The Importance of Being Human

Living with open ears gets to be challenging in a noisy world, and almost nowhere in my world is it as loud as it is in spinning class. One difference between an indoor ride and an outdoor ride is that at least with the latter, you get somewhere! But another has to do with the noise level. I am not an I-Pod wearer-- maybe among the last of us without earbuds and a white cord dangling. So I am not accustomed to having ambient sounds crowded rudely out by music at volumes approaching rock concerts or planes escaping the runway. Spinning has meant adjustments for my legs and heart to the exercise, and my ears (and heart!) to the music's volume.

It is the volume itself that makes actually listening to it difficult. Otherwise, one's whole body becomes an eardrum, and vibrates, like everything else in the room, to the beat. That's where the heart-part comes in: is my heart beating to the music or is the music beating my heart? Hard to say. My legs keep pumping anyway!

So it is unusual when, having become the noise I am immersed in, I actually hear the lyrics, especially if the song is new to me, as one was the other day. I heard this chorus, emerging over the relatively dulcet chords: "Are we human? Or are we dancers?"

I love it when existential questions rise like the Lady of the Lake (or Angelina Jolie) from beneath the primordial ooze of everyday distractions.

Turns out, the questions were posed by the British punk rock group, The Killers, in their web-released song, "Human," last September. Turns out, bit of controversy there. (You'll be helped to hear what I'm writing in that last bit by re-reading and saying "controversy" in a British accent!) More than one critic called the lyric "silly"-- which is both damning and positively saying something when it comes to rock music lyrics, most of which hold meaning like a sieve holds water. But one post opined that when the song appeared in German, the meaning suggested that maybe The Killers were likening us to marionettes. Some of the lyrics appeared to have allusions to puppetry. Maybe it helps to hear rock music sung in languages other than our own?

Point is, I really got caught by the dilemma of the questions-- thus (a)mused my way through several intervals, jumps, and sprints. Are we human? Or are we dancers?

I want to make two quick comments, not by way of answers, certainly not one way or the other, but in order to speak out of both sides of my mouth:

Yes, we are human-- and since it is our basic humanity that gets too often lost in this brutish and inhuman world, affirming it, confirming it, and returning to it requires a daily spiritual discipline. We are helped when we can treat each other with compassion and embrace ourselves and each other in our common humanity. We ARE human. But we need a kind of common encouragement to be our all-too-human selves...

And, yes, we can be dancers! In fact, would that we were dancers! Would that we could develop in ourselves a capacity to transcend our humanity, even if only for brief moments in time, and dance! And participate in that which is greater than ourselves with a freedom straining for abandon! And be moved by music that we hear with our whole selves, and give ourselves over to, so that we are made lighter, translucent even, by moving at the speed of sound!

Ah, maybe making us riders into dancers-with-pedals is what our spinning instructors are aiming for? Why then do I feel only the sound barrier? In the noise, I huff and puff and am reminded all too well of my humanity. In the music, who could tell what hills I might climb?