The Loco-Motion Part one: The revolution

     Of the three songs that have adhered to each other in my mind in this past while: Ooby Dooby, Hokey Pokey, and The Locomotion, the last evokes the greatest complexity of imagination.  I knew it in my youth and no doubt danced to it, summer night skies, loud speakers, macadam, girls, but when I heard it driving to work one morning it lifted me up in ways I could not have known when young. 
     I became one among many dancing in the streets of Detroit stirring up the ashes of dashed hopes, breathing them in, tasting the bitter joke of unkept promises, and laughing at it because the spirit of man cannot be crippled by misfortune or controlled by corporate exploitation.  They stuff our mouths with death, they use us and toss us aside, yet we dance.  Joyful and defiant we celebrate what we are, what they can never be: human.
     In a life grown complex, in an America where big is beautiful and small is fodder for the Corporopolitical machine the hungers of humanity are a nuisance that must be demonized by Religiocorporate puppets who have sold their conscience for cash.  Passion has become a dirty word.  But I forget myself and have fallen into a Marxist rant remembered, unbidden, from those days in the late sixties when I believed in movements.
     Experience quickly made it clear to me that institutions are inherently inhuman, that those gathered under a banner or a flag abandon reason, reflection, and compassion.  It matters little whether you call it "The Movement" as we did back then or you call it Evangelical Christianity the goals are the same: destroy all that does not agree with it.  It is that part of us that will give rise to a Hitler, a Stalin, a Pol Pot, a Pope Gregory IX.  It is the abrogation of our own humanity, replacing our personal passions with institutional imperatives, becoming a part of the beast of the machine.
     But the truth is none of these subsequent reflections were a part of the experience of The Locomotion in my car on the way to work.  No, there was no politics in it, there was only the longing to dance like a fool in the streets, to be with others celebrating life.

    

Back to the blog: The Ooby Dooby

     I cannot say for certain that I have ever seen the Ooby Dooby done but there was one night in east Texas outside of Tyler when I witnessed, if not the thing itself, then something much like it.  It was in a private club that had, as far as I could understand, only two requirements for membership: to be white and to bring your own bottle, I qualified.  The place itself was unadorned, more of a hangout for working stiffs in their 20's, a place to dance and drink.  I was enjoying the latter when the Ooby Dooby moment came.
     There were two young women on the dance floor wearing the smallest, whitest, tightest pants I had ever seen worn in public.  The effect of the white was enhanced by the blacklight that was ubiquitous in that era.  So I, moderately oiled with gin, sat rapt, mesmerized by the fulness of these twin orbs that leapt and shook to the music in the hazy light.  They called me.
     It has been my good fortune to have a keen perception of the inherent decorum of any of the drinking establishments I have visited.  I know what is and what is not acceptable and have been able to avoid confrontation.  So I knew that no matter how much it seemed to me that these lovely young women appeared to beckon, it would be a serious breach of etiquette to approach them.  In one scenario I would slip onto the dance floor ask to join one or the other and dance with her, and talk, and share a drink, and perhaps step outside to share a moment of privacy, whereupon the local boys would beat the shit out of me to preserve the honor of their ladyfolk and my membership would be suspended.  I kept my seat.
     I chose to content myself with an appreciation of the aesthetics and the sociological import of this most delightful display that had all the elements of the Ooby Dooby: "wiggling to the left, wiggling to the right, a wiggle and a shake like a big rattlesnake."  Yes, I am convinced that this was it: a rockabilly ritual whose meaning could only be truly perceived by those in the cultural milieu of its origin.  Oh, I could tease it out intellectually, put aside the lust it inspired in me to imagine what long term contract the viewer was invited to consider, what mixed joy and sadness lay before them in this country that was too big for comfort, that would always drive them to seek some small nest of joy to shield them from the immense, uncaring land.  I could think it but never feel it.
     And yet, when I stumble upon the Ooby Dooby again it makes me dance, even alone, as I imagine I am one of them, that my heart beats to that rhythm, that life comes struttin' across the dancefloor lifting me from the ordinary to the divine.