#well actually maybe that doesnt make sense. ive been translating that as 'follow' in my head

[lokh]

i dont know if i can finish this movie

[axemetaphor]

my dad got his hands on a copy of Sonic 06 for the xbox and asked me to be his play-tester after having a lot of trouble with that speed level right at the beginning (catching up to Eggman's ship on the beach) and i got as far as the Silver battle before giving up, so here's my notes

DISCLAIMER this isnt an invitation to dunk on the game in the notes of this post alright we've seen enough of that. i dont hate the game. no, really, i dont. i respect everything it tried to be and feel bad for literally everyone working on it because, from what i gather, they were green and facing extreme crunch time. sucks for everyone involved. anyway:

the load times on xbox were VASTLY better, which makes a lot of sense, given from what i know the ps3 has a ... strange way of storing/retrieving/loading data, but they were still pretty long and a little too frequent for my liking. still, probably not anyone's fault, tbqh. i'll have to see if the emulator my dad's working on getting on his PC (finally, he's been trying to do that for years now lmao,) has the same issue to figure out if it's a programming problem or hardware. personally im pretty sure it's just hardware.

it's much easier to steer sonic if you use the camera and his movement, but the camera will still fuck you over. this isnt 06 specific though game cameras are Always hard to wrangle lmao

the animations for this game are so strange... i dont say this as a negative whatsoever. it looks like they were mocapped, which is fascinating to me, translating human proportions onto sonic--it doesnt always work, and i personally wouldn't've made the choice to do that, but it makes me want to study it lmao

the voice acting as well is strange, at least in english; im not knocking anyone's work, whatsoever. i still really love the performances. but i think back to this one tweet i made about silver's intro dialogue where i mentioned that i loved the performance, but the poor guy sounded like he'd done a hundred takes of the audio and was losing grasp of Words themselves (As happens to everybody) and Silver's english VA not only liked the tweet but started following me because of it. this was during the trend of not actually giving VAs context for their dialogue, and not really.. respecting them at all, and it makes me sad to think that maybe they did stick everyone in a box, hand them lists of lines, and make them say them over and over until the director got whatever they wanted--or, on the opposite end, were only given enough time for a single take out of the inherent disrespect for VAs that's present in Many fields

the environments are fucking gorgeous and i was genuinely surprised by how many things i could interact with in the levels. granted, i did get stuck on them sometimes, but i doubt the poor devs got any chance to fix that shit. i liked especially ramming Eggman's Cerberus into a statue instead of the wall and watching the statue completely shatter, that's genuinely pretty cool, they couldve just had it be like the walls, static and unreacting. i also liked how the Cerberus decimated those pillars, but thats mostly because the camera kept getting stuck on them

there's very little active direction in the game, save for the floating (?)s, which can sometimes be wordy enough that ive already fucked up and died before theyre done talking. that's probably on my dumbass though.

collision physics in this game ... sure is. i cant remember if all games from the 2000s were like this given i have more experience with older games (pre-00's) + brand fucken new ones so someone else weigh in on this s'il vous plait.

the pre-rendered cutscenes are still fucking gorgeous. delightful.

so much of this game is such a lovely awkward development-stage kind of thing, like awkward teen years. the homing-attack mechanics make me grateful for the auto-targeting of later games. the way he goes from 0 to 100 is in character but hard to play (unwieldy) and makes me glad for the more measured sliding scale of other games. the sprint parts of the game, where youre just steering him, are so fucking cool but i am so fucking bad at them and im glad that in future games the sensitivity of the controls was turned down. it took me some lives to get into a proper rhythm with it, get a sense of just how much of a hair trigger the directional changes were. tails' attacks in this game definitely felt like they could've been much better (throwing the bombs is So difficult to aim, thanks to the camera and how long the animation for it is) and i'm glad they're different in other games--the bombs is a cool idea, just needed to be implemented differently imo

if you knwo more about the development n shit of this game id love to hear it, all i know is they had serious crunch time to release the game alongside the ps3 as its flagship game and had to cut a lot of steps from the process/cut a lot of corners. i attribute a lot of its flaws (and "flaws") to that tbqh. sonic 06 is not a bad game, it's a game that was failed by its circumstances. i dont know fully, im just an animator, i have never in my life made a proper video game.

also this may just be me but i have a theory that this game was meant to be like the Shadow the Hedgehog game, and not rated E for Everyone after all. the darker storybeats (sonic's murder, elise's death, silver's future etc) all feel like they'd have been better-executed at a level closer to that. it feels To Me like they were developing the beginnings of this game (script, designs) in tandem with the endtail development of ShTH, and when it received pushback for the guns, swearing, and violence, they panicked and had to neuter the story. i have a lot of respect for what the game COULD have been.

[ohmotherwhatsthat]

Do you have headcanons about the disciples, like the Twelve or Magdalene, Joanna...? One of the reasons why i love The Chosen is that i started to imagine them as *real* people and thought about how they could have been

Honestly SAME. I feel like there were certain things I picked up on before The Chosen, particularly with Peter where its like random rock metaphors in his letters, and when you get the whole 'peter means rock'/'on this rock i will build my church' thing, you're like look if anyone is qualified to make ALL the rock metaphors its Peter.

And i really love the fact that The Chosen has taken my absolute delight in remembering that the people of the Bible were REAL people, rather than sunday school story characters to a whole new level.

Honestly the same reason I love biblical fiction as well.

I dont know i have headcanons pe se... but like, there's definitely characters I'm super interested in, and from reading the Bible, have so much curiosity about the random side characters who only get mentioned once or twice.

And to be honest I also try and separate the concept of non-textual or historical contextual 'headcanons' about the Bible? 100% down for being like oh i feel like x would be an interesting concept as potentially explaining the context of this character. But mentally I dont really like to refer to them as 'headcanons'... If that makes sense?

But that being said - some random things

Peter seems to love his sheep and rock metaphors (particularly in 1 & 2 Peter), i feel like he would enjoy puns as a result of this

I'm actually super interested by the concept that 'magdalene' may not necessarily have referred to a origin location but was potentially a nickname type thing - this is something that shows up in academia occasionally but isnt super common. I dont know either interpretation actually matters, but i find it a cute concept that theres 'peter' which means rock, 'sons of thunder', in John 11:16 the reference to Thomas as "Didymus" is sometimes translated (such as in the ESV) as "the Twin" and just the concept of these people having nicknames is cool to me

Martha gets a bad rap in the church sometimes - I feel like Mary and Martha and Lazarus love each other a lot, but often I've found when ive heard Mary and Martha talked about, its always with this "mary is better" vibes. Just because martha was wrong in ONE of the encounters we have with her doesnt mean shes a bad example, or that shes argumentative with her siblings

and going off that - i feel like its 100% Martha's house. Like the text obviously says "a woman named Martha opened her home" but like... the fact that its Martha's house is important i think, and also says something about her and her status.

