife die fairly young.
I love to dance — and used to dance well. I was on the way to making the High School of Music and Art in NYC but my father wouldn’t let me go so I stopped the process. In later years he regretted stopping me — he thought I’d get in with a ‘wild’ or bohemian crowd, instead I was left alone and got involved in far worse sordid things in a crowd of teenagers at Richmond Hill and then to stop myself became reclusive myself. I suspect when I am dancing I really act out my feelings as I dance and that teacher sees it and doesn’t like what she sees.
Well fuck her. I’m not going as much this fall because I have a number of committments that conflicts. I see Charlie (grief support person) on Monday at noon and the Dance Fusion is Monday and Friday; once a month my Washington Area Print group is Friday afternoon; tomorrow is a luncheon at AU at noon. Next week I go to the 2 and 1/2 day conference Thurs-Sat. So it goes.
When we were young Jim and I would dance wildly to rock-n-roll music at the few parties we went to; I could dance in a released way and he’d just do it with me especially after we were drinking; in Leeds we had the pubs where there was music every night in some of them. One had square dancing once a month; it was a long walk in winter but we’d do it. In later years we had little opportunity and we were older and staider, but we went to an Alexandria City Halloween party about years ago and danced a good deal. I’m glad to talk of these things — these were part of my happiness I didn’t think about as a gift. They were.
The Internet is so marvelous — I had vaguer memories of Darin and only that he died young and that he had been married to Sandra Dee: he so gifted as a musician and she as an actress. Now I just learned how intelligent he was too — the rheumatic fever might have killd him earlier up to the 20th century but it seems it was the heart operation that did him in. I did not know about Dee’s anorexia and later life. She was in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf with Burton and Taylor. I was anorexic for 5 years and for years afterward did not eat right either; anorexia never quite leaves you ever.
A friend: “I loved your blog about Bobby Darin. The dancing sounds intense, and it’s sad you’re not encouraged to express your own feelings. Maybe you could take a modern dance class? I didn’t know Darin died so young. My mother took me to Sandra Dee movies in the ’60s, and I knew of their marriage. That somehow made the films where both appeared more exciting: like Lucy and Desi, or Liz and Richard…”