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 .

"What's wrong with me?"

I scoffed at the worried self: Too insecure, that's the main problem -  get yourself in order. A less abrupt, gentler talking-to might have worked: You’re just tired.  But unless I took the tough line I sensed I might cave in and stay in.

Those fears are far from unique. I know - not all - but many women can and do feel these things. I know because sometimes they say.  I heard a woman I know say it this last weekend at the Edinburgh International Tango Festival. The worry we have when we do not dance  came up: What’s wrong with me? but in jokes and laughter.   In so doing I realised we know it is a common condition shared by many of us, but redundant because we also know in all likelihood nothing is wrong with us.  In the vast majority of cases women get dances for common reasons such as being younger, slimmer or more known.  They may be very well presented, better dancers or they may accept anyone to use them to "get seen". They may appear popular and be seldom off the floor by accepting all comers.  They may prostitute themselves to get dances in ways we might not care for.   And they are not necessarily better dancers.  I can think of at least five women I danced with at the festival who were all very likely older than me and who were all an absolute pleasure to dance with, far better than many, probably most younger women I dance with.  I asked a visitor sitting next to me how she had found the Festival.  She looked extremely capable at getting what she wanted. She seemed youngish, attractive I would have thought to men but gave an open, helpless shrug that said, I know it isn't personal when they don't choose you, but what can you do? The second clause of her reply demonstrated her experience:  "I can't get the guys I want who also want to dance with me." She knew it has to be a mutual thing.

Before we become thus familiar and therefore competent at managing these feelings, the birth of this acknowledgement is not always so easy. With some women, frequently new dancers, it comes out quietly almost in - needless - shame or even occasionally on the brink of tears or in their confession after private tears. Often it is not just difficult conditions or being unknown or general insecurity at, say, that moment but in response to ways they have been treated by partners on the floor or in invitation. I cannot say how much my heart goes out to them because I have known how they feel for all those reasons. We talk about and laugh at our common fears and try to have perspective on them. But more often we feel alone in them. We feel they are not representative of our ordinary selves so are worth no attention. We try to dismiss the fears but, undealt with they linger oddly, like the predatory guys who can't dance but who prowl the floor gazing down creepily and far too close at the seated women, blocking our view and who ought to be dealt with by any self-respecting organiser. 

We may feel we have worked so hard “at tango” [sic]. We have paid and travelled and practised and thought endlessly about our dance. But we give little thought to how we feel and what to do with ourselves when things do not go to plan or when we worry they might not or when the conditions are not conducive to our being at ease. With all that "tango training" how could things not go to plan? That is, for instance, the plan of dancing well and often with the people we seek. Yet for various reasons and especially when we are new or do not know people that is just what can and does happen.

September 2014, at an encuentro.

A: I have realised my problem. If I am not in the right frame of mind, which is to say relaxed, I am hopeless at cabeceo with people I don't know & haven't spoken to.

B: That's normal. The problem goes when one becomes better at a) relaxing and b) avoiding the kind of event that traps you into dancing when you're not in the right frame of mind, esp. tango camps, inc. encuentros.

How to get through this at any kind of milonga? I still have this angst and claim no expertise. One way of course is not to go to milongas you do not know alone but to go with friends.  Though I have tended to strike out a lot on my own and now do know people and milongas in Scotland, England and further afield, I cannot claim it has been easy.  Most of the time it was not though there were rewards.

Another option is to leave a milonga not long after you sense the doubts start to creep in from the shadows.  I know resourceful and self-reliant women who if they are not having a good time will do exactly that and I suspect more of us probably should.  I mentioned to someone recently this issue of going to an encuentro and feeling trapped there. They gave a nice example of someone who does go to them, but lightly: she goes for an hour and if she isn't having a good time, she leaves. She uses the spa in her hotel, does some sightseeing and finds other ways to enjoy herself. It strikes me as very good sense. 

But if you are still not sure if it is you or it (the conditions) or them (the crowd) the doubts can nag. I think susceptibility to these things is partly down to temperament. Experience helps, patience, losing self-consciousness, finding other things to distract you like listening to the music watching the dancing especially the fun interactions between couples or better still, for me, and if I can get it, good, relaxing, distracting conversation.  And from within that I often find a sort of wordless understanding, a kindness and empathy in others that is hard to beat.  It is an unpatronising, non-judgemental, reassuring solidarity which, if it endures after a while we call friendship. 

Doubt and kindness

It was two flights and over eight hours of travel from Perth to my hotel in Stuttgart for the milonga weekend in Tango Loft. I had slept poorly and arrived tired with a growling headache that had developed during the afternoon. With little opportunity to rest before the dance the worries surfaced easily as I got ready to go out: What was I doing here?

