Poppies

Walled garden, Mirehouse

A song is personal. The choice of song indicates preference, the inclination of personality. A song is emotion, sometimes poetry, the expression of an inner self; it is the breath of your life. Singing requires a particular kind of breathing which is perhaps why it is so linked to wellbeing.

A dandelion will sing a song and not think twice about it nor care where its spores land. A tulip may have a few qualms but in the grand scheme of things probably isn’t too bothered. But orchids, as ever, need the right environment. Singing in harmony with dad, the feeling was always right. Singing at home feels right. 

Singing with others can feel fraught, or irrelevant even when I have been asked if or whether I will sing again.  Just as I only dance when the feeling is right I only want to sing when the feeling is right and in public it never has been quite right. But the same can be true of watching and not singing.

Perhaps we are afraid of looking or sounding stupid of rejection, of seeming weak. We are back to Cain. 

The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. (John Steinbeck, 'East of Eden')

It is coming in to poppy season.  Poppies are curious. They will grow in poor soil, but they are not dandelions. Fragile, yet enduring.  Picked, a poppy dies within an hour. Is confidence like the poppy, stunning and miraculous in the right soil; but sensitive, easily killed off? 

It's puzzling that some people sing so easily with others but I have learned that we only tend to see who is present. And for everyone who is present there are also their shadows, those absent or who do not join in.  They all have their reasons. I have met many people who stopped going to the milongas because they were not invited to dance, or they hadn’t the self-belief or the experience or simply the assistance, the support to master the traditional non-verbal signals of invitation and acceptance. They wanted to, but they couldn’t. Or no-one talked to them and that is far too common.  Inexperienced, overwhelmed, bewildered perhaps afraid, the neophyte it seems, is still supposed to make the effort. 

Fear kills many impulses. Maybe it's fear, but also I don't sing there because I have no-one to sing with. No-one knows my songs because they are in Spanish and from far away countries.  No one has quite said "bring some music and I will play for you" though sometimes they have said so-and-so will probably play.  Why sing with someone else? Singing with gives security.  We all have the primal need to feel safe. Our sense of safety is affected by our personality, our environment and by what happens to us.  If you grow up in a culture that sees singing as about individual performance and associating certain attributes with that then of course if you are an ordinary person with an ordinary voice you are unlikely to feel safe singing in front of a group of strangers.  It would be profoundly unnatural. But if you grow up in a culture like that shown in the Argentinian documentaries about folk music, there, music fulfils a very different there, singing accompanies the mundane tasks of daily life - herding, planting, expressing the events and feelings of your own life, seeing your  neighbours, marking festivals, participating in  community life. 

(See: The Ultimate Companion, Strangeness and Awe, Musical Journeys)

There are unusual people like Laura who sing out, solo, their joy in life.  I remember her coming to the old Glasgow practica for the first time, introducing her to people, inviting her to the tiny cafe we used to squeeze into, to drink tiny cups of thick Italian hot chocolate while our breath fogged the windows.  She sang tangos for us there and we were delighted. Years later at the milonga in the garden of her home in Utrecht she sang again. Someone told me later that when she knew she was sick she sewed a shroud of flowers.  They might have been poppies. 

 Not everyone sings for joy.  Why would I sing alone, to a group?  Each singer is politely applauded, but what is the point, apart from to feed the ego?  For me it is about the pleasure of singing with, not singing to. I don't mean singing within the much more formal structure of a choir, just singing with someone or some few people.  My idea is more that of dad with the hymns or Bing and the washing up or my Argentinian friend with his campfire and friends, guitar and zambas and the backdrop of the Sierras de Córdoba .

Community run dances and some Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Because most people who have learned to dance just want to dance, they don’t tend to think about showing new guys how to dance, by well, just dancing with them.  It isn't, for many who think that learning is only something you do in class, one of the things you do to bring new people into the scene.  So, sadly, beginners are often largely ignored.  It is the cultural legacy of that sink or swim attitude which infects scenes run by elitist and usually controlling individuals.   You can recognise them because they are notoriously unfriendly, or will even talk about the downsides of being too generous.  

There is however a community run practica in Glasgow.  Glasgow does already have the redly named Glasgow Tango Collective which was set up in the vacuum left after a teacher moved away and his milonga ended.   It runs classes, a practica, a monthly milonga and special events.  However, as with many of these ventures, it is really run by a teacher plus friends and I am not sure if the practica and milonga would survive independently of the individuals who set it up, as would a true community initiative.

