Less Ego, More Work

Have you given up the blog? Stan asks.

We are between dances, a time for chit-chat. But this is no idle question, not for me.

As a matter of fact, Stan and I don’t do chit-chat so much any more, not since he learned I write this blog. He wrote a note to the Tango Colorado listserv, I responded as One Heart, and he answered back: Who are you?

Uh-oh.

I don’t tell. When asked I keep quiet. I change the subject. If pressed I evade the truth. A few weeks ago someone pressed hard, and I lied.

Anonymity is at the core of this kind of writing. All researchers struggle with the same constraint: The presence of the observer influences the outcome.

I learned this on the job. As an investigative reporter I infiltrated an Ozark hillbilly religious revival. My colleague infiltrated the local KKK. (He got the plum assignment, but mine was the more dangerous one: If he screwed up, he got tossed on the bonfire; if I screwed up, I burned in Hell.)

Anonymity allowed us to get our scoops. If people know you’re observing them, they act like the people they’d like to be rather than the people they are. In a word, they become self-conscious.

Clearly, it would be unwise to tell.

* * *

Nice story, if you can get someone to buy it.

In truth, I know better. It is not they who are self-conscious, it is I. I can’t do anything right when people are paying attention.

This works well for writing

... but presents a challenge for tango.

To solve it, I dance very light. This says to my partner: Carry on! Don’t mind me, I’m not really here.

When I was a beginner, my primary concern was to stay out of the way of my partner. My teachers reinforced this. They instructed the leads: “She is your puppet” and “Walk right through her.” They instructed the women, “Don’t think!” They said, “It’s always the fault of the lead,” allowing the follower no agency, not even in her own missteps. When you’re a beginning tanguera, it’s easy to feel like an accessory.

I don’t mind. I like being around things but not of them.

The beginning leads make it easy: They are the Henry Fords of tango, all about interchangeable parts. They have been told that I am their puppet. Absorbed in the assembly of their own dance, they notice me only when I snafu the line. They stop and tinker with me. Then we restart, but it is hard to get rolling again. Now they are aware of me, and I can’t do anything right.

Ah … see how that works? How, as truth circles close, we shift the focus to someone else? Surely my obsession with invisibility is the fault of … of course, how convenient! Like everything else, it’s the fault of the lead!

This shift of focus is a neat trick, especially useful to mystery writers. The more convincing the writer, the more fun for the reader-detective.

I am a lousy mystery writer; I cannot even fool myself.

* * *

I like dancing with beginners because they are so intent on their own dance they pay no attention to me. I like being a beginner for the same reason.

That said, there’s no time when it’s more important to be a perfect, interchangeable puppet-part than in a group class. The leads are struggling to learn the pattern of a new step and to communicate that pattern to the follower. They struggle to master the bare bones and then to give it panache. That’s a lot to assemble in a one-hour class. Especially when you are trading out puppets every two minutes. In this setting, the least I can do is be perfect. Do not snag his attention on missteps. Stay out of his way, be his puppet.

I like group classes for this reason. It is impossible to be so perfect as to be invisible, but it is a good challenge.

Private lessons are different.

Here I am solid and real. This is my time, for my dance. In the puppet-master’s workroom, the puppet gets worked over.

You think the teacher is the puppet-master, but don’t be so quick. I am of the family of Pinocchio—a puppet with ambition.

Whatever the teacher offers, I ask for more: more clarification, more retakes, more time to figure things out on my body, more technique, more cool moves, more retakes. When I am satisfied, we move on.

In private lessons, the teacher and I are a team; my body is the puppet we work on together.

I am both student and teacher. All eyes are on me, including my own.

When I am a student, I am a beginner again, so intent on my dance I pay no attention to me.

And thus become visible.

.

After the Labor Day Festival, I was twitchy and jittery and sure to slap any lead who got near me. As a service to the men of Tango Colorado, I avoided every class and gathering. Until the appointment for my private lesson with Grisha.

He’s an exceptional teacher. A dreamy lead. From all indications, a nice person. Surely he doesn’t deserve to be slapped.

I tell myself this as I drive across town, walk up the sidewalk, ring the bell.

Seconds away from a tango lesson, I’m poised to jump out of my skin.

What to do?

When the teens I work with are having a bad day, I set out a box and tell them to toss their junk in it. They can pick it up when they walk out the door. But while they’re with me, it stays in the box.

Grisha has a different solution.

He brings out new, tricky moves. He hammers away on technique. The person of me is put away. Grisha and I work over the puppet. We work its ass off. I am a beginner again, so intent on my own dance I pay no attention to me.

.

“In the end … your initial fear becomes a fake fear—just a manifestation of your ego. I didn’t want to waste my time asking myself, Will I be good or not good? I realized I just had to have less ego and do more work.”

--Marion Cotillard, on her role as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose

* * *

When Stan wrote, “Who are you?” I did not write back. I don’t tell.

But.

Stan first invited me to dance when I was a rank beginner, dressed in bulky layers and ratty shoes. Striving to be light. Incorporeal.

In his dance there were no surprises; no steps I couldn’t do well. Or if (more likely) there were, he never let on. Trusting his lead I could forget myself, forget him, lose myself in the dance.

I have a soft spot for the leads who danced well with me when I was awful. So the next time we danced, I told him, “I am One Heart Dancing.”

We finished the tanda. We chatted briefly. Nothing changed. Only the silence was broken.

(The flit of a butterfly’s wings in Buenos Aires affects the weather in Moscow.)

Since then, Stan occasionally mentions the blog, tells me what he thinks. He likes my writing. I like his thinking.

Now he is looking at me with a kindly, I’ve-been-around-the-block-a few-times-myself openness that elicits honesty—not the skirt-the-truth kind, but the come-clean kind. He is waiting for me to answer his question,

which, in case you have forgotten, is,

“Have you given up the blog?”

I have been asking myself the same question--and dodging the answer. I would like to dodge some more, but at this moment, face-to-face, I can’t serve up a flippant flapjack answer.

So I tell the truth: I’ve been overwhelmed. Not the “I’m busy” kind of overwhelmed but the “I want to go to bed and stay under the covers until the year 2010” kind.

* * *

And what is it that has been so overwhelming? Here it is, in the form of a series of thought experiments:

I think, therefore I am. (Descartes)
How do I know what I think until I see what I say? (e. e. cummings)

If I can’t do anything when people are watching
...how can I write when I know you are reading?

If I can’t write, how can I see what I say?
… and therefore know what I think?
… and therefore know who I am?
... or (yikes!)
... that I am?

And lest you think it’s all about me:
Who would you be without your story?

Oh hell, let’s dance.