[Photo by Leone Perugino]
Boy do I feel like a putz. A real wanker. I've been so "disassociated" from this blog that I haven't added a link in the sidebar for one of my favorite blogs. One of the few I actually make time to read. And not that I would ever believe this blog, ATF, is "all that" and is somehow the standard bearer for all links to all tango blogs.
Quite the contrary. I'm sure that there are at least a dozen or two new blogs that I am missing in my links sidebar. I'm pretty sure I'm quite incomplete and out of date that way. I just like to include the good ones, blogs of note, blogs of tango friends (who I've never met and never danced with, and may never), blogs with good writing and good humor and astute/keen observation. This blog, from Terpsichoral Tangoaddict, a friend through Facebook.
She's a follower, living and dancing in Buenos Aires.
Please accept my most humble apologies, kind Muse.
In her latest post, "The Oestrogen Cloud", she describes the feel of a particular type of follower thusly: "...that the best of them feel as light as pedaling a bicycle downhill; as soft as my old velveteen teddy bear with one missing eye; as responsive as a thoroughbred horse; and yet as tranquil as an aged labrador...".
It's the "pedaling a bicycle downhill" that got me. This is an almost perfect analogy of what it feels like to dance with these women. I've weakly characterized it before as "dancing with a butterfly", which obviously no one can know what that feels like, and can only imagine.
I first felt it in an epiphanous (not a word?) dance with a porten~a teacher in a private lesson in the frigid Masonic Temple in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Epiphany, breakthrough, come-to-jesus, hallelujah, whatever you want to call it. It was a seminal moment of seminal moments. With none of my usual sophomoric innuendo whatsoever.
Reading her post simultaneously transported me back to BA (where I was one of those foreign guys within an estrogen cloud of two, if that counts...dutifully doing the promotional/advertising tandas with/for them...and failing miserably with my Quasimodo cabeceo, scaring the local women no doubt, finally resorting in the wee hours to getting drunk on vino tinto and stuffing empanadas in my pie hole...), and back to that two hours with Gabriella in Colorado. Anyway, Gaby and I were "just" dancing during that private, and she would stop to correct me, correct my lead - explain what I was doing wrong (or not doing), and explain how it felt (wrong), and how she wanted it to feel. Little tweakages here and there. Nuances. Ever-so-slight. Ever-so-light, but without doubt of intention. So I'm babbling again. Driveling. My point is that this light-but-with-clarity-and-purpose-and-sublimely-connected-responsive feeling is reciprocal in both follow and lead. Mutuality.
Unfortunately, in my world, rare. I only know it exists through luck and happenstance. I know it exists because I have felt it. Because I have danced it. Because I have had it danced unto me. Into me.
I miss it.
For me, that's the sign of good writing. Writing that communicates a concept, a moment, an experience, a dance, a feeling - and dredges up your own memories - touching, poignant, whatever. Memories, and feelings. Dredged up to feel it all over again, sitting wide awake at 4am in a seedy motel next to a refinery in Odessa, Texas. (The dickweeds who woke me up are sound asleep now...)
I may owe my lead to Gaby. My elusive lead, the "I'm not sure if it's still there" lead.
Anyway, check out Tango Addiction. Dig back into the archives.
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