You can’t control Falling in Love. That’s where the Falling part comes in, and why everything that comes after that can be so beautiful or so tragic. Sometimes both and maybe even at the same time. Falling is uncontrollable. If it could be controlled, then it would be Flying. Flying is how some of the old timers describe the way Frankie Manning danced. Flying is also what superheroes do. Frankie probably would have laughed off that comparison, but it’s a better description than you would think. After all, heroes give us Hope.
Hope is about possibilities and opportunities. There are now thousands of people around the world that can express themselves in a way that should have disappeared decades ago because Frankie taught them to Swing.
Swing is the way your Soul expresses itself. It's not just about music or movements. Swing about creating something new or different out of something familiar. Frankie once bragged that he could Swing even when he was standing still.
But when we Swing too hard or Hope for too much, sometimes we Fall. It felt like that a year ago. But that was Frankie’s final lesson to us: that Falling isn't always a bad thing. A year ago, something tragic eventually turned into something very beautiful.
Flying is not the opposite of Falling. It’s just another way of doing it differently.