I have a lot of thoughts about Mary and Martha and Lazarus actually ok leave me be, i really hope they show up in the series

ok final thought - personally i feel like they might have gone to Jerusalem with the disciples, and maybe have been at the crucifixion. John 11 and 12 make it clear that there is a crowd that follows Jesus from Lazarus' funeral to Jerusalem, and John 12:12 makes it clear that Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem happens the day after they have dinner at Martha's house

[mousehole5000]

tgcf chapters 107 - 120 this is one where i give some Opinions. i do overall like hualian a lot but i have some quibbles

wait why am i still taking screenshots? i can copy/paste again afskldfjasad

It really was hard to tell whether people would feel happy after watching such performances. However, in truth, slaughter and the sight of blood did create excitement in people. Whether or not there was fear, after the initial shock was over, a rush of adrenaline would be produced in the heart- me watching horror movies

“Shi Qingxuan said. “Then, Your Highness, Crimson Rain Sought Flower! I order you to—to immediately strip each other’s clothing!” - djslkadjlsd WHY DID HE SPECIFICALLY SAY THEY HAD TO STRIP EACH OTHER THISALSKDJ is this a normal thing is it a wingman attempt what is happening

“I’ll tell you what it is,” he said softly. “To watch with your own eyes your beloved be trampled and ridiculed, yet be unable to do anything. That’s the worst suffering in the world.” ... “Ming Yi asked, “What’s the biggest regret of your life?”- when truth or dare gets a bit too real

On the side, Hua Cheng was still only observing, and was already bored to the point where he’d changed back into his red robes. Then he changed to black robes again. Then to white robes. Almost every time Xie Lian looked back, he would be donning a different appearance, and with every new look there were different hairstyles, and different accessories, and different boots, and so on; sometimes playful, sometimes elegant, sometimes deadly, sometimes glamourous. Xie Lian was growing dizzy from all the colours and kept looking back, unable to look away. - THIS ISNT THE TIME HUA CHENG. YOURE PRIMPING. THE WINDMASTER HAS BEEN KIDNAPPED AND YOURE PRIMPING

obsessed with xie lian not being able to figure out to use the windmaster’s fan and just. using it to SMACK

also windmaster??? whats going on??? :( i know some things from spoilers like who is not to be trusted but i really have no clue whats happening rn

anyways back to puqi shrine lets check on those kids also can we PLEASE get some funds for this restoration smh. hua cheng and xie lian doing mundane hard labor together to fulfill prayers.... :pleading:

jailbreak in the heavens 2: dig a tunnel

Sure enough, the moment Ming Yi put pressure on his shovel, a hole opened up before them. With the shovel raised, he burrowed crazily ahead while Shi Qingxuan, in the middle, cheered him on crazily. As the only non-crazy person, Xie Lian brought up the rear. That treasured shovel of the Earth Master was indeed magical, and with only a few strokes, a new tunnel of over ten meters was dug. - anybody remember mulch diggums from the artemis fowl series? this is much more dignified than that but i think this is only the second time ive read a character just starting digging a tunnel as a plot point

okay so much is going on i wish i hadnt spoiled who certain characters actually are for myself but i have no one to blame but me for a) not blacklisting spoilers at all and b) just having a little freefall through the tags. oh well. anyway heavenly college admissions scandal except way worse. the corruption extends to the heavens and the windmaster is having a very bad day

i guess we’re having a high seas adventure now?

im gonna keep it real im getting tired of how often we get told how handsome hua cheng is. i know its all xie lian’s pov and while im not terribly familiar with it i know what genre we’re working with and im assuming thats pretty typical. its something i dont much care for in general and idk maybe it sounds better in the original but ngl its starting to make me roll my eyes. love you goth king but god okay we get it.

i guess what i will say about hualian so far is that overall i like them and i like how they interact in general they have a lot of nice moments and they just genuinely seem to like each other which is really nice to see EXCEPT for when it actually comes to things that could be romantic or sexual which is a shame bc i dont think it has to be like this. again disclaimer that im only reading a translation and dont know everything might not have all the knowledge necessary to accurately criticize etc etc and im assuming a lot of this is expected from the genre (disclaimer to this disclaimer that i cant say that for sure its just based on things ive picked up about the bl genre over the years) but idk like xie lian was so distressed after their underwater kiss scene. it was kind of uncomfortable to read and maybe im being unfair i know his cultivation is based around abstinence or whatever but idk i dont care for it. and that scene alone doesnt have to be a bad thing like idk i guess its his first kiss ever (?) and it would make sense if he feels weird about it but i just have my doubts thats going to be addressed or resolved in a satisfying way. also im like. dude everyone is like centuries old. xie lian’s been on earth for 800 years. has he really never met or heard of a gay person during all this time? maybe he hasnt idk what he got up to yet maybe that’s actually a thing. also same thing with the reactions from the immortals to xie lian in a dress and characters like the windmaster like again you’re all centuries old and its not uncommon to be able to just completely change gender presentation. why are you all weird about a man wearing a woman’s dress? i just feel like that shouldnt be a big deal to these characters idk

also again not going to lie part of this that im not really a big fan of reading romance in general. yes i am reading this book. yes i do read and write a lot of fanfic that includes or centers romance. im multifaceted. but really what im talking about is the like physical side of it and descriptions im extremely picky about it. ill give an example. early on in the torture pit (or whatever it was called i cant remember lol) when xie lian kind of accidentally felt up hua cheng in the dark when he was being carried. i dont think thats a bad thing to have happen between the two romantic leads i think thats fine and good to include that early but i just did not enjoy reading it when it happened idk maybe it was the wording and i do think that moments like these work better in a visual medium. ive definitely read het romance that reads like this and i wasnt a fan of that either lol same with fanfic i get tired when writers go on and on about how hot one characters finds another character. this isnt a huge criticism of it like i said im picky but again like with the way that hua cheng is described it just makes me roll my eyes sorry kings

okay back to the reading. this whole saving the fishermen thing feels like a big set up for something narrative-wise. hua cheng specifically insisted on coming and i know one of the characters involved ends up dying im wondering if thats now it would be a good time tbh if things get just a bit too unfortunate during this heavenly calamity... and the brothers are notably not having a harmonious time... also tho it feels very likely we’ll just have another Hualian Moment (tm)

In such a situation, Pei Ming still acted the same. In the evening, when they rescued a few fishermen girls, so scared their eyes were blurry from tears, he held them in his embrace and soothed them with a gentle voice; a true show of honeyed romance, affectionate and charming. - pei ming please get pickled again.

also its funny that hua cheng is just kinda hanging out and everyone else just has to deal with it

