Dancing With the Universe

From MinnPost:

The video was downloaded to the web on Saturday, June 20, 2008. By Sunday, it had 1 million hits. By Thursday, it was everywhere — embedded on Facebook and MySpace pages and flooding email inboxes and translating into millions of viewers, thousands of comments, and official "gone viral" status.

But this one is no YouTube vanity trip. This one is different. This one feels important, necessary, and artistic; it's a concrete manifestation of the change that the world's leaders have been preaching at a time when the human race could use a little pick-me-up, a little jig in its step.

This one is a high-definition television commercial for hope...

The sum effect of "Dancing," which is called "Where the Hell Is Matt (2008)" on YouTube, is just that --especially when coupled with the ephemeral music created by Harding's friend Gary Schyman and sung by Palbasha Siddique, a 17-year-old native of Bangladesh who will be a senior at Minneapolis Southwest High School this year.

Here is a translation of the poem "Stream of Life," by Rabindranath Tagore, which Siddique adapted for "Dancing":

Stream of Life
by Rabindranath Tagore

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.