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ENTHUSIASTIC APPLAUSE (#SingingAsTheDarknessLifts 93)

ENTHUSIASTIC APPLAUSE

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This morning I am interested in what the air smells like where you are. I am also interested in whether you will, in the future, help me to celebrate my hundredth episode by taking note of what the morning air is scented with on that particular day. If my calculations are correct the one hundredth episode will be on Monday 8th September and I would love to collate as many responses as possible to mark the occasion. That episode will also coincide with my blog being two years old. One hundred episodes over two years charting a new journey and keeping the promise to embrace Monday mornings. That feels good.

 

Alt text says this week’s photo is two women taking a selfie. I might say it is two women standing in a field readying for a concert and my sister would say it is not a field. She would be right because Dreamland Margate, which is where we were, has artificial grass and is in a town, but we were definitely readying for a concert. And it felt rather like being in a field.

 

It seems my sister and I have invented another tradition to go alongside our ‘sisters at the snooker’. Our new one is a July concert at Dreamland Margate. Last year we saw Suede and Manic Street Preachers and this year KT Tunstall and Texas. We are already wondering who we will see next year.

 

And breaking news… I can clap in time in certain circumstances! I have discovered that I can find that rhythm… when I am at an outdoor concert, when I really like the song, and when it’s been in my heart for a long time. Having not really ever been a clapper-alonger before this is worthy of a little celebration. My dancing is still a little on the wrong side of rhythmic, but I can clap along and jump up and down in a relatively beat driven way. There was plenty for me to get my hands in the air for at the concert, and lots of singing along too. 

 

There’s something rejuvenating about sunny evenings where your favourite bands play and you’re a few rows from the front. This was my first time seeing Texas live and they definitely brought the energy. It always feels like a gift to be in the presence of talent, and I love it! I loved the fact that a whole crowd of people applauded enthusiastically when Sharleen Spiteri took her jacket off after the first song. I loved the joy of hearing a set list of songs from my younger music video consuming days. I loved that the concert ended with an excellent version of Suspicious Minds. I loved that I got to share this experience.

 

In a week where I have shared time over iced coffees and been invited to zoom room shenanigans as well as taking a mini road trip to stand in a field that is not a field I find much to applaud enthusiastically. Here’s to all the things that bring us the kind of joy that make us clap our hands together both literally and metaphorically.

 

It feels apt to share a poem about clapping, but please note it is the kind of clapping at the opposite end of the continuum to the ones described above!

 

 

CLAPPING

 

You can hear your own clapping

louder than anyone else’s.

You are not matching the rhythm

of anyone in this room.

Soon they will be looking at you

willing you to stop.

You try to change the way

your hands hit one another

but you cannot unhollow the sound.

 

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