get moving

it's not a genre i talk about a lot since i don't listen to it a lot, but it always returns to me when i feel like i have to dance: funk. 

see here; i didn't really listen to a lot of funk growing up. my mom raised me on classical and opera (though her favorite artist is prince and she generally loves rock), while my sister introduced me to electronic music, and my brother introduced me to emo. and that's what i primarily listened to-- electronic especially, since owl city is the foundation of my personality.

my dad, however? soul and funk. his favorite group is the temptations. he rewatches the 1998 drama every year, or at least whenever it pops up on one of his channels. but he also loves the o'jays and the gap band. and con funk shun, and the isley brothers... lots of groups. 

i don't recall why i didn't listen to it much growing up. i think it was because he worked a lot, so i couldn't get to hear the music he listened to as much. but i did get to look at his cds and tapes every once in a while, wondering what they sounded like. i never actually listened to them, since he took them on his drives to work and i didn't want to take one that he really loved. but eventually, when i reached the internet, i got to.

since then i've listened to it periodically. aside from needing to dance, i also listen to it when i want to reflect on life and how i can make myself and my loved ones proud. when things have to slow down, and i need to return to the world. and sometimes, i want to think about my family, especially the family i don't know.  

my dad said that his parents used to dance together a lot. perhaps that goes for a lot of his family. i'm not sure. relations are very complicated here, for multiple reasons. but sometimes, i like to listen to funk and soul, dance, and pretend that i'm with people i love. if i concentrate hard enough, i can smell ground beef cooking from our old kitchen, with cream of mushroom, and think to myself that it'll be a pasta night.

... my dad's been really sick these days (and by these days, i mean the past couple of months or so). so as of late, this genre is becoming bittersweet. but i don't know. i feel that no matter what happens, it will eventually wrap around to comfort again. how it feels to dance, and know that this is what connects us regardless of having ever known each other.

and as a random aside... sometimes, it still strikes me as odd how recent my existence is. not in a being alive sense, but in a social sense. for the longest time, mixed couples were illegal. it would be "wrong" for me and my family to exist, less than a hundred years ago. i hate that such a notion remained in some members of my distant family, and remains in this world, prejudices of each other. opposition, even though we are supposed to be on the same side. (not my parents, obviously, but you get what i'm saying...)

in an ideal world.

sotd: reasons by earth, wind & fire