According to the French historian Philippe de Félice, “Eras of greatest material and moral distress seem to be those during which people dance most.” A medieval dancing mania swept through Europe following the height of the Black Death, when between 500 and 800 people died every day in Paris and Saint-Denis, and when alternating waves of flood and drought caused widespread famine. I wanted my body to influence and be influenced by other bodies - this time not as a vector of disease but as a vector of pure feeling. In isolation, I’d felt myself stiffen into a form so familiar it had come to seem inescapable. Sometimes I mean that I want very badly to pin somebody to the club wall with my butt.Įven though it’s better, as my mother recommended, to dance alone than not at all, the “ despojo” I’d been dreaming of was social. But when I say “ despojo,” I don’t always mean to sound so serious. In order to repossess the body, it’s necessary to dispossess it in order to feel alive, it’s necessary to get in touch with what’s already dead. The “ despojo” I’ve desired articulates a paradox. I guess “ despojo” comes to me, via Puerto Rican Spanish, in a register already worked through by ritual, by generations of people who’ve had to scavenge something good from the many losses of forced migration. It’s strange to discover that a word I associate with rejuvenation technically has more to do with death and disaster. I’ve never known what “ despojo” means, precisely, though it’s a word I use with some frequency to express a physical craving for spiritual catharsis: “ Necesitamos despojo, quiero despojarme.” Or, watching a friend gain momentum on the dance floor and begin to enter a self-forgetful trance: “ Esoooo! Des-po-jo!” My Spanish-English dictionary has only the verb (to despoil, to shed leaves) and the plural noun (the spoils of war, mortal remains, rubble, waste). But in that same period had my life evolved at all? Had I met anyone? Surprised myself? Stemmed the tide of collective crisis? My mother often urged me to dance, just a little, by myself in the kitchen - “It’s good medicine,” she said, “ despojo.” When I pulled my hair back in a tight ponytail, I could see a patch of scalp.

My right knee was clearly deteriorating - I couldn’t sit cross-legged at my desk the way I used to - and because I wasn’t wearing makeup, I could track each age spot as it bloomed to the surface. I turned 33, then 34, and my body seemed to grow old without bringing my spirit along with it. įor most of 2020, I passed the pandemic alone in my studio apartment. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

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