Looking down from above, the entire area was painted in a terrifying black. It was easy to see the collision between the two different-coloured currents. Their fierce battle was what formed this enormous whirlpool. As the eye swallowed the ship whole, the two currents of water separated. However, the battle was far from over. Like two venomous vipers, they continued to snap at each other. Each collision was followed by a mountain of angry waves. - this pretty dope ngl. also love our wind and earth masters just chilling on a shovel i dig it. hehe

Yet, other than discovering Hua Cheng had a fine body, there were no other finds. Xie Lian was at his wit’s end and started to worry. - okay see this one’s funny im just also irritated bc im like WE KNOW!!! WE GET IT HE’S HOT AND XIE LIAN THINKS HE’S HOT OKAY GOT IT

okay kiss #2 again its not the kisses themselves its xie lian’s reaction it just bothers me idk im not saying i need him to be super into it and completely unconflicted about it rn but he’s just so freaked out about it and idk i just dont really like it just feels weird i dont care for that aspect of it. also dude hua cheng is a ghost and he did this exact same thing for you before just chill. i wish instead of xie lian literally running away while screaming that hes sorry he was just like “oh haha youre fine thats cool im gonna go look around the woods i dont feel weird about this at all haha” like idk its kind of funny but when its literally our two romantic leads i just feel like its confusing like it kind of makes me feel like they shouldnt be together if one of them freaks out this much again considering the fact that they are both CENTURIES old. i know i know xie lian is an 800 year old virgin but. he hasn’t been like this about anything else so yeah idk like it still could have been awkward and funny i just dont think it needed to be so :/ that being said it was funny that xie lian was then internally like “oh i did it wrong? perhaps i should ask him for more.. instructions....” if that actually happens i might like it bc it would complete this little watery theme

Before he finished, he immediately remembered. Coffin wood. There were trees here everywhere; and a deceased? There was one right before his eyes. Sure enough, Hua Cheng smiled. “Won’t it be fine once I lie inside? - love that hua cheng just sat on the fact that he can turn anything into a coffin. that would have been really useful information earlier but no he just waited until everyone but xie lian was gone afjaklsdjf

also i do think that oblivious xie lian thinking “wow whoever it is that hua cheng fancies is an idiot for not liking him back theyre totally taking him for granted :/” is kind of funny and sweet. actually the whole conversation they have at the campfire is good and im bookmarking it to think about later

“...You on top and me on the bottom,” Xie Lian replied. “Isn’t top and bottom the same?” Hua Cheng asked. - okay im sorry but. mood whenever theres discourse about top/bottom dynamics for a ship im just like jesus christ i dont care. tbh i rarely read fanfiction if its just sexual and ngl if i see a fic specifically tag characters as top or bottom i wont read it lmfao. especially when people have really strong opinions about this stuff when theres nothing canonical to back it up like headcanon all you want but whenever i see people argue about it im just like no offense but go work out your own sexual issues and dynamics instead of arguing with strangers on the internet about who’s a top and who’s a bottom. sorry to be mean but just thats how i feel lol

this was mostly a ramble with a few excerpts but im getting sleepy im going to TRY to take a break from this for like a day but we’ll see how that goes i do very much want to know what happens. anyway if you read this whole thing hiiiiii sorry for subjecting you to my opinions on top/bottom discourse

[hungryhungryhippo3]

ok im kinda tired from studying all day and i just watched the latest episode, and ive got some thoughts??? but im not in the best state of mind to articulate everything so imma just do some dot points:

- letting everyone have a go as a superhero: i dont agree with; it sort of trivialises that kind of power and is contradictory to master fu’s own experiences with his carelessness,,, like did you even learn anything from hawkmoth lmao... idk why but this thing upset/made me most uncomfortable, it just seems like a lot of carelessness, but tbh this is also a kids show with a kids audience so i guess you do have to sacrifice some elements of common sense/rational thought and action/general consistency with fu’s decisions for some Cool Heroes and Fun New Powers

- leading on from this, what is our position on how we treat kwamis?? : these are sentient beings, these are actual gods ( i think?? i havent read the comics), who are chained to a miraculous. what is our (by that inclusive, im referring to the characters in the show + the actual audience + producers) actual position on them?? so we respect them as mentors and guides + actual gods, but do we also treat them with the same triviality as the miraculous object itself??? something to give away and lock up at will, something to utilise only in times of need?? and those are only in part rhetorical qqs, im genuinely curious and i wont judge if thats the way things are

- chat noir and rena rouge: y’all can argue that their interactions were strictly platonic but imma fight for this; he was blatantly flirting with her. he kissed her hand, he was *casually* leaning against his baton, leaning in towards her, ok admittedly, i know french culture is a lot more direct and touchy than western culture and i havent down my research lmao but it felt a lot like he was interested??? i mean these are the same stuff he does to ladybug??? and alya (maybe she saw it as just platonic) but she also indulged him even tho shes already in a relationship ??? lol idek maybe its just me, but the first introduction made me feel uncomfortable coz of that (the second interaction was much more platonic tho)

- keeping chat noir out of the loop: ive seen a lot about this already on the tags, and 100% agree. at this point i dont know what to make of the relationship between lb and cn. @the ml producers, whether you wanna sell them as partners or as a duo where ladybug is the Main, ill support, but pls: consistency. i feel like theyve always been presented as a partnership, like two parts of one whole, but this ep kinda went against that? marinette has visited fu many times (implied), he allowed her to choose a hero, he himself explained all that detail about the miraculous’ to her, she left chat noir to fend for himself (without explaining the plan) while she went to find fu. adrien, who took gabriel’s book to learn more himself, didnt even get the chance to learn properly. and i bet that had he been given the opportunity to read, lb wouldve been the first person he went to. partnership = developing together, making decisions together, being transparent and clear w/ each other. i didnt see that today. what i saw was something more akin to batman and robin, hero and sidekick

- development/consistency w/ ladybug and chat noir’s (general) relationship: again, ik this is a kids show, and each episode is meant to be independent of each other, and there isnt a fixed sense of continuity. and this dot point sort of touches on the last 2 as well, but a change in the dynamic had so much potential to progress on ladybug and chat noir’s relationship (there could’ve been conflict, there could’ve been insecurities, there could’ve been distance, esp. following the Glaciator ep). the producers could’ve used this opportunity to see a shift in their general relationship + some solid characterisation (in relation to their partnership/dynamic) and actually lay some solid groundwork beyond the whole lovesquare thing.

- alya in general: ok so a positive: some good characterisation for alya. it was gr8 to see some more insight about her family dynamic, her own interactions w/ her siblings, the type of person she is beyond school and the ladyblog. shes undoubtedly worthy to receive that miraculous; headstrong, focused, learns quickly (thats a bonus). but i gotta agree with some of the posts circulating, marinette, as professional as she can be when she has to, is still ultimately biased. master fu tells her himself to choose someone she trusts (according to the translation i got), and doesnt that entail some subjectivity??? thats not to say that she chose her just bcoz theyre friends because marinette would be blind not to see all these gr8 qualities in her bff. but like ppl are saying, i think alya shouldve been chosen by virtue by the guardian, who knows these miraculous’ more than anyone, knows the sort of characters each miraculous is suited to, instead of marinette randomly selecting one and giving it to her best friend.

