I Wanna Dance With Somebody

"Oh! I wanna dance with somebody
I wanna feel the heat with somebody
Yeah! I wanna dance with somebody
With somebody who loves me"

I Wanna Dance With Somebody - Whitney Houston 

Let's me start with this: I love this song. It's a classic ballad delivered from peak era Whitney Houston. It's been killed by thousands of people at karaoke bars - in both the good and bad way. It's that song that comes out near the end of the night at parties and weddings and everyone gets into it. I remember it coming on when I was at a club in Melbourne (incidentally, the same club which inspired The Nights and All The Small Things) and it made me think about how much I want to eventually find someone to dance with. 

There's many types of dancing out there: ballet, salsa, rumba, contemporary, hip hop, country line dancing, dancing in the rain, that weird move you always do in the club, dancing around like maniac when your favourite song comes on and that secret bum wiggle dance every tries out at least once. Dancing is part of life - even if you have never done it professionally it's still something that can bring a lot of joy and bring people together. I am always keen to get a dance floor going, however minimal. I was once on a dance with floor with one friend and three American girls I had just met, and I had a ball. 

But I Wanna Dance With Somebody is more about the dance of life. The song talks about finding that person who will dance with you through thick and thin. As a person who has never really had a serious relationship I see this song as an ideal, a goal, the end result. We all know life will throw great things and terrible things at you, and for many of us these things will be dealt with alongside a partner. I would like to think that we will all end up with someone holding our hand and dancing around the good and the bad, from your first dance at your wedding to the Saturday night dance at the retirement village. 

One day I will find someone to dance with. I blog time and time again about the importance of being an individual and following your dreams, but I still believe you can do all that with someone dancing alongside you. In the mean time, I will dance with friends and family, with strangers and by myself, until I find my dance partner. 

Wings + The Nights

"Mama told me not to waste my life,
She said spread your wings my little butterfly
Don't let what they say keep you up at night
And they can't detain you'
Cause wings are made to fly"

"He said, "One day you'll leave this world behind
So live a life you will remember."
My father told me when I was just a child
These are the nights that never die
My father told me"

Wings - Little Mix + The Nights - Avicii 

Not long before I left for Australia my mother came up to me and asked if I had heard Wings before. I said yes, of course, it's played all the time on the pop stations. She said something like good, that's what I want you to do. I got all sorts of other advice from my parents before I left - be safe, have fun, remember why you are going, do it for both of us. It was the typical parent stuff. It was comforting; before I left I had always wanted my parents permission to go off on this big adventure. Although I'm in my early twenties and could have gone off without their permission it was nice to know I had support back home. 

As I traveled I met a lot of young people like myself and one thing we often talked about was what our parents thought about us being on the road. I met a girl from London whose mother was reluctant to let her get an Australian Visa, and another girl from Sweden said her parents had begged her to come home for Christmas. There was an English girl who missed her parents so much she decided to go home after two months. I even met a mother who loved traveling so much she was taking her son along the Australian East Coast. Then there was the American grandmother I met who hinted it was she who needed her children's permission to go on her overseas experience. 

I'm lucky my parents let me go without too many reservations. It's a pretty big deal to let your child board a plane with just a few places of accommodation booked in a foreign country. Indeed, my mother she hardly sounded surprised when I called her from the Sunshine Coast and said "I'm off to Vietnam in two weeks!" And since I've been home my older brother has headed off on his overseas trip and my mother has let him to do his thing. Between myself and my older brothers we've always come back a bit wiser from all our overseas trips - my mother always said I came back different from my first solo overseas trip to Sydney when I was eleven. 

I picked out two songs this week to dedicate to my mother and father. The song by Avicii is a banger I am absolutely digging right now. I first heard it when I was in Australia and then it came on when I was in a club in Melbourne with my friends I met in America. I think that night, when we were all friends met while traveling, we remembered the nights we had together in Australia and America.

So this post is a double header of two pop songs my parents would probably never listen to, but you get the point. Thanks, ma and pa.