After a nice and sound sleep I woke up, hit my ITUNES and asked BONGA to step forward. I literally danced for one whole hour. Non stop. And that's nothing. Back in the day, when I was a teen and sneaking out to Cincinnati's underground alternative dance club Metro, I would dance from 12 am until 5 am, non stop, with brief breaks for water [handed out by girls dressed in second-hand green and purposely ripped stockings]. My stepfather caught me once and when I explained I was only out dancing, no drinking, no drugs. He smiled and said when he was young he'd dance even longer.

BONGA is an ultra-amazing artist from Angola who can spin you into life in the first beat of a track. And I mean SPIN. And then he can send you drifting into pensive memory with his ballads that seem to hit every cord in the individual's emotional scope.

As I was dancing to BONGA, non stop, high-paced, I thought of my mom and her brother Gordon dancing the 50s version of the Swing at nearly every family function. Their moves were so precise and concentrated. We giggled of course, us kids. Snickered and defaulted into embarrasment. But they had been known to attend parties in the 50s and dance "to beat the band", as my grandmother would say. Then I thought of my grandmother and grandfather, dancing the Cha-Cha and the Salsa in their basement. Laughing, drinking beer with their friends, unafraid to be alive and in the moment. And then I thought of my grandmother's parents, Leslie and Carrie. How my grandmother said they were known as "some kind of dancers". He was 6'3, she was 5'2, and the site of them dancing together was "something to see, Keith" she would say. "They would really cut a rug".

So as I danced myself into a trance I thought of them, my ancestral dancers spinning along with me. Understanding the impulse, excited by the life spinning within the morning. They would have loved Bonga.

Until next time,

Keith