- gabriel: is a hypocrite and does not deserve to be a parent, but what else is  new lmao

[writingguide003-blog]

Zadie Smith: dance lessons for writers

New Post has been published on https://writingguideto.com/must-see/zadie-smith-dance-lessons-for-writers/

Zadie Smith: dance lessons for writers

From Fred Astaires elegance to Beyoncs power, Zadie Smith is inspired by dancers as much she is by other writers

The connection between writing and dancing has been much on my mind recently: its a channel I want to keep open. It feels a little neglected compared to, say, the relationship between music and prose maybe because there is something counter-intuitive about it. But for me the two forms are close to each other: I feel dance has something to tell me about what I do.

One of the most solid pieces of writing advice I know is in fact intended for dancers you can find it in the choreographer Martha Grahams biography. But it relaxes me in front of my laptop the same way I imagine it might induce a young dancer to breathe deeply and wiggle their fingers and toes. Graham writes: There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

What can an art of words take from the art that needs none? Yet I often think Ive learned as much from watching dancers as I have from reading. Dance lessons for writers: lessons of position, attitude, rhythm and style, some of them obvious, some indirect. What follows are a few notes towards that idea.

Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire

Alamy; The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images. Top: Getty Images

Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly

Fred Astaire represents the aristocracy when he dances, claimed Gene Kelly, in old age, and I represent the proletariat. The distinction is immediately satisfying, though its a little harder to say why. Tall, thin and elegant, versus muscular and athletic is that it? Theres the obvious matter of top hat and tails versus T-shirt and slacks. But Fred sometimes wore T-shirts and slacks, and was not actually that tall, he only stood as if he were, and when moving always appeared elevated, to be skimming across whichever surface: the floor, the ceiling, an ice rink, a bandstand. Genes centre of gravity was far lower: he bends his knees, he hunkers down. Kelly is grounded, firmly planted, where Astaire is untethered, free-floating.

Likewise, the aristocrat and the proletariat have different relations to the ground beneath their feet, the first moving fluidly across the surface of the world, the second specifically tethered to a certain spot: a city block, a village, a factory, a stretch of fields. Cyd Charisse claimed her husband always knew which of these dancers shed been working with by looking at her body at the end of the day: bruised everywhere if it was Kelly, not a blemish if it was Astaire. Not only aloof when it came to the ground, Astaire was aloof around other peoples bodies. Through 15 years and 10 movies, its hard to detect one moment of real sexual tension between Fred and his Ginger. They have great harmony but little heat. Now think of Kelly with Cyd Charisse in the fantasy sequence of Singin in the Rain! And maybe this is one of the advantages of earthiness: sex.

When I write I feel theres usually a choice to be made between the grounded and the floating. The ground I am thinking of in this case is language as we meet it in its commonsense mode. The language of the television, of the supermarket, of the advert, the newspaper, the government, the daily public conversation. Some writers like to walk this ground, recreate it, break bits of it off and use it to their advantage, where others barely recognise its existence. Nabokov a literal aristocrat as well as an aesthetic one barely ever put a toe upon it. His language is literary, far from what we think of as our shared linguistic home.

One argument in defence of such literary language might be the way it admits its own artificiality. Commonsense language meanwhile claims to be plain and natural, conversational, but is often as constructed as asphalt, dreamed up in ad agencies or in the heart of government sometimes both at the same time. Simultaneously sentimental and coercive. (The Peoples Princess. The Big Society. Make America Great Again.) Commonsense language claims to take its lead from the way people naturally speak, but any writer who truly attends to the way people speak will soon find himself categorised as a distinctive stylist or satirist or experimentalist. Beckett was like this, and the American writer George Saunders is a good contemporary example. (In dance, the example that comes to my mind is Bill Bojangles Robinson, whose thing was tapping up and down the stairs. What could be more normal, more folksy, more grounded and everyday than tapping up and down some stairs? But his signature stage routine involved a staircase pressed right up against another staircase a stairway to itself and so up and down he would tap, up and down, down and up, entirely surreal, like an Escher print come to life.)

Astaire is clearly not an experimental dancer like Twyla Tharp or Pina Bausch, but he is surreal in the sense of surpassing the real. He is transcendent. When he dances a question proposes itself: what if a body moved like this through the world? But it is only a rhetorical, fantastical question, for no bodies move like Astaire, no, we only move like him in our dreams.

By contrast, I have seen French boys run up the steps of the High Line in New York to take a photo of the view, their backsides working just like Gene Kellys in On The Town, and I have seen black kids on the A train swing round the pole on their way out of the sliding doors Kelly again, hanging from that eternal lamppost. Kelly quoted the commonplace when he danced, and he reminds us in turn of the grace we do sometimes possess ourselves. He is the incarnation of our bodies in their youth, at their most fluid and powerful, or whenever our natural talents combine ideally with our hard-earned skills. He is a demonstration of how the prosaic can turn poetic, if we work hard enough. But Astaire, when he dances, has nothing to do with hard work (although we know, from biographies, that he worked very hard, behind the scenes). He is poetry in motion. His movements are so removed from ours that he sets a limit on our own ambitions. Nobody hopes or expects to dance like Astaire, just as nobody really expects to write like Nabokov.

Harold and Fayard Nichols

Getty

Harold and Fayard Nicholas

Writing, like dancing, is one of the arts available to people who have nothing. For 10 and sixpence, advises Virginia Woolf, one can buy paper enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare. The only absolutely necessary equipment in dance is your own body. Some of the greatest dancers have come from the lowliest backgrounds. With many black dancers this has come with the complication of representing your race. You are on a stage, in front of your people and other people. What face will you show them? Will you be your self? Your best self? A representation? A symbol?

The Nicholas brothers were not street kids they were the children of college-educated musicians but they were never formally trained in dance. They learned watching their parents and their parents colleagues performing on the chitlin circuit, as black vaudeville was then called. Later, when they entered the movies, their performances were usually filmed in such a way as to be non-essential to the story, so that when these films played in the south their spectacular sequences could be snipped out without doing any harm to the integrity of the plot. Genius contained, genius ring-fenced. But also genius undeniable.

My talent was the weapon, argued Sammy Davis Jr, the power, the way for me to fight. It was the one way I might hope to affect a mans thinking. Davis was another chitlin hoofer, originally, and from straitened circumstances. His logic here is very familiar: it is something of an article of faith within the kinds of families who have few other assets. A mother tells her children to be twice as good, she tells them to be undeniable. My mother used to say something like it to me. And when I watch the Nicholas brothers I think of that stressful instruction: be twice as good.

