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Text of the poem.
November, 2014:
A: When, in the practimilonguero videos the older people say tango is a feeling, a passion, they don't only mean the music, do they...?
B: They don't. There's nothing "only" about this music :)
***
In July 2012 I went to my first tango social dance in Edinburgh. It was a one-off event for beginners in the port of Leith, an area of the city by the docks. I had been going to classes in another town for about a month. The subject of "tango" came up in conversation with a new acquaintance, evidently an experienced dancer. I don't remember how the conversation started but we were talking about it as I suppose a bundle of associations. It would be at least another two years before I realised that tango is not a verb, perhaps not even a well-defined notion, it is accurately a kind of music to which we dance. According to him "tango" could become a kind of obsession, an addiction, that people could take things too far, could get too wrapped up in it. Tango could come to mean more to them than what it is. They could, if not careful, develop a tendency to forget that it is just a dance. It wasn't a warning exactly, more an observation.
Perhaps a year later I mentioned to an experienced teacher how "tango" - I suppose I meant the self-contained space of the milonga - was a refuge from daily life. "For some", he said, amused while I squirmed. Tango is different for everyone.
Over three years on that music and dance, the life of the milonga - where I hear and dance tango - is for me a filter on life. The milonga is a microcosm for, not the world, not society but specifically for how people interact with one another. So it is true for me now that life and what happens in the milongas overlap. You hear it said that for some "tango" is a way of life, or that it is a journey in life as much as in dance or that the milonguero lifestyle is one where people spend a lot of time in the milongas. It is not just any of those things for me. The milongas are a way of seeing, of understanding things about life.
I see now that "tango" is different things for different people: a kind of music, a kind of dance, an image, a fantasy; it's a hobby, a dance class, a marker in the week, a way to spend time with a partner, a way of meeting others. For some it is a way of meeting singles; for the predatory it is a hunting ground, a way of getting their hands salaciously on the young, the vulnerable and the unwary. It can become a means of asserting power, a form of social competition, an aspiration, a means of ambition, something to work on, something serious, "something difficult and rewarding...a valid, satisfying and worthy goal... an adequate justification for persistent effort" (here), a career; a show, a passion, a contest. Tango for some is an exploration, an adventure, an enhancement to travel, an international community, a shared language, a way of belonging. It can mean a social occasion, a time to meet friends, or a way of being anonymous; an opportunity to meet strangers, a way of connection. It can be relaxing, focusing, a meditation, a means of mindfulness, a time of reflection on the past or the future, a time to be wholly in the present, an elusiveness, a mystery, a release, an oblivion, a pleasure, an ache, a drug, another world. It is a feeling, an intuition, a recognition, a pull, a "something" that makes you want to dance.
