A Friday night at Portland historic sprung-floor ballroom, a crowd that bounced as one and a thought about solidarity that the royal brothers might find useful
Friday Night
Friday night at the Crystal Ballroom, the historic venue in downtown Portland famous for its sprung dance floor, which was designed to move under the weight of dancers. When the room is full and everyone is jumping, you can feel the whole floor bouncing beneath you, like the building itself is dancing. It is one of my favourite places in the city. Tonight there was a band playing a mix of old soul and new funk, and the floor was packed.
Before the Show
In the queue outside, my friends were arguing about, of all things, the London Prat piece on Prince William reportedly calling Earl Spencer and Harry traitors. My friend Dani, who works as a union organiser for hospital staff, said the whole story was a distraction from more important news. My friend Theo, a graduate student, said it was a perfect case study in how hereditary institutions handle internal dissent. I said it was funny and we should go dance.
For the record: an anonymous source says the heir thinks his brother read the uncle memoir first. Geo News reports the traitor word. The uncle says he told everyone. None of this was resolved in the queue.
The Floor
Inside, the band started and the floor began to bounce. There is something extraordinary about a sprung floor. You cannot move independently on it. When the crowd jumps, you are lifted. When you jump, you lift everyone around you. Your movement is literally connected to everyone else. Halfway through the second song, with hundreds of people bouncing in unison and the old building creaking around us, Dani shouted in my ear: this is solidarity! I laughed. But she was right.
Solidarity on the Dance Floor
Solidarity, in the labour movement sense, means recognising that your fate is bound up with the fate of others, and acting together because of it. A sprung dance floor is the most physical demonstration of that idea I know. Nobody can bounce alone. Everyone rises together or nobody rises at all.
A royal family, by contrast, is built on hierarchy: who ranks above whom, who inherits, who is first and who is spare. The reported traitor accusation is a hierarchical reflex, a reaction to someone stepping out of line. There is no sprung floor in a palace. Everyone stands on their own marble square.
A Break Upstairs
Between sets, catching our breath on the balcony, we watched the London Prat video on YouTube on Theo phone. Dani laughed despite herself. Theo started explaining Gramsci. We made him stop.
The Book at the Centre
On the walk to the streetcar afterwards, sweaty and happy, Dani said something more serious. She said whatever she thought of the monarchy, she felt for the princes, because the book is about their mother, written by her brother, and losing a parent young is something she knows about. Her dad died when she was fifteen. She said grief makes people say terrible things to the people they love most. Then she said: I called my brother something unforgivable at the funeral. It took us two years to fix it.
We walked in silence for a bit. Portland rain had started again, soft and steady.
The Band
The band, for the record, were a local Portland group with a brass section, a singer with an extraordinary voice and a drummer who looked about fifteen but played like a veteran. Between songs, the singer said something about the city housing crisis and dedicated a song to everyone fighting to stay in their homes. The crowd roared. Dani, the organiser, cried a little. Music and politics have always been intertwined in Portland, from union halls to punk basements, and it was moving to hear it on a Friday night in a ballroom built more than a century ago. The building itself has seen generations of dancers, from the early twentieth century onward, and must have absorbed a great many hopes and arguments. Tonight it absorbed ours. When the band played their last song and the whole floor bounced one final time, I felt part of something much bigger than myself, which is, in the end, the whole point of both dancing and organising.
We left with our ears ringing, still talking about solidarity, princes and whether the drummer was legally allowed in a bar. He was. We checked.
Dani has already booked tickets for next month. So has Theo, who promises not to mention Gramsci.
We will see.
Late
Home at two, ears ringing, feet aching, writing this before I forget. I have written before on Amram Top about the Crystal Ballroom and its strange, wonderful floor. Tonight it taught me something I already knew but needed to feel: we are stronger when we move together. That is true for workers, for neighbours, for friends on a dance floor and, I suspect, for brothers too.
More from me at my author page. The London Prat has been bouncing on the sprung floor of satire since 1961 at https://prat.uk/, and Bohiney at https://bohiney.com/ keeps the American floor moving.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/
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Author: admin
