A river, an old song and moments that became memories

It was around 2am or 3am  in the morning, I can not quite recall. 

We were seated on the banks of the River Nile, a small circle of people; colleagues, friends and almost-friends under the stars, with music playing into the night. There were five countries represented in that circle, and even those from the same country came from opposite ends of it, different accents, different memories, different histories.

At that hour of the night, there wasn't that much seemed important. No one was talking about work. We were simply there, sharing a night, sharing wine, sharing music, sharing an easy closeness forming among people who may or may never sit together in exactly the same way again.

The playlist kept drifting backward, one familiar song after another. Yes, you know those songs that carry the weight of so many years and memories inside in them making people smile before the chorus even begins.

Hotel California by Eagles came on. Almost everyone knew it.

The singing became louder, increasingly more carefree, each person entering in where they remembered the words best, some confidently correct, others confidently wrong. Then there was that line that made me pause...

Some dance to remember, some dance to forget.

One of the ladies sung that particular line quite loudly that the line stood out as if it had separated itself from the song.

Some dance to remember. Some dance to forget.

That statement became larger than the music itself, and it actually felt true in that moment.

A song can return you somewhere without warning. To a school corridor, a wedding, a heartbreak, bus journey, to a person you no longer speak to or a version of yourself you had almost forgotten existed.

There are times when people dance because they want that return. They want, for three or four minutes, to meet an older version of life, and touch something that once felt simple or alive. A song can open a small door and for a moment you step through it willingly.

Other times people dance for the opposite reason, to forget by leaving certain thoughts outside the moment. They dance to let the body carry what the mind has been carrying all day. They dance to stop worrying about tomorrow and stop answering imagined questions. Sometimes I dance to silence worry, nudges from unfinished work, loneliness, uncertainty, all of it.

No, I do not dance to forget forever, but just until the song ends, because the music does not remove life, but only interrupts it. The speakers will eventually go quiet. Someone checks the time. Someone remembers the morning ahead. Someone mentions the long drive back, the early meeting, the message they forgot to answer, the thing waiting for them beyond the night, and life resumes almost immediately.

Could this be exactly why these moments matter? For a short while, people stand fully where their feet are, without being dragged backward or forward too much. One smiling at memories, another deep in their private thoughts, another singing loudly, almost theatrically, another just listening. All that in my opinion could be a kind of dancing too, even without moving, and in a way saying, "for this moment, I am here."

That night by the Nile, under the stars, with five countries gathered in one small circle, old songs seemed to flatten distance not between countries, but distance between years, between who people had been and who they were now. 

That night was not just about music. It was about something else that is harder to explain. You realise that knowing someone is not always about time, but sometimes it is about moments. You can know a person for years and still not know them like that. On the other hand, you can meet someone one evening, sit by a river, share music, share silence, share badly sung lyrics, and leave knowing something real about them.

That night, I met a constellation from the East properly, through their presence, laughter, the stories they told, the memories they shared, and most importantly for me was the unspoken understanding that, for that moment, that was enough. I say a constellation because they are not just one bright point, but made of remarkable parts carrying patterns, meaning, and depth, where people can look at them more than once and still discover something new.

Some dance to remember what life once felt like. Some dance to forget what life has become. Most of us, I suspect, are doing both at once. There are times, without even realising it, where we dance to meet each other somewhere in between.