The Nicholas brothers were many, many magnitudes better than anybody else. They were better than anyone has a right or need to be. Fred Astaire called their routine in Stormy Weather the greatest example of cinematic dance he ever saw. They are progressing down a giant staircase doing the splits as if the splits is the commonsense way to get somewhere. They are impeccably dressed. They are more than representing they are excelling.

But I always think I spot a little difference between Harold and Fayard, and it interests me; I take it as a kind of lesson. Fayard seems to me more concerned with this responsibility of representation when he dances: he looks the part, he is the part, his propriety unassailable. He is formal, contained, technically undeniable: a credit to the race. But Harold gives himself over to joy. His hair is his tell: as he dances it loosens itself from the slather of Brylcreem he always put on it, the irrepressible afro curl springs out, he doesnt even try to brush it back. Between propriety and joy, choose joy.

Prince & Micheal Jackson

Redferns; Sygma via Getty Images

Michael Jackson and Prince

On YouTube you will find them, locked in many dance-offs, and so you are presented with a stark choice. But its not a question of degrees of ability, of who was the greater dancer. The choice is between two completely opposite values: legibility on the one hand, temporality on the other. Between a monument (Jackson) and a kind of mirage (Prince).

But both men were excellent dancers. Putting aside the difference in height, physically they had many similarities. Terribly slight, long necked, thin-legged, powered from the torso rather than the backside, which in both cases was improbably small. And in terms of influence they were of course equally indebted to James Brown. The splits, the rise from the splits, the spin, the glide, the knee bend, the jerk of the head all stolen from the same source.

Yet Prince and Jackson are nothing alike when they dance, and its very hard to bring to mind Prince dancing, whereas it is practically impossible to forget Jackson. It sounds irrational, but try it for yourself. Princes moves, no matter how many times you may have observed them, have no firm inscription in memory; they never seem quite fixed or preserved. If someone asks you to dance like Prince, what will you do? Spin, possibly, and do the splits, if youre able. But there wont appear to be anything especially Prince-like about that. Its mysterious. How can you dance and dance, in front of millions of people, for years, and still seem like a secret only I know? (And isnt it the case that to be a Prince fan is to feel that Prince was your secret alone?)

I never went to see Michael Jackson, but I saw Prince half a dozen times. I saw him in stadiums with thousands of people, so have a rational understanding that he was in no sense my secret, that he was in fact a superstar. But I still say his shows were illegible, private, like the performance of a man in the middle of a room at a house party. It was the greatest thing you ever saw and yet its greatness was confined to the moment in which it was happening.

Jackson was exactly the opposite. Every move he made was absolutely legible, public, endlessly copied and copyable, like a meme before the word existed. He thought in images, and across time. He deliberately outlined and then marked once more the edges around each move, like a cop drawing a chalk line round a body. Stuck his neck forward if he was moving backwards. Cut his trousers short so you could read his ankles. Grabbed his groin so you could better understand its gyrations. Gloved one hand so you might attend to its rhythmic genius, the way it punctuated everything, like an exclamation mark.

Towards the end, his curious stagewear became increasingly tasked with this job of outline and distinction. It looked like a form of armour, the purpose of which was to define each element of his body so no movement of it would pass unnoted. His arms and legs multiply strapped a literal visualisation of his flexible joints and a metallic sash running left to right across his breastplate, accentuating the shift of his shoulders along this diagonal. A heavyweights belt accentuated slender hips and divided the torso from the legs, so you noticed when the top and bottom half of the body pulled in opposite directions. Finally a silver thong, rendering his eloquent groin as clear as if it were in ALL CAPS. It wasnt subtle, there was no subtext, but it was clearly legible. People will be dancing like Michael Jackson until the end of time.

But Prince, precious, elusive Prince, well, there lays one whose name was writ in water. And from Prince a writer might take the lesson that elusiveness can possess a deeper beauty than the legible. In the world of words, we have Keats to remind us of this, and to demonstrate what a long afterlife an elusive artist can have, even when placed beside as clearly drawn a figure as Lord Byron. Prince represents the inspiration of the moment, like an ode composed to capture a passing sensation. And when the mood changes, he changes with it: another good lesson.

Theres no freedom in being a monument. Better to be the guy still jamming in the wee hours of the house party, and though everybody films it on their phones no one proves quite able to capture the essence of it. And now hes gone, having escaped us one more time. I dont claim Princes image wont last as long as Jacksons. I only say that in our minds it will never be as distinct.

Janet Jackson Madonna Beyonce

Michel Linssen/Redferns/Getty; Dave Hogan/Getty; Matt Slocum/AP

Janet Jackson / Madonna / Beyonc

These three dont just invite copies they demand them. They go further than legibility into proscription. They lead armies, and we join them. We are like those uniformed dancers moving in military formation behind them, an anonymous corps whose job it is to copy precisely the gestures of their general.

This was made literal on Beyoncs Formation tour recently, when the general raised her right arm like a shotgun, pulled the trigger with her left and the sound of gunshot rang out. There is nothing intimate about this kind of dancing: like the military, it operates as a form of franchise, whereby a ruling idea America, Beyonc presides over many cells that span the world. Maybe it is for this reason that much of the crowd I saw at Wembley could be found, for long periods, not facing in the direction of the stage at all, instead turning to their friends and partners. They didnt need to watch Beyonc any more than soldiers need to look fixedly at the flag to perform their duties. Our queen was up there somewhere dancing but the idea of her had already been internalised. Friends from the gym stood in circles and pumped their fists, girlfriends from hen nights turned inwards and did Beyonc to each other, and boys from the Beyhive screamed every word into each others faces. They could have done the same at home, but this was a public display of allegiance.

Janet Jackson kicked off this curious phenomenon, Madonna continued it, Beyonc is its apex. Here dancing is intended as a demonstration of the female will, a concrete articulation of its reach and possibilities. The lesson is quite clear. My body obeys me. My dancers obey me. Now you will obey me. And then everybody in the crowd imagines being obeyed like Bey a delightful imagining.

Lady writers who inspire similar devotion (in far smaller audiences): Muriel Spark, Joan Didion, Jane Austen. Such writers offer the same essential qualities (or illusions): total control (over their form) and no freedom (for the reader). Compare and contrast, say, Jean Rhys or Octavia Butler, lady writers much loved but rarely copied. Theres too much freedom in them. Meanwhile every sentence of Didions says: obey me! Who runs the world? Girls!

