Dancing When the Bomb Drops

FRIENDS OF MINE author and GenXer Elisa Lorello navigates midlife through her Duran Duran lens.

Dancing When the Bomb Drops: An Introduction

“We want to be the band to dance to when The Bomb drops,” said Duran Duran vocalist Simon Le Bon in a December 1980 article. They had yet to take the world by storm, but those present from the beginning knew that a storm was brewing in the best way possible.

Among Duranies, the quote has become iconic. It’s a snapshot of Generation X; whereas our parents went through air raid drills and our children and grandchildren are going through active shooter drills, my classmates and I went through Cold War drills: namely, what to do in the event of a nuclear strike. Never mind that we’d be vaporized before getting to the door.

You’d think nuclear disaster was imminent. We were told to live as if it was. (Don’t believe me? Look up The Day After on IMDb.)

Duranies took the quote—hell, it was a mission statement—to heart, and Duran Duran delivered danceable music regardless of the DEFCON status.

Forty years later, on an episode of his podcast The D Side, my good friend David O. revisited Simon’s declaration. According to David, “the Bomb” wasn’t a singular weapon of annihilation. Rather, it was those defining moments in life (and perhaps not so defining—just… life) that threatened to annihilate our spirit, if not our survival.

And, of course, there didn’t have to be just one.

We lived through Wall Street and the fall of the Berlin Wall. We lived through college promising us “a good job” and changed jobs time and time again. As the Cold War faded from the rearview mirror, we ran smack into the War on Terror following September 11, 2001.

We made it to midlife.

But wait, there’s more.

David posed a question: “When the bombs drop, are you dancing?”

Not dancing because they’re dropping, but dancing—literally or figuratively—because you’re fully immersed in your life when they do.

When I wrote Friends of Mine: Thirty Years in the Life of a Duran Duran Fan, the Bomb had been my parents’ separation and eventual divorce when I was thirteen. Duran Duran was the band I danced to through that wreckage and restoration.

Moreover, the Fab Five (regardless of their incarnation) propped me up whenever subsequent, albeit smaller bombs threatened to knock me off my feet. And by the time I published Friends of Mine, the world was my beach and I was Rio dancing on the sand. 

But nothing prepared me for these last ten years.

Nothing prepared me for the bomb of rising author success followed by plummeting failure and the continuing struggle to find my equilibrium.

Nothing prepared me for the bomb of the promise of a blissful marriage followed by irreconcilable differences.

Nothing prepared me for the death of a parent. Or two uncles. Or a friend who became a brother. Bomb after bomb after bomb.

Nothing prepared me for the bomb of Covid-19. Or altitude sickness.

Nothing prepared me for the bomb of saying goodbye to a tuxedo cat who chose me as her person.

David O. observed that Duran Duran is at an authentic place where “they’re dancing, not chasing. Not chasing hits, charts, or Likes on social media. They’re having fun with each other and their fans.”

I have chased so much these last ten years that I’ve not only stopped dancing but also have forgotten how.

These last ten years have brought me to my knees.

And yet, Duran Duran has remained the soundtrack of my life. They’ve been a portal of escape. A dose of nostalgia. A lighthouse.

They remind me that all I need is now, and it’s all a future past as they honor the past that brought them to this now. They tell me to dance into the fire, and to believe it’ll be alright again.

In late 2020 I wrote the first draft of a new memoir called Stay with the Music that picked up where Friends of Mine left off. I shelved it to finish and publish my novel All of You in October 2022. Last year, I intended to finish Stay with the Music and release it exactly ten years after Friends of Mine’s launch.

However, I couldn’t.

It was too overwhelming. Too emotionally taxing. It kicked me in the gut.

In hindsight, maybe I wasn’t meant to finish it because the story wasn’t finished.

I mean, the story is never finished. But at some point, you come to a suitable conclusion for the sake of rhetorical purpose.

This Substack series sort of takes place in the middle of the memoir. Or, perhaps, two-thirds of the way through.

It’s about where I am now and where I’m going tomorrow in the context of what came yesterday.

It’s about the bombs.

It’s about me learning to dance again.

It’s about reclaiming my authenticity while rediscovering my tribe. It’s about daring to live a different life.

But it’s also for you.

It’s for you, fellow Duranie and GenXer.

It’s for you, who lost a parent, a friend, a spouse, a vocation, or a home. Or hell, all of the above.

It’s for you, who wants to recover your true north.

It’s an invitation to dance again. To dance into the fire. Dance among the wreckage. Dance through the joy and the sorrow and the beauty and the heartbreak and the rise and the fall.

One step at a time, set to the soundtrack of our lives.

Because no matter what has gone on in our lives, no matter how many bombs have been dropped, we’ve put the records on, we’ve watched the videos, we’ve gone to the shows, and we’ve danced.

This is the gift Duran Duran keeps on giving. It’s the promise they’ve kept, and it’s the deal we’ve made: keep dancing.

Because when we’re dancing, even when The Bomb drops, all is well.

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