Was I going to be too unknown? I thought of Cambridge where on the Friday night my best dances had been with three guys I already knew. 

Was I too old ? I thought of Berlin where the good scene was mostly young, where I found out later a friend had been told by a regular dancer there that it is hard to break in there. Then I thought of the vivacious women bailarines I had seen in Buenos Aires, older than me by thirty years or more, popular for dance, looking fantastic.

Was I experienced enough? The advert had said the event was suitable for “experienced dancers”. Four years is not that experienced. But I had seen often that time can mean little in dance. What did this particular place mean by experience anyway? Taking classes? Doing as you are told? Practising “women’s technique” in a way I once heard described unforgettably as playing with herself? No particular slur intended to this woman.  I could have picked any of the splurge of these on YouTube. Did they mean experienced in looking the part, playing the games? Or experienced simply in response to different partners on the floor, to tango music you both know and love? 

Was my dance too poor? I remembered many lovely things men and women have said over time and recently and an evening of marvellous tanda after tanda at a milonga with a friend visiting from France not long ago - dance as it can be. I might feel stiff and out of practice but even so I did not think my dance so catastrophically awful that I would not dance at all.

The doubting self muscled in again insistently: but was I going to be too tall, were my clothes too unpresentable, was I too personally unembraceable?  Despite the misgivings I  did not think it wholly so.  I remembered a young guy and great dancer I had recently danced with several times and who had complimented the very dress I was going to wear that night. Another guy was to make another compliment on a different dress that weekend. 

In the milongas and in life I see time and again it is the kindnesses of people which can be the things of real value that shore us up when we need it.

A DJ's "audience", "Tanda of the Week" and censorship

Martha Graham

Back here I said I wanted to respond to something that came up in a post on Tanda of the Week.  The owner of that tango music blog, DJ Antti Suniala said 

"the music has to be in relation to the audience as well".  I agree with this - with one crucial difference:  I don't think a DJ has an "audience".  A milonga isn't a show though on occasion I have seen DJs act or talk that way, or try to whip up a crowd with stamping, clapping, head-banging, air-punching, all sorts of odd things. That hubris can be fatal, I think.  A DJ plays for, is at the service of, dancers - always.  "Audience" implies something else. 

Unless Antti's idea of the DJ's role is profoundly different to mine, this mention of a DJ's audience I guess is a slip of the pen.  I have never heard Antti DJ, to my knowledge we've never met and we've never corresponded. I've read his blog for somewhere between 6 months and a year which is enough to at least get a feel for how things are there.  To date, he strikes me as one of the good guys.

Tanda of the Week is evidently not merely a personal showcase, not just a DJ setting out his stall for bookings, not least because the site is a mix of tandas put together by Antti and submitted to him by guest DJs.  So I think it's a resource, a tool, something useful, something you can learn from.  This is the main reason I also think it is great when DJs are open and share their sets publicly or privately.  TOTW is also about discussing music and DJing and that is what is great about it, what makes it really alive.  We don't always agree on music but that's kind of the point.  Where is the real interest in discussing things with people who already share your ideas?  The pleasure of discussion is in learning something new, in contrast, in persuasion, in seeing another's point of view, in understanding how they think and what they value, the finding out where you agree and disagree and why.

Tanda of the Week is well known.  In the secret lives of many DJs I suspect it is a well-used resource yet compared to the amount I imagine it is read it is commented upon comparatively little.    Antti posts his own tandas regularly, knowing that they differ in style, one from another, knowing that they could well be and in fact regularly are commented upon and have metaphorical tomatoes thrown at them, knowing his taste will be questioned and the good tandas often ignored -  yet he keeps doing it, cheerfully, with good humour.  The tandas, the cortinas and the comments are resources that can be used by new and existing DJs. I think this blog enriches the musical life of the contemporary tango scene.

