Creatives Need Side Quests

Are you up to enough antics?

I have always loved watching people play video games. I would avidly watch my little brother play The Secret of Monkey Island when I was little, and delight at this beautiful, silly world of pirates. There was one part of the game where you could set off the fire alarm at an island school, and get everyone to evacuate. We would evacuate that school over and over again, laughing hysterically every time. The teacher would scream “ANOTHER FIRE, everyone run for your lives!” and we would be bent over double over in hysterics.

These were side quests.

Video games are full of them. There was no point in evacuating that school, it did not get us closer overthrowing the fire bearded pirate, Le Chuck. And yet we evacuated that school over and over again.

I’m caught up in 90’s PC nostalgia. The point is, side quests are fucking delightful.

Even when I overcame the gendered story that girls don’t game and learnt to game myself, I didn’t do side quests. When I played the Witcher, I explored NO caves, if the amiable looking NPC asked me to play the card game Gwent I would get out my sword and swing it at them, (they were unkillable). I am the sort of person who stays on the path. I have a job to do. Do not distract me with antics.

I can be a bit like this in life too. I stick to the main quest, my main quest happens to be fucking wonderful, it is writing books, and making art, and encouraging others to do the same. But as an artist and a writer and a fucking human being, it is incredibly important that I MEANDER.

So I am committing to a year of antics, a year of meandering, a year following a rouge curiosities, even when they have no relevance to my main quest.

Last night I went on my first side quest.

I went to a DANCEHALL CLASS.

I am not a dancer. I have very little awareness of where my body is in space, and no ability to hold steps in my head. But I am obsessed with dancehall dancers. I have obsessively watched them online for nearly a decade. It was time to stop watching, and to become.

430pm day of side quest.

I eat my dinner. I normally eat at 530, but that would be when I would be dancing!! These side-quests have me making my extremely strange food timetable even stranger.

440pm.

I debate what to wear. Dancers wear baggy clothes, so says the internet. I go for my oversized GANDALF tshirt (literarily a shirt with gandalf on it) and leggings because the only baggy bottoms I have are jeans and that can’t be right. I only own three pairs of shoes, so it’s either crocks, slippers or my runners…

455pm

I leave early to make sure I can figure out where to park. At first I park 500 meters away, and then realise that’s kind off far and I dare to go closer. I get one 450 meters away.

511pm:

I enter the dance studio with a demeanour that I hope says, I have never done this before, please be nice to me. I say my name is Amie. They say. Amie McKee? I say yes, even though that is not really my name. Dance studio three please.

512pm:

I walk in. A few girls are stretching sort of like a yoga session. I have to choose where to set up. Tricky. I will suck at this. So back of class makes sense. BUT I like looking at myself in mirrors, and I am going to want to see the teacher. I opt for front of class but right at the end of the studio. I smile at the girls and try and seem sweet. I am sweet. But my natural instinct is to do that thing that most women do when we convene in a group, I shut down and put my defences up. I make eye contact and smile whenever I can.

It’s a big class, which delights me. Monday afternoon and a room filled with people who want to be in community and express themselves. I feel so strongly that the world is healed by in real life creative experiences like this.

520pm:

Our teacher comes in. Obviously she’s incredibly fucking cool. Baggy clothes. Of course.

She turns on the music and we warm up. Gandalf tshirt comes off almost immediately, it is such an active workout. Now I have no baggy clothes on!! Just leggings and a sports bra. Embarrassing! I am exposed as a NON DANCER, but that is already wonderfully, potently obvious.

530pm:

We start to learn a handful of moves and begin stringing them together. The hanky panky, the Pull up yuh drawers, the Wacky dip.

I’m currently in the best physical condition of my life and it’s amazing to watch such an athletic looking body move so poorly. It’s such sexy dancing, and that’s why I wanted to try dancehall. By 530pm I feel less sexy, more… very, very white. I am so stiff, and unsure.

Am I embarrassed? No. I would’ve been deeply embarrassed to show up like this for most of my life but today I simply feel absolutely adorable, because I am trying.

542pm:

I forget the choreography and stand absolutely still in the middle of a wildly moving room and I notice the story “This is so not you” rear it’s head. I refute the claim. I am whatever I want to be.

620pm:

I leave the class, and I feel light and giggly, not unlike how I would feel when I would evacuate the school in monkey island for the 15th time.