{"id":32586,"date":"2017-08-05T10:49:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-05T14:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=32586"},"modified":"2017-08-05T10:49:52","modified_gmt":"2017-08-05T14:49:52","slug":"hour-2-dance-me-to-the-end-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/hour-2-dance-me-to-the-end-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Hour 2: Dance Me to the End of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><code><\/p>\n<p>In the UK we're just celebrating the 50th anniversary of gay relationships not being illegal:<br \/>\n\u2018Britain marked\u00a0the 50th anniversary Thursday of the first move to recognize gay rights\u00a0by\u00a0acknowledging that society was wrong to treat same-sex couples as criminals.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>I myself am not homosexual, but I have a lot of time for LGBTQI rights, so for this hour I'm using a scene in a movie called Stonewall, released in 1995, directed by Nigel Finch. It tells the story of the gay riots in New York City, from the perspective of the drag queens at the Stonewall Inn. In one scene characters Matty Dean (Frederick Weller) and Ethan (Duane Boutte) go to a beach where males are allowed to sunbathe together and, at night, they are allowed to dance together, but only after a token female has started to dance. The invigilator berates one couple for dancing cheek to cheek, saying, \u201cIt's not like that [hands palms facing each other], it's like this [palms side by side, facing the same way]\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The title is another Leonard Cohen song, Dance Me To The End of Love. The last line is from Stonewall, where drag queen La Miranda (Guillermo Diaz) ends the film by saying of drag queens, \u201cWe're as American as apple pie.\u201d I visited NYC just after finishing my chemistry degree, and while there saw a Stonewall exhibition, which made quite a big impression on me, since we'd never been taught such stuff in school. When the film was released and shown on British BBC2 the following year, I was delighted by it :)<\/p>\n<h1>Dance Me to the End of Love<\/h1>\n<p>Here we can dance,<br \/>\nslowly<br \/>\nunder a swaying spotlight,<br \/> <br \/>\nmomentarily red<br \/>\nbeckoning all.<\/p>\n<p>Jitterbug me under the the glitterball<br \/> <br \/>\nlet the cascading white light<br \/>\nplay across your face,<br \/>\nits 11pm stubble<br \/> <br \/>\nbeginning to peek through.<\/p>\n<p>Waltz me round the dancefloor<br \/>\ncheek to cheek,<br \/>\nilllumineted blue<br \/> <br \/>\nour love,<br \/>\ndeep as the Danube,<br \/>\nAmerican as apple pie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the UK we&#8217;re just celebrating the 50th anniversary of gay relationships not being illegal: \u2018Britain marked\u00a0the 50th anniversary Thursday of the first move to recognize gay rights\u00a0by\u00a0acknowledging that society was wrong to treat same-sex couples as criminals.\u2019 I myself am not homosexual, but I&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":964,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/964"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32594,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32586\/revisions\/32594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}