Learning Boleo: May 20, 2007 - June 12, 2008

2007: May 20

Nina is teaching boleos. These things are impossible! Stand strong on one leg, let the other go dead.

Seven women, facing the wall, pivoting and swinging away.

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In the movie of your mind, let that scene play and replay, interspersed with images of One Heart missing the boleo with every lead, in every practica and milonga, every single time it is led. Watch the seasons change. Watch her hair grow long. Watch her other dance skills come along. Choose a nice piece of background music. This is the B-roll.

Voiceover:

Here’s the thing. Boleo can’t be done. It’s not physically possible. To see why, think back to Nina’s followers’ class:

Noodle leg! Nina calls out. All of the women line up facing the wall, leaning against it with both hands. We stand on our left legs, let our right legs go limp and swing and swing.

Limp is a relative thing. Kari’s leg flops around like a cooked noodle. Mine is straight out of the box.

Like this, Kari says, laughing and swinging away. Kari is always laughing and catching on fast.

I go silly and overcooked, too. That’s fine if you’re dancing with a wall, but it’s no use at all with a live partner.

Think about this: You cannot have some overcooked noodle for a leg when you are dancing tango. You don’t know what the next step is. What if it’s not a boleo? What if he sends you to a step? Your noodle leg would collapse beneath you.

I have not been able to convey this idea to one single person. Still, I persist. I know I am right! It is logic.

Think about it: Your working leg has to bear weight, it has to be strong. How can you let your free leg go limp if you have no idea whether in the next microsecond it is going to become the working leg? You can’t transform from limp to strong in a microsecond.

Think further: More often than not, he is not going to lead a boleo. You can’t go all noodle-y with every step in anticipation of a boleo that happens only a few times in a dance.

No. If you let your leg go limp and the next step is not boleo, your noodle-leg will not support you, and you will fall down. A strong leg is the only defense against the hard floor. Do not relax your defenses.

I have explained this to Nina a half-dozen times. Yeah, she says. Do the noodle leg.

I have explained it to Grisha. He looks at me as if I am speaking a foreign language.

I have explained it to Tom. To Stan. To Kari. The boys are polite. Kari laughs, nicely.

I will explain this again if you don’t understand. By understand, of course, I mean agree.

I will repeat it again and again, louder and louder, if that will help.

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Summer 2007 to Spring 2008

I don’t like boleo. It’s too sharp and sudden, like the flash of a switchblade. Every time I see it, I flinch. When Gustavo and Giselle performed here, I flinched so much I got sore.

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A small boleo is lovely. Maria has a small boleo. Her foot traces a little crescent moon on the floor. A crescent is a lovely shape. I wouldn’t mind doing that. … If it happens. I am not going to push it. This is never going to be one of my steps.

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Grisha doesn’t ask what I want to learn. He just leads it.

You have a small boleo, he says. That’s OK. That’s your style.

Nice.

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I am in a class on boleo. I am faking it. I have learned how to do that.

The teacher notices, works with me for a minute.

That’s your first real boleo! he says. He is pleased. I give him a smile.

I faked it better.

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I’m late every time because I have to go noodley before I can fake it.

I think Grisha is on to me.

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Grisha brings up boleo almost every week.

Good grief. He may be as stubborn as I am.

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Into the floor with your foot, Grisha says.

There is a swishing sound on the floor, just like a real boleo. Sounds nice. Also, I like the feel of the floor pressing on the sole of my foot.

My boleo barely comes off the floor, but I like it that way. Very tasteful. You wouldn’t see Audrey Hepburn doing a Giselle-style boleo. No. That would be unseemly.

Audrey would not carry a switchblade but a stiletto. With a pearl handle. In an embroidered silk sheath in a tiny designer purse with a diamond on the clasp, which she would carry everywhere, including to Tiffany’s, where she would foil a trio of armed robbers by charming them as she fumbled prettily in her purse.

Yes, that’s my boleo!

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I practice tango every day. Boleo is part of my practice. I hang onto the doorframe or the bookshelf, noodle away to Canaro.

I push into the floor, and the push down makes the leg go up all swirly. It’s a little gust of wind; not wild but not controlled, either. This is a little unnerving. The leg could fly out in any direction with any kind of force without warning. It does that kind of thing. It’s good I’m practicing on drywall.

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You can tell when boleo is coming, a man says. It may have been Grisha, or another teacher, or a lead, or a video lesson. I have lost track of my sources.

Boleo comes out of back ocho, the man says.

Clearly, it’s not Grisha speaking. He’d never limit his choices that way.

Still, there’s a broad shaft of hope. If you can tell when boleo is coming…

I need to think about this.

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2008: Mid-March


You have to learn this, Grisha says.

It’s just mental, he adds.

He’s right.