This newer venture, called Tango Mac has set up in a little known Charles Rennie Mackintosh building, the Ruchill Kelvinside Parish church hall.

It is off an unprepossessing section of Maryhill Road populated by tanning salons, tattoo and betting shops, nail bars and a Vape City.   It was not, as far as I can gather, set up purely from altruistic motives. In a dramatic dagger-and-revenge move the rumour was it was initiated to supplant and shut down a teacher-led practica which runs at the same time, on the same day practically round the corner.   This seems to have been largely successful since the numbers at the old practica when I last went in the autumn, had dropped from about forty attendees to a handful.  I heard it continued thus until this old practica, which used to last for 2.5 or three hours, changed its format to be an hour and a half.  It is now also split around two lots of lessons, making it attractive only to those who do the lessons or the private classes.  That is actually useful because it keeps the social dancers away and usefully separates social dancers from class dancers and their very different styles of dance.

But from this dramatic start better good things may yet grow from that (metaphorical) spilt blood.  Teachers were involved in setting up TangoMac from which one might suppose it was just another of the tactics to close down other teachers that happen in the tango world.  Over the years I have seen these shark-like attacks are shocking in their flagrant callousness and viciousness and yet are remarkably common.  

However, this practica is not preceded by classes as the other one is and ordinary dancers take it in turn to host and to DJ meaning they gain experience in these things.  It is, potentially, just the kind of place where people might learn from one another. There are, though, not as many younger dancers in Glasgow as there might be.  For a cosmopolitan city, Glasgow is in many ways quite traditional (though nothing like as conservative as Perth!) and a small-c conservative community, with a core of older members many of whom are already paired up in couples is not going to be as open to guys learning both roles, or even the concept of learning outside of class, as a generally younger set like the university tango society in say, St Andrews.  Still, more people have a stake in this venture, have hosted it, have DJd for it and so its survival looks more assured than practicas or milongas that depend just on one or two people.

I went for the opening event on 15 September last year.   I haven't been back yet. The floor is not the best and was slightly damaged in one part.  I danced only one traditional track because the music was mostly cover versions of traditional tracks, modern orchestras or the more dramatic, 50s end of the traditional era.   Over seven years I have noticed music in Glasgow has been consistently less traditional than in Edinburgh.  I was delighted to be asked to DJ there but I like to DJ for people who prefer and appreciate traditional music, the well-loved popular classics that have been danced for decades and I do not feel this is yet the case in Glasgow.  You can see how popular and busy this event was here with no chair not taken.

All was not lost though.  I chatted with friends. Blane, as ever, cajoled me into a better mood and Kate was there with whom I love to chat.  She mentioned this book and we talked about Spanish history.  She told me about Oviedo, the Asturias and its role in the Reconquista.

Exterior, cafe interior and top floor, former gentlemen's room

 I feel now I should go back, even for the social bit and there is so much of Mackintosh's work I have yet to see in Glasgow.  I have been to the Hill house which is now under renovation.  In October last year I visited the gorgeous, newly restored Mackintosh at the Willow tearooms on Sauchiehall Street, the only one still in its original location. 

Design details

'The Lighthouse' is another Mackintosh building.  It was his first commission, to house what were the offices of Glasgow's newspaper, The Herald. It is down one of Glasgow's unsalubrious alleys not dissimilar, but not quite as bad as this one.  There is a bright neon sign to show you the way.  Mackintosh is known for the design of the exterior of this building.  It may not seem like an obvious  Mackintosh building but there are faint hints of what is to come in the future, around the top of the door for instance.  You can read more about The Lighthouse building here. Sometimes they run tours which are well worth doing.  Inside there is a permanent exhibition dedicated to Mackintosh and his work. 

The gates that form part of the side entrance to the building are interesting.  When aligned together, they reveal the face of Margaret Morris, Mackintosh's wife.

There is still lots of Mackintosh I have yet to see, notably the House for an Art Lover and the Mackintosh House at the Hunterian.  The new V&A museum in Dundee also houses the restored and reconstructed Mackintosh Oak Room, the largest interior that he designed for Miss Cranston's Ingram Street Tearooms in Glasgow.

I loved the Tango Mac building where the practica was held.  The exterior hints little at what there is inside though there are clues, especially around the lower windows.

It has some elegant  features:

  

The building is used as a community hall and those features are in desperate need of conservation and restoration.

This elegant panel and archway houses the loos! 

There is a combination of the Mackintosh trademark geometric cubes and the flowing lines, curves and oval shapes (featured on the window above).   Much is beautifully understated.

