Escape.

The 4th of July has never been a day of huge celebration for me or my family. No particular reason and no we aren't unpatriotic but something about the holiday has just eluded itself from my rep of Hallmark benchmarks. I have various memories from a handful of Independance Days usually involving barbecues and fireworks, flagpoles of everyone's celebrations. Today was the same but something about it felt very different. I had the chance to escape from the city for about five hours; five hours that exposed my eyes to a New York beyond "The City".

Larchmont was the destination of choice and the party took place at one of the must stunning locations I have been to in recent memory. It was a house resting on the shores of the Long Island Sound with a dock extending out toward the water like a telescope magnifying the explosions. It was not the dance world, not the theater world, not a school world, it was the real world. At first I when I arrived I found myself almost wanting to escape back into the comforts of my normal party routines where everyone is an artist and there isn't really such a thing as normal. Families with small children were frolicking around the enormous lawn, a yard who's expansive reach and view into the open water seemed to echo my sense of searching. My normal ends were not in sight, there was nothing but openness.

I have determined that I am not really good with kids. They read it right away as if I am wearing it written on my shirt and look at me with their piercing open eyes with a sense of bewilderment. "Who is this awkward creature?", they ask. I can't remember a time that I have been around this many young children and something about their innocence, their fear of the noisy explosions, and their "oohs" and "ahhs" as the fireworks popped in the sky comforted me. It was like realizing that its okay not to have all the answers.

On a day that is supposed to be a reminder of our strong roots to our country and our history, seeing these children experiencing so much for the first time reminded me of a sort of innocence in myself. Wow, selfish sentence much?! I was stuck in the middle of age ranges at this party, with only the adults above and the children below buffered by my slightly older sister. Part of me felt like a fly on the wall that had flown into this world he had never seen. My dad and I talked about how it's difficult as an artist to be at parties with people who lead such normal lives. Not that our lives are any better, they are just so different. To me a stock broker is just as strange as a dancer is to them. However for those few moments standing over the water on the dock we all united as the flickers lit up our eyes and our minds.

Escape is an important thing whether it is a physical or a mental. We all need to drift off to new places at some point even if those places are slightly uncomfortable. Today for me was a happy discomfort, a time to analyze what and why and how everything has ended up as it is. As I watched the children running around I realized that while now they are running amok in fifteen years they could be just as much on the outside of a party like this as I was. Who knows where we're going end up.