David Byrne

Rex/Shutterstock

David Byrne and David Bowie

The art of not dancing a vital lesson. Sometimes it is very important to be awkward, inelegant, jerking, to be neither poetic nor prosaic, to be positively bad. To express other possibilities for bodies, alternative values, to stop making sense. Its interesting to me that both these artists did their worst dancing to their blackest cuts. Take me to the river, sings Byrne, in square trousers 20 times too large, looking down at his jerking hips as if they belong to someone else. This music is not mine, his trousers say, and his movements go further: maybe this body isnt mine, either. At the end of this seam of logic lies a liberating thought: maybe nobody truly owns anything.

People can be too precious about their heritage, about their tradition writers especially. Preservation and protection have their place but they shouldnt block either freedom or theft. All possible aesthetic expressions are available to all peoples under the sign of love. Bowie and Byrnes evident love for what was not theirs brings out new angles in familiar sounds. It hadnt occurred to me before seeing these men dance that a person might choose, for example, to meet the curve of a drum beat with anything but the matching curving movement of their body, that is, with harmony and heat. But it turns out you can also resist: throw up a curious angle and suddenly spasm, like Bowie, or wonder if thats truly your own arm, like Byrne.

I think of young Luther Vandross, singing backup a few feet behind Bowie, during Young Americans, watching Bowie flail and thrash. I wonder what his take on all that was. Did he ever think: Now, what in the world is he doing? But a few performances in, it was clear to everybody. Here was something different. Something old, and yet new.

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

Sipa Press/Rex/Shutterstock; Getty Images

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

When you face an audience, which way will you turn? Inwards or outwards? Or some combination of the two? Nureyev, so fierce and neurotic, so vulnerable, so beautiful like a deer suddenly caught in our headlamps is faced resolutely inwards. You cant take your eyes off him, as people like to say, but at the same time he is almost excruciating to watch. We feel we might break him, that he might crumble or explode. He never does, but still, whenever he leaps you sense the possibility of total disaster, as you do with certain high-strung athletes no matter how many times they run or jump or dive. With Nureyev you are an onlooker, you are a person who has been granted the great honour of being present while Nureyev dances. I dont mean this sarcastically: it is an honour to watch Nureyev, even in these grainy old videos on YouTube. Hes a kind of miracle, and is fully cognisant of this when he dances, and what did you do today to warrant an audience with a miracle? (See also: Dostoevsky.)

With Baryshnikov, I have no fears of disaster. He is an outward-facing artist, he is trying to please me and he succeeds completely. His face dances as much as his arms and legs. (Nureyevs face, meanwhile, is permanently lost in transcendent feeling.) Sometimes Baryshnikov wants to please me so much hell even try tap dancing with Liza Minnelli, risking the scorn of the purists. (I am not a purist. I am delighted!) He is a charmer, an entertainer, he is comic, dramatic, cerebral, a clown whatever you need him to be. Baryshnikov is both loving and loved. He has high and low modes, tough and soft poses, but hes always facing outwards, to us, his audience. (See also: Tolstoy.)

Once I met Baryshnikov over a New York dinner table: I was so star-struck I could hardly speak. Finally I asked him: Did you ever meet Fred Astaire? He smiled. He said: Yes, once, at a dinner. I was very star-struck, I hardly spoke. But I watched his hands all the time, they were like a lesson in themselves so elegant!

Swing Time by Zadie Smith is published on 15 November (Hamish Hamilton, 18.99). To order a copy for 15.57, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

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Zadie Smith: dance assignments for scribes

From Fred Astaires elegance to Beyoncs power, Zadie Smith is inspired by dancers as much she is by other writers

The the linkages between writing and dancing has been much on my psyche recently: its a path I want to keep open. It feels a bit ignored compared to, respond, the relationship between music and prose perhaps because there is something counter-intuitive about it. But for me the two forms are close to each other: I experience dance has something to tell me about what I do.

One of “the worlds largest” solid pieces of writing advice I know is in fact intended for dancers you can find it in the choreographer Martha Grahams biography. But it relaxes me in front of my laptop the same way I reckon it might generate a young dancer to breathe deeply and wiggle their fingers and toes. Graham writes: There is a vitality, a life force, an intensity, a speed that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of experience, this phrase is unique. And if you stymie it, it will never dwell through any other medium and it will be lost. The macrocosm will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how invaluable nor how it compares with other formulations. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and immediately, to keep the path open.

What can an prowes of words take from the prowes that needs none? Yet I often reckon Ive learned as much from watching dancers as I have from reading. Dance lessons for columnists: assignments of place, stance, pattern and mode, some of them obvious, some indirect. What follows are a few memoes towards that idea.

Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire

Alamy; The Life Picture Collection/ Getty Images. Crown: Getty Images

Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly

Fred Astaire represents the aristocracy where reference is dances, claimed Gene Kelly, in old age, and I represent the proletariat. The importance is instantly satisfying, though its a little harder to say why. Tall, thin and sumptuous, versus muscular and athletic is that it? Theres the obvious content of silk hat and tails versus T-shirt and slacks. But Fred sometimes wore T-shirts and slacks, and was not actually that towering, he only stood as if he were, and when moving always sounded promoted, to be skimming across whichever face: the floor, the ceiling, an ice rink, a bandstand. Genes centre of gravity was far lower: he crouches his knees, he hunkers down. Kelly is floored, securely planted, where Astaire is untethered, free-floating.

Likewise, the aristocrat and the proletariat have differing relations to the field beneath their feet, the first moving fluidly across the surface of the world, the second largest specific tethered to a certain smudge: a city block, a village, a factory, a extend of studies. Cyd Charisse claimed her husband always knew which of these dancers shed cooperated with by looking at their own bodies at the end: bruised everywhere if it was Kelly , not a bruise if it was Astaire. Not exclusively aloof when it came to the field, Astaire was aloof around other families mass. Through 15 years and 10 movies, its difficult to detect a few moments of real sex tension between Fred and his Ginger. They have great harmonization but little hot. Now think of Kelly with Cyd Charisse in the fantasy sequence of Singin in the Rain! And maybe this is one of the advantages of earthiness: sex.

When I write I appear theres often a selection to be made between the sanded and the drifting. The sand I am thinking of in such a case is language as we gratify it in its commonsense mode. The language of the television, of the supermarket, of the advert, the newspaper, the government, the daily public conversation. Some columnists like to walk this dirt, recreate it, violate chips of it off and use it to their advantage, where others barely recognise its existence. Nabokov a literal aristocrat as well as an aesthetic one just ever gave a toe upon it. His speech is literary, far away from what we think about as our shared linguistic home.

