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National Tap Dance Day 2024
Today is National Tap Dance Day and I’m reminded of my beloved munchkins’ many recitals.
Rat-A-Tat-Tat
I would imagine that if you could understand Morse code, a tap dancer would drive you crazy. ~Mitch Hedberg
That would probably cause some cognitive dissonance for sure. 🤠It certainly is fun to watch, though.
While Emmeline and Connor took years of tap, I never did. The only taps I had to deal with were the ones my Military Training Instructors wore.
To this day, hearing metal heels anywhere but on stage tends to send a chill up my spine.
That was by intention. I’m not sure who had the original idea of giving Drill Sergeants and Military Training Instructors taps for their boots, but they were some kind of evil genius.
By sight, such a man is designed to be intimidating. Their uniforms are always in perfect condition. The wide-brimmed campaign hat is a rare and unique sight, designed to intimidate.
But what if they’re coming up behind you? It’s one thing to jump to attention when you see one or more campaign hats coming your way.
When you’re hanging around taking five and you just hear that clack, clack, clack coming up on you. Damn, son. That’s 360° intimidation, and it’s by design.
So, why did I pivot from tap dancing to TI’s? Because it’s Memorial Day Weekend
History of the Holidays: History of Memorial Day | History
Please remember those who fell defending our country. You might have friends or family who were lost in recent wars, Vietnam, Korea, WWI or II or even the Civil War.
These fallen heroes are an honored part of the fabric of this country and we should remember why this weekend is a holiday.
Sure, Memorial Day is the unofficial start of 🌞 Summer 🔥. That’s all fun and good with a side of hamburgers and pasta salad, but remember that it starts with a moment of solemn remembrance.
Also, please remember that Memorial Day is for those who didn’t come back. Veteran’s Day, in October, is for those who did.
It’s always a good day to thank a veteran for their service to the country, but Memorial Day is an occasion when you should direct that towards a headstone, a cenotaph or a memorial statue.
Feet Of Fire
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You don’t see it a lot anymore except for period dramas, and that’s a shame. Fred Astaire used to tap all over the place in his movies.
It’s a vibrant style of dance with a lot of national and cultural variations.
Maybe whenever Hollywood can pry their heads out of their cabooses, we might start seeing more of this on screen.
Whether it’s a fun movie like Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly would have made or good old fashioned adventure movies, it would definitely be great to see Hollywood ditch all the messaging and return to actual entertainment again.
Melt The Stars
Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars. ~Gustave Flaubert
Back in Flaubert’s day, that was something that authors tried to accomplish. He lived in a time graced with writers like Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Herman Melville and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
These are names associated with some of the finest works of fiction ever written. The ideas, the prose, the structure were all peak artistry.
So, what do we get today?
Tighten it up. Write short, dopamine-inducing chapters. Staccato prose designed to keep the reader riding a hallucinatory roller coaster.
Yes, attention spans are shot. I know mine is. I despair of catching up on all my long-form content because I just don’t have the time.
Even when I do have the time, I don’t have the time. I’d rather watch a dozen five minute videos on a dozen topics than a one hour deep dive on a single topic.
I have plenty of those queued up, but I’m drawn away from them by quick hit content. Part of that is my ADD acting up and part of it is just a sign of the times.
It’s commonly said that people no longer have the luxury of having absolutely nothing else to do but read a classic tome.
I don’t know that it’s entirely true. Granted, nobody in the 18th, the 19th or the first ¾ of the 20th Centuries had semi-infinite forms of entertainment streaming into their houses.
That being said, people who didn’t have UHF, cable TV or even on-demand video services still had plenty of ways to entertain themselves.
Pa Ingalls is famous for playing his fiddle in the house after a long day in the fields.
Anne of Green Gables attended and participated in teas and poetry recitations.
There was vaudeville, opera, playhouses, traveling circuses and street buskers of one kind or another throughout the ages.
The people who had the leisure and intellectual fortitude to try to digest War and Peace back then were probably no less busy than those who still do today.
BookTube is full of avid bookworms who have books stacked up like mad hoarders (I can identify), but they actually read through those stacks and create videos to opine on their findings.
Naturally, there are MFA students who are obliged to read through thick literature, but there are others around who just like reading more than watching random content all day long.
It takes all kinds. Some people like cat videos. Some people love cat videos. Some people never watch any videos at all.
Also, there are cultural differences involved in readership. America’s preeminent contribution to world culture is our movies and TV. Other countries are still more oriented toward literature over theater. Despite the ease of delivery, a lot of people are still more inclined to read than to watch.
So, if you want to sell a crap-ton of books, yes, write quick-paced literary TV episodes. That’s perfectly valid.
The thing is, there is literally an audience for everything. There are about 8 billion people in the world and it’s estimated that 86% of them or 6.88 billion people are literate.
Among nearly 7 billion people worldwide, do you think you can find more than a handful of people who would rather chew through a book thick enough to give you back pain than watch Dancing with the Stars or Desperate Housewives?
I do.
I’d be willing to bet there are millions of people among the entire 8 billion who would read enough pages to rebuild an entire tree before they resorted to reality TV or influencer videos on TikTok.
Otherwise, Brandon Sanderson would never sell a single book. Nobody would care that George R. R. Martin hadn’t finished the damn Song of Ice and Fire because nobody would have gotten through the first book. James Joyce wouldn’t still be in print.
If theatre killed the literary star, there wouldn’t even be the five big houses anymore. No, some people read like it’s going out of style (particularly, my beautiful wife, Kelly).
So, for mass-market consumption nowadays for the typical buying audience, go ahead and write dizzyingly-paced mind candy. It’s okay. Mars, Hershey, Just Born and Cadbury get on quite well selling candy in unending quantities.
For your own peace of mind, write what you want to read. I want to read the rest of GRRM’s long-awaited series that he couldn’t even get the HBO screenwriters to finish correctly for him, but that’s another matter entirely.
The Sentinels is probably not going to have obvious appeal to the people who buy the modern equivalent of penny dreadfuls. They’re not my target audience.
Anyone who knows sales knows that your target customer is not everyone, it is someone in particular.
Harlequin Romances are fabulously successful and sell like hotcakes, but you’ll never see them in the hands of guys who like reading stories about Jack Reacher, Jason Bourne or Mack Bolan.
Nothing appeals universally. You pick a niche and try to serve its interests. You can’t sell steak to vegans. You can’t sell guns to pacifists. You can’t sell flashlights to blind people.
Identify your audience, include the tropes that appeal to them and you will delight that particular group of people.
Will avid readers of darn-near everything like The Sentinels? Sure, I hope so. I intend for it to be written well enough to be appreciated as a well-constructed series.
Maybe, if I can get word of mouth from people on the merits of the work, it will find broader appeal. I’m not banking on that. It’s better to focus on a core readership than try to be something for everyone.
In any case, I need to get back to it. I discovered that it’s suffering from a lack of villain involvement at the moment. Six chapters in and only one vague mention of gangs, a quick scuffle with some rude jerks and one B&E guy who tried to break into the wrong apartment. That’s not cutting it. Got to stop writing this so I can get on with writing that. See you on Wednesday.
That’s all for this tap-happy Memorial Day Weekend. I hope you have a great holiday and give a moment’s silence to our fallen heroes.