I like that Antti uses this own name.  It is a good precedent.  It's less rare, for obvious reasons for a DJ to use a pseudonym online.  But of the few bloggers - and people who comment - who challenge or question, to different degrees, the status quo most seem afraid to speak out under their own name:  TangoCommuter, TangoAirO (defunct and removed), RandomTangoBloke (sadly defunct), and most obviously TangoVoice whose clam-like silence on their identity is proportionate to the degree to which s/he is, is, I think an advocate of the traditional, Buenos Aires way of doing things.  There are excellent reasons for this, not least the risk of ostracism and fear of a backlash in their local communities.  This is not on the same scale as the risks faced by some apostates or critics of religion and yet a social death in their local tango scene is enough to put off many from speaking freely - or at least publicly - especially if they already have roles as DJs, organisers or even teachers. But what actually does it say about these tango "communities" where there is evidently a sense that there can be no diversity in opinion, let alone practice, without repercussion?  Diversity is healthy.  Monopolies are not and breed a herd-like mentality and fear.  How many milongas are there round your way locally? How many compared to the number of teachers?  What kind of music is played?  How many different DJs are there locally? Does one group run all your milongas or is there healthy diversity? How diverse are things, generally, near you? I have found diversity by dancing in five or six different towns and cities within an hour of me but more local diversity is better.  

One of the best things for me about Tanda of the Week, is that it is open, uncensored.  That alone says much.  As far as I know, and as far as I have heard to date unlike many Antti does not censor comments where he does not agree with the view.  That freedom to speak your mind implies a degree of trust that, in a society which values freedom of speech, I have found to be surprisingly (to my mind) rare among bloggers.  It was Martha Graham¹ (pictured) who said "Censorship is the height of vanity" and I agree.  And of fear.  People who censor are essentially fearful, trying to cling on to something - usually their sense of a form of power, status or money.  When challenged on this, moderators or administrators almost universally adopt a libertarian line, saying this forum is a sort of private club where our own rules apply and if you don't like it, you can go elsewhere or we can kick you out. But censorship by definition happens (usually) before people get to see it, before that group  gets to decide collectively on whether something is OK or not.  It prevents discussion about whether it's ok.  I think that's what I object to. Some people are happy to abnegate that responsibility, but I care more about the people who aren't.  Open societies just like open forums discuss together what is acceptable and what is not. That's how we live together.  It's also how we develop diversity and toleration.  The rapper Jay-Z in his book, Decoded said we change people through conversation, not through censorship.

Sometimes censorship is more insidious - an edited history is provided. So things happen, things are said, and then quietly deleted, history is rewritten. It reminds me of China's history books - it happened, but only like this, only as we tell  you, or only as far as you remember and we know how how unreliable memory is.  Except memory can be surprisingly persistent and objectionable when things are suppressed.

TangoAirO sometimes looked at things from a questioning angle.  S/he took his site offline earlier this year - not left for posterity to learn from, and yet if ever a blogger was didactic this one was - but removed so the author could move onto the more important things in life.  I can't help but wonder if that was teaching.  For me discussion about ideas is at the very heart of life.

So while discussion remains not ad hominem but about ideas and opinion then I think no censorship is very valuable.  Actually, even personal attacks, unless severely disruptive, or revealing of privacy, personal or confidential information are worth leaving in place - as indicative of the person that made them.  I understand when comments are moderated maybe to avoid spam or perhaps with the idea that someone should be spared another's vitriol but I do not comment upon blogs like Melina's Two Cents (dormant), and TangoCommuter's that allow comments yet filter them in god-like fashion depending on the degree to which they disagree with the blog owner.  If only part of a comment is published it is for me a form of dishonesty and the kind of manipulation of which the media is often accused.  Mostly this filtering smacks of fear which sits uneasily with someone writing publicly.  It feels like grandstanding yet having hoods at the back to chuck out the dissenters.  Besides, I find the public back-slapping - rife on social media - between people who share uncontroversial ideas uninteresting at best, slightly sinister at worst. 

Someone said to me recently, "We can't rely on what our friends say about us...they love us unconditionally. What our foes say is the more accurate benchmark."  I don't know about accurate, because enemies are also prone to propaganda. But still, I asked,
"So what do your enemies say?"
"I have no enemies, When you expect the best out of people, nine times out of ten that's what you get."

That, I think is what is happening in Tanda of the Week.  Antti expects it to work, for the most part expects healthy debate and ideas (since his "never criticize" comment, this under review) and gets it, I think.

Antti argues, believe me. But he will sometimes be persuaded by or make a concession to a point.  I have found that in life to be a rare trait between individuals, let alone in public.  It suggests honesty, open-mindedness and a willingness to change one's mind.  There is more often strength than weakness in that.

The point about a DJ's "audience" was the first I wanted to respond to.  The other will be next time.

¹Martha Graham "the Picasso of dance" was an influential twentieth century modern dancer and choreographer whose work, rooted in America, crossed artistic boundaries. She said, "A dance reveals the spirit of the country in which it takes root. No sooner does it fail to do this than it loses its integrity and significance".

Photograph by Cris Alexander, courtesy of Martha Graham Dance Company.