One argument in defence of such literary communication might be the style it admits its own artificiality. Commonsense language meanwhile claims to be grassland and natural, conversational, but is often as created as asphalt, dreamed up in ad business or in the heart of authority sometimes both at the same time. Simultaneously nostalgic and coercive.( The Peoples Princess. The Big Society. Make America Great Again .) Commonsense language claims to take its guide from the route parties naturally communicate, but any writer who truly attends to the route beings pronounce will soon find himself categorised as a distinctive stylist or satirist or experimentalist. Beckett was like this, and the American novelist George Saunders is a good contemporary example.( In dance, the pattern that comes to my memory is Bill Bojangles Robinson, whose stuff was tapping up and down the stairs. What could be more normal, more folksy, more grounded and everyday than tapping up and down some stairs? But his signature stage routine committed a staircase pressed right up against another staircase a stairway to itself and so up and down he would tap, up and down, down and up, alone surreal, like an Escher publish be coming home with life .)

Astaire is clearly not an experimental dancer like Twyla Tharp or Pina Bausch, but he is surreal in the sense of outstripping the real. He is transcendent. When he dances a question proposes itself: what if a torso moved like this through “the worlds”? But it is only a rhetorical, fantastical interrogation, for no organizations move like Astaire , no, we are just move like him in our dreams.

By contrast, I have realise French sons run up the steps of the High Line in New York to take a photo of the view, their backsides working just like Gene Kellys in On The Town, and I have visualized black girls on the A train swing round the spar on their way out of the sliding openings Kelly again, hanging from that everlasting lamppost. Kelly repeated the commonplace where reference is danced, and he reminds us in turn of the grace we do sometimes possess ourselves. He is the incarnation of our torsoes in their youth, at their most liquid and strong, or whenever our natural aptitudes blend ideally with our hard-earned abilities. He is a demonstration of how the prosaic can pass poetic, if we work hard enough. But Astaire, when he dances, has nothing to do with hard work( although we know, from biographies, that he worked very hard, behind the scenes ). He is poetry in motion. His movements are so removed from ours that he defines a limit on our own aspirations. Nobody hopes or expects to dance like Astaire, just as none genuinely expects to write like Nabokov.

Harold and Fayard Nichols

Getty

Harold and Fayard Nicholas

Writing, like dancing, is one of the arts available to people who have nothing. For 10 and sixpence, admonishes Virginia Woolf, one can buy paper enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare. The only absolutely essential material in dance is your own mas. Some of the greatest dancers have come from the lowliest backgrounds. With numerous black dancers this has come with the complication of representing your hasten. You are on a stagecoach, in front of your parties and other people. What face will you show them? Will you be your soul? Your best soul? A image? A symbol?

The Nicholas brethren were not street girls the latter are the family of college-educated musicians but they were never formally trained in dance. They learned watching their parents and their parents peers playing on the chitlin tour, as black vaudeville was then called. Later, when they entered the movies, their conducts is often filmed in this way as to be non-essential to the storey, so that when these cinemas played in the south their magnificent sequences “couldve been” snipped out without doing any harm to the soundnes of the planned. Genius contained, genius ring-fenced. But also genius undeniable.

My talent was the artillery, quarrelled Sammy Davis Jr, the ability, the channel for me to fight. It was the one practice I might hope to affect a humanities feeling. Davis was another chitlin hoofer, originally, and from straitened contexts. His logic here is very familiar: it is something of an article of faith within the kinds of houses who have few other assets. A mother tells their own children to be twice as good, she tells them to be undeniable. My mother used to say something like it to me. And when I watch the Nicholas brethren I think of that stressful instruction: be twice as good.

The Nicholas brothers were numerous, numerous proportions better than anybody else. They were better than anyone has a right or required to. Fred Astaire announced their routine in Stormy Weather the greatest pattern of cinematic dance he was never grasp. They are developing down a giant staircase doing the separates as if the splits is the commonsense course to get somewhere. They are impeccably garmented. They are more than representing they are excelling.

But I always remember I recognize a little difference between Harold and Fayard, and it interests me; I take it as a kind of exercise. Fayard seems to me more concerned with this responsibility of representation where reference is dances: he seems the role, he is the area, his propriety unassailable. He is formal, contained, technically undeniable: a credit to the race. But Harold hands himself over to rejoice. His “hairs-breadth” is his tell: as he dances it tightens itself from the slather of Brylcreem he always put on it, the ebullient afro bend springs out, he doesnt even try to brush it back. Between propriety and exultation, choose joy.

Prince& Micheal Jackson

Redferns; Sygma via Getty Images

Michael Jackson and Prince

On YouTube you will find them, locked in many dance-offs, and so you are presented with a stark select. But its not a question of grades of ability, of who was the greater dancer. The option is between two entirely opposite qualities: legibility on the one mitt, temporality on the other. Between a headstone( Jackson) and a kind of mirage( Prince ).

But both men were superb dancers. Putting aside certain differences in elevation, physically they had numerous similarities. Atrociously slight, long necked, thin-legged, powered from the torso rather than the backside, which in both cases was improbably small-time. And in areas of influence they were of course equally indebted to James Brown. The splits, the rise from the splits, the twisting, the fly, the knee bend, the moron of the psyche all been stealing from the same source.

Yet Prince and Jackson are nothing alike when they dance, and its very hard to bring to knowledge Prince dancing, whereas it is practically impossible to forget Jackson. It sounds absurd, but try it for yourself. Lord moves , no matter how many times you may have discovered them, have no conglomerate inscription in retention; they never seem quite set or retained. If person asks you to dance like Prince, what the fuck is you do? Spin, maybe, and do the divides, if youre capable. But there wont appear to be anything especially Prince-like about that. Its strange. How are you able dance and dance, in front of millions of people, for years, and still seem like a secret exclusively I know?( And isnt it the case that to be a Prince fan is to feel that Prince was your secret alone ?)

I never went to see Michael Jackson, but I recognized Prince half a dozen days. I considered him in stadia with thousands of people, so have a rational understanding that he was in no feel my secret, that he was in fact a luminary. But I still say his sees were illegible, private, like the performance of a humanity in the middle of a area at a house party. It was the greatest act you ever know and yet its greatness was confined to the moment in which it was happening.

Jackson was exactly the opposite. Every move he made was perfectly legible, public, endlessly imitated and copyable, like a meme before the word existed. He considered in personas, and across age. He purposely summarized and then labelled once more the leading edge around each move, like a officer describing a chalk thread round a body. Put his neck forward if he was moving backwards. Cut his trousers short so you are able read his ankles. Grabbed his groin so you could better understand its gyrations. Gloved one hand so you are able to attend to its rhythmic genius, the acces it punctuated everything, like an exclamation mark.

Towards the end, his strange stagewear became increasingly tasked with this occupation of outline and separation. It looked like a sort of armor, the purpose of which was to define all the factors of his torso so no action of it would deliver unnoted. His arms and legs multiply buckled a literal visualisation of his flexible joints and a metallic sash guiding left to right across his breastplate, accenting the transformation of his shoulders along this diagonal. A heavyweights belt accentuated slim hips and fractioned the torso from the legs, so you saw when the surface and foot half of their own bodies attracted in opposite tacks. Finally a silver-tongued thong, interpreting his forceful groin as clear as if it were in ALL CAPS. It wasnt subtle, “there werent” subtext, but it was clearly legible. People will be dancing like Michael Jackson until the end of time.

