Dance badly, unfilmed, like your fathers. It built nations
Hear what the young woman fears: not the dancing, but the RECORD of the dancing. And understand that her fear is rational, which is the indictment. We built a world where a man cannot embarrass himself honestly among strangers and have the night decay into rumor, as nights were meant to.
The ancestors danced terribly and thrived on it. At every barn raising, every harvest festival, every wedding since weddings began, men of substance performed movements that would end careers today — and the only storage medium was the memory of witnesses, which softened with drink and died with the witnesses. This was not a flaw. This was the SYSTEM. Forgetting is how a community forgives itself into Monday.
Now the promoters hunt content in the dark and the spectacles conceal lenses, and a generation dances at half-strength, watching the watchers. A dance floor where every man is his own press officer is not a dance floor. It is an office party that never ends.
Berlin covers the cameras with stickers. Good. The paper defeats the lens, as the old things defeat the new when permitted. Dance badly. Remember nothing. Till. Then rest.