We keep doing, that’s what we do

David Rudder will soon be 70, Gary Hector is 60, and I’m teaching myself ballet.

All incredible but true. Incredible, not as in wonderful, but in the sense of defying belief.

On 6 May, his birthday, Rudder will give a gorgeous and heartbreaking performance, because that is what he does.

Gary just did his first solo show, heartful and intimate, because that is what he does.

And I am doing ballet via YouTube and looking more like an octopus than a dancer. Because, you know, that’s how it goes for some of us.

I feel like 100 years old and this is what I have decided I want to do.

At my age ballet is almost an extreme sport, but it also feels oddly natural. People my age do yoga. Yoga – healing friend to many – is not something my body grasps. But this slightly unnatural-looking thing that professional dancers train their bodies and destroy their feet to do, this feels right.

I look like an idiot, but that’s never stopped me before.

In Merle Hodge’s Crick Crack Monkey, the young protagonist, Tee, is sent to ballet class by her antagonistic aunt. Tee must show the dance teacher how she moves. After some awkward pausing, Tee wines as best as the unfamiliar ballet music allows.

That would have been me. I doubt that’s the takeaway either Merle or my first-form teacher hoped for, but that’s what I got.

Will I ever be any good at ballet? Unlikely. I had zero dance lessons of any kind when I was a child. I was so rhythmically challenged that, on the rare occasion on which I could not weasel my way out of it entirely, I had to be the marching mascot on sports day. Not because I was cute or had some special skill, but because I could not keep time with everyone else.

Out front, and about the height of a side table, no one seemed to notice I was out of sync. And that’s where I’ve been ever since. Away from others, a bit out of step.

I don’t know if either Rudder or Gary – isn’t it funny how one is always referred to by his last name and the other by his first? – has dance aspirations. No matter what they chose or choose to do, I think of them as always being a little off to the side, not quite falling in step with everyone else. Because if they did, they couldn’t know the things they know or sing the things they sing.

At 60, Gary Hector, a man of many bands, is striking out on his own. He has been wearing that cowboy hat for a while, and sure, we can’t really say we didn’t hear him reaching for a sort of country sound in some of his music, but did any of us think he was actually going country? Did we want him to? Away from jointpop, away from crashing drums and that sweet, sweet rock guitar, we find Gary, just him and an acoustic guitar, and he sounds remarkably familiar.

His recent concert was called Naked. And maybe there was some soul-nudity, maybe there wasn’t. The thing is, he still sounded like the man I’d been listening to for most of my life. I don’t think he can write a clothed song. They all peel away layers of himself and ourselves, always looking for a