But Prince, precious, elusive Prince, well, there lays one whose reputation was writ in sea. And from Prince a scribe might take the lesson that elusiveness can own a deeper beauty than the readable. In the world of words, we have Keats to remind us of this, and to illustrate what a long afterlife an elusive creator can have, even when residence beside as clearly reaped a illustration as Lord Byron. Prince represents the brainchild of the moment, like an ode composed to captivate a transfer wizard. And when the humor changes, he changes with it: another good lesson.

Theres no democracy in being a statue. Better to be the person still jamming in the wee hours of the house party, and though everybody movies it on their telephones no one substantiates quite able to captivate the essence of it. And now hes gone, having escaped us one more time. I dont pretension Sovereigns portrait wont last-place as long as Jacksons. I simply say that in our sentiments it will never be as distinct.

Janet Jackson Madonna Beyonce

Michel Linssen/ Redferns/ Getty; Dave Hogan/ Getty; Matt Slocum/ AP

Janet Jackson/ Madonna/ Beyonc

These three dont just invite imitates they demand them. They go further than clarity into proscription. They precede hordes, and we join them. We are like those uniformed dancers moving in armed shaping behind them, an anonymous squad whose chore it ought to mimic precise the gesticulates of their general.

This was induced literal on Beyoncs Formation tour recently, when the general promoted her right arm like a shotgun, drew the initiation with her left and the seem of gunshot rang out. There is nothing intimate about this kind of dancing: like the military, it operates as a way of franchise, whereby a rule suggestion America, Beyonc was presided over by numerous cells that span “the worlds”. Maybe it is for this reason that much of the crowd I ascertained at Wembley could be found, for long periods , not facing in future directions of the stage at all, instead turning to their friends and collaborators. They didnt need to watch Beyonc any more than soldiers need to look fixedly at the flag to perform their duties. Our king was up there somewhere dancing but the idea of her had already been internalised. Friends from the gym stood in haloes and ran their fists, girlfriends from hen nights passed inwards and did Beyonc to each other, and boys from the Beyhive hollered every term into each others faces. They could have done the same at home, but this was a public display of allegiance.

Janet Jackson knocked off this curious phenomenon, Madonna sustained it, Beyonc is its apex. Here dancing is intended as a show of the female will, a concrete articulation of its reach and possibilities. The reading is quite evident. My organization obeys me. My dancers obey me. Now you will obey me. And then everybody in the crowd supposes being obeyed like Bey a delicious imagining.

Lady columnists who invigorate same piety( in far smaller audiences ): Muriel Spark, Joan Didion, Jane Austen. Such columnists offer the same essential qualities( or misconceptions ): total self-restraint( over their organize) and no liberty( for the reader ). Compare and contrast, pronounce, Jean Rhys or Octavia Butler, dame columnists often affection but rarely emulated. Theres too much democracy in them. Meanwhile every convict of Didions alleges: obey me! Who passes “the worlds”? Girls!

David Byrne

Rex/ Shutterstock

David Byrne and David Bowie

The art of not dancing a crucial assignment. Sometimes it is essential to be awkward, clumsy, jerking, to be neither poetic nor banal, to be positively bad. To show other the chances of torsoes, alternative prices, to stop making sense. Its interesting to me that both sets of creators did their worst dancing to their blackest slashes. Take me to the river, sings Byrne, in square trousers 20 times too big, seeming down at his yanking hips as if they belong to someone else. This music is not excavation, his trousers reply, and his pushes go further: perhaps this mas isnt quarry, either. At the conclusion of its stratum of logic lies a liberating contemplate: maybe nobody absolutely owns anything.

People can be too precious about their heritage, about their institution novelists especially. Preservation and protection have their region but they shouldnt pulley-block either liberty or theft. All possible aesthetic phrases are available to all folks under the signal of desire. Bowie and Byrnes obvious passion for what was not theirs brought about by new slants in familiar tones. It hadnt passed to me before hearing these men dance that a person might choice, for example, to satisfy the swerve of a drum lash with anything but the matching bending gesture of their body, that is, with harmony and heat. But it is about to change you are eligible to withstand: throw up a strange inclination and abruptly spasm, like Bowie, or wonder if thats genuinely your own arm, like Byrne.

I think of young Luther Vandross, singing backup a few paws behind Bowie, during Young Americans, watching Bowie flail and pummel. I wonder what his take on all that was. Did he was never imagine: Now, what in the world is he doing? But a few concerts in, it was clear to everybody. Here was something different. Something old, and hitherto new.

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

Sipa Press/ Rex/ Shutterstock; Getty Images

Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov

When you face an gathering, which way will you grow? Inwards or outwards? Or some combination of both? Nureyev, so intense and neurotic, so vulnerable, so beautiful like a deer abruptly caught in our headlamps is faced resolutely inwards. You cant take your eyes off him, as beings like to say, but at the same time he is almost excruciating to watch. We appear we were able to interruption him, that he might deteriorate or explode. He never does, but still, whenever he leaps you sense the possibility of setting up total cataclysm, as you do with particular high-strung athletes no matter how many times they flow or startle or descent. With Nureyev you are an onlooker, you are a person who has been granted the largest honor of being present while Nureyev dances. I dont signify this sarcastically: it is an honour to watch Nureyev, even in these grainy age-old videos on YouTube. Hes a kind of miracle, and is amply cognisant of this when he dances, and what did you do today to warrant an audience with a miracle?( See likewise: Dostoevsky .)

With Baryshnikov, I have no horrors of disaster. He is an outward-facing creator, he seeks to satisfy me and he succeeds absolutely. His face dances as much as his arms and legs.( Nureyevs face, meanwhile, is permanently lost in transcendent experiencing .) Sometimes Baryshnikov wants to please me so much better inferno even try tap dancing with Liza Minnelli, gambling the scorn of the purists.( I am not a purist. I am delighted !) He is a charmer, an entertainer, he is comic, stunning, cerebral, a clown whatever you need him to be. Baryshnikov is both enjoying and cherished. He has high and low modes, tough and soft poses, but hes always facing outwards, to us, his audience.( See likewise: Tolstoy .)

Once I gratified Baryshnikov over a New York dinner table: I was so star-struck I is more difficult to address. Eventually I asked him: Did you ever assemble Fred Astaire? He smiled. He spoke: Yes, formerly, at a dinner. I was very star-struck, I scarcely communicated. But I watched his hands all the time, they were like a reading in themselves so luxurious!

Swing Time by Zadie Smith is published on 15 November( Hamish Hamilton, 18.99 ). To tell a photocopy for 15.57, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or announce 0330 333 6846.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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