The Kebab Queens

It might sound a bit silly, or greedy, or both. But there are songs that make me feel not only powerful but also power-hungry. I’m talking about a song by Coldplay called Viva la vida; not that I am a big fan of this band, actually I’ve always sustained that if a boiled hake had a voice, it would be Chris Martins’.
Apparently, this song was used to motivate the players of the football team that has won three cups after a historical season. (“I used to rule the world, seas would rise when I gave the word”) Not that I’m a big fan of football either, but this fact captured my attention, for it takes to a higher level the motivation you can bring out from certain notes or chords or lyrics.
I can easily imagine all those alfa males listening to the song and removing everything from their heads until the only thing they are able to imagine is winning. (I used to roll the dice, feel the fear in my enemies’ eyes.”)
I use music all the time to motivate myself when I head to the office at seven in the morning, or when I have to go to the supermarket and face up to dozens of old ladies armed with shopping carts. I use it when it rains and I forgot my umbrella, and when I miss someone but want to feel as happy as if they were around.
There was a time when I didn’t need to feed my confidence in order to succeed, I didn’t even think about it in those terms. I had to do something; I did it, I was the best, end of story. But living involves failing, too. And I’ve learnt from my failures that intelligence is not a blank check that guarantees that everything is gonna work out well for you. (“One minute I held the key, next the walls were closed on me.”) Things get even more complicated if your success doesn’t only depend on you.
Some days ago I was a bit worried because I had to perform that belly dance show I have been rehearsing since Christmas. Four years ago, when I moved to this outlaying neighbourhood where I live, I decided to join a dance group to feel I belonged here, maybe put down some roots.
The other women’s reasons for being in this group are also far from having something to do with improving their dance skills. For most of them it is a way out of their routine, a time to laugh or talk about their lives, complaints and miseries. But when they dance and focus on moving their hips and breasts they are just women. Nothing else. No less. And the sensual movements of that dance awaken their inner feminine power. After a couple of hours they go back home with a renewed interest in having sex with their husband (if they have one), or a sudden desire to cook spicier meals in their tiny kitchens. Once, one of the women of the dance group asked our teacher if it was possible to choreograph a dance with shorter steps.
“I have to rehearse in the kitchen, which is only two metres wide. I can’t take long steps or movements without ending up in the sitting-room, where my husband and son would laugh at me if they saw me dancing.” (“It was the wicked and wild wind, blew down the doors to let me in.”)
Obviously, that didn’t put our teacher off choreographing a dance with all its corresponding long steps for a sort of end-of-course party. The idea of performing it on a stage in front of the rest of the neighbourhood was definitely a bad one. I mean all those people don’t have no reason to see in us anything more than a quirky non homogeneous troup of working class women dressed up as odalisques, embarrassing themselves, showing, in some cases, their lack of rhythm and flexibility. They don’t necessarily need to be able to see those magical feminine connections I mentioned some lines ago. That’s why I decided I would take the Coldplay song to our last rehearsal before the show (I bought a couple of six packs, too. The song is powerful but, failing that, I knew the beer would do the trick.)
When I put the CD on and the first notes sounded, all the women in our dance room, as if powered by a spring, started jumping, and laughing and screaming and dancing to that song, dressed in those incongruent outfits and with a can of beer in our hands. (“For some reason I can’t explain, I know Saint Peter won’t call my name.”)
Then came another song and another beer, and another. And at some point I guess we walked to the stage and danced in front of all the neighbourhood, and that in some video recordings there will be inmortalized our tipsy look and our (still) sensual movements. I just remember that I had great fun, which necessarily means we were immense.
Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking about those elements I had to turn to in order to build some confidence in myself to do things I know I can do. Then I miss those times when succeeding was an accident, like being young and spontaneous, a time when I enjoyed an unstructured charm and the unintended soul of a leader. (“But that was when I ruled the world.”)