Some of the teachers involved in setting up this event run an  occasional tea on the other side of Glasgow with more alternative music and superb cakes.  One of the teachers is also an artist and made the attractive business cards in the Mackintosh style.  Here is the special inauguration cake for the new practica which has now been running for six months.  

In May 2015 I was delighted to post about Dundee tango society which, in its new incarnation outside the city had set up a community practica though it soon turned class dominated. Their social dancing is only quarterly but the community-led milongas when I last went were in almost every respect very nice.  I last went in June 2016 and October 2016 when I think I danced one track, but have not been back since.  That is because of the music which is played by the teachers and the dancing that goes with that sort of music.  It is not the popular classics, played and loved for decades, that I enjoy and need for dancing. 

More recently, last month I went to TangoAires, a milonga in Liverpool that I had been trying to get to for several years.  It has existed for 8 years, run in that time by different people.  The entrada was cheap for most milongas in the UK: £5.  I asked about the price and the milonga's history. It had been made into a social enterprise with a formalised structure meaning that the organiser could not as she said in her own words "just take any profit to spend on tango shoes".  The whole idea was apparently to make it a community initiative, not something for one individual's benefit.  I have to add that Helen is a quiet, and a wonderful dancer.   Unsurprisingly, but unfortunately unlike most of the men there, she also dances both roles. There was plenty of good music and I found there some of my favourite UK (women) dancers. The only problem was how busy the floor was in that relatively small space, which describes that milonga's popularity.  

Growing communities or building them?

I love spring, March and April, so almost any excuse will do for pictures of flowers but there is a theme of growth. These were on top of a wall just on the path from the carpark to Falkland Palace which if you're in these parts I can't recommend enough. We did an Easter trail there recently. The National Trust for Scotland which is deputy keeper of this property has reciprocal arrangements with similar organisations in the UK and abroad.

Returning to a recent theme - what do you do if you can’t trust a dance teacher?  I would say find people, find good dancers you can trust who are not trying to sell you something. Those human connections made through warmth, openness, real trust and respect all exchanged freely create more of a community, grown organically, than any false construct built by people with a financial vested interest in having such a “community”. Healthy communities grow naturally from individual inclination.  "Built" communities, built by someone for some purpose of their own which often involves control, do not have the same authenticity. Nor I think do they last except in some cultish way when they become staffed by servile drones more than by thinking humans. Watch the tango forums online. People - usually organisers or teachers - nearly always talk about building communities. But people like a reason to come together (e,g. the  milonga), freely, organically. They generally like less being put together unnaturally (e.g. partner rotation in class).  People just do like to dance. Most of the practicas I have been to whether guided or not are effectively turned into milongas by the people who go. It's a natural inclination taking root. No surprise then that you get regulars at milongas but an endless turnover of short-lived beginners in tango class.

Such fragile beauty in the photo of the flowers appears random, created from what just happened to be the right conditions and, it would seem, the conditions don't even have to be much.  

On the other hand, despite being labour intensive and costly, building doesn't always work: 

Falkland Palace, East Range to the left

That corner of stonework in the left hand side is apparently the site of the original building. It is now a herb bed. I believe the foundations were discovered and marked out when the 3rd Marquess of Bute made extensive renovations in the late 19th century. When Cromwell's troops left here to build in Perth a citadel on the park opposite where I live now, there was a fire. The East Range was destroyed.and the place became essentially derelict for over two hundred years. So the building has changed through accident and circumstance and been adapted over time because the purpose for which it was originally built did not endure, as little does. Under the curation of the National Trust for Scotland there is an attractive orchard, a willow maze and arresting willow sculpture, lovely gardens, the oldest tennis court in the world etc.

Falkland palace orchard

So I think I prefer the idea of curation of good natural circumstances. Falkland Palace and the charitable organisations that preserve and maintain such historic properties to share with the interested public are good examples.

Another even more literal example of the success of growing an enterprise is Branklyn Gardens in Perth which my younger son and I visited over Easter to do another trail.  

Branklyn garden

A couple bought these two acres in 1922 and the house to live in. The intention in the gardens was originally private - to create an attractive background to the house for its owners. But the result today are gardens famous among those who enjoy such things. The point again is they didn't set out to "build" these gardens. They grew them literally, and just for the pleasure. The success was almost incidental. Indeed the sheer variety of spring flowers coaxed from the Scottish ground at this still inhospitable time of year and in this small space I find remarkable and inspiring.