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2008: Late March

I go to Florida. At the conference hotel, the elevators have marble floors and big mirrors. I get caught practicing my cool new hip action when the doors open unexpectedly.

A week later, I’m in another hotel, in a huge bathroom with a huge mirror. My cool new hip action is coming along, but boleo refuses to leave the starting gate.

It’s a good thing you’re not a racehorse, I tell my boleo.

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2008: Mid-April

Most of the time you can tell what step is coming next, Grisha says.

Of course he can. He’s leading.

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2008: The following week

I’m still faking it, I say to Grisha.

I know, he says.

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2008: The following week

We are perplexed. I am also frustrated. I would like to start catching on.

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2008: Early May

I concentrate very hard on noodleizing my leg.

Don’t think about your leg, Grisha says. It comes from your hip.

I give up.

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My hipbone makes a handy shelf. He puts a hand there and pushes down on my hip at the same time he leads the boleo. My leg swishes up all by itself.

Wow!

I totally get it! Your hip is a hawk’s wing, on the air of the music. Why didn’t anyone say so in the first place?

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… that very night at the Merc

Wow! Tom says. You did the boleo! He falls away from me, grinning.

Me too. It was a big swishy one, and I did it for real! I don’t know how; it just happened.

You led it, I say.

He scoffs. That’s not the point.

I agree.

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2008: Denver Memorial Day Festival, Alternative Milonga

This is my favorite milonga of the year.

All the leads I dance with are out-of-towners or The Five. I let it all hang out, as the hippies used to say. Audrey Hepburn on a single, tastefully elegant toke.

Casually I toss off a couple boleos. Acutely self-conscious and resolutely not faking.

Groovy!

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2008: Post-Alternative Milonga, the drive home

Faking is a crutch. Enough is enough. No more arguing (though I know I am right!). Swallow the story, accept the dislogic.

If bumblebees can fly over the rainbow, why can’t I?

Boleo or bust!

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2008: Every Day for 2 weeks Following the Festival

Front and back, back and forth. Knees together. Cross in front. Use your hip. Don’t think about your leg. Don’t think about think your foot. Don’t think about the swish. Don’t think…

I am channeling Grisha and Nina and the guy in the video and Tom Stermitz and a half dozen helpful leads and Kari and God knows who else. Every day I stand in a doorway or up against a bookcase, swinging my leg from my hip. After a while, I don’t talk to myself, just watch my hip swing my leg around. After a while I don’t even watch, but stare at the wall, enjoying the feel of my hip as it swoops like a wild bird’s wing.

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2008: June 12

Yes, Grisha says, you are getting it some of the time.

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Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. (Rumi)

Tango and Chocolate: One of These Things Is Just Like the Other

Quote of the day:

"Gas could be $55/gallon. We're still going to buy chocolate. That's not negotiable."

--Some guy on the news, interviewed in a candy store with his kid

DiscoTango

Spare me. Please.

At 8 a.m., a band has taken over the front room of my favorite coffee shop. They are wearing costumes—curly wigs and weird clothing. They are disco impersonators.

A television station is filming them. It’s a promo for a gig tonight.

The announcer has done his voiceover. The musicians are warming up.

Who listens to disco? It is not cool. It was not cool even when it was popular. The best you could call it is kitschy.

Also very loud. I am trying to write. Crammed in a back corner, I am working very hard to screen out the music, concentrate on my thoughts.

At the Denver Memorial Day Festival one month ago, Grisha taught a session on tango music, what defines it and makes it irresistible for dancing.

Disco has nothing in common with tango.

So why am I rocking in my chair?

Cool Tango Move Saves Baby

This story is to Brigitta Winkler’s credit. Glenlivet’s too. But mostly Brigitta's. If she hadn’t inspired Glenlivet to get tricky with his tango lead, there would be one banged-up baby today.

This story is also to Grisha’s and Nina’s credit. If they hadn’t persisted until my cool new hip action took its tentative hold, there would be one banged-up One Heart today.

It is to my credit, too. I am the Clark Kent of Tango!

Here is the story …

Some time ago Glenlivet advertised for a practice partner. I cautiously volunteered. Cautiously because I don’t like the idea of practice partners and I had sworn off my sole partner to date, The Man on the Wall.

Still, I wanted to dance well with Glenlivet, who had progressed much more quickly than I had in the year since we were beginners together. Also, I wanted to undergo the experience so I could write about it.

We agreed to meet before a Sunday evening milonga. We would practice a bit, then join the fun.

He didn’t show. The milonga began. I joined the fun.

Sometime later Glenlivet appeared. He apologized for arriving late, but he was not sorry. He was glowing.

Tell me!

I just had a lesson with Brigitta Winkler, he said. In an isolated corner of the enormous ballroom, he showed me his new way of dancing. In no time, I was glowing, too.

Glenlivet has never looked back. He has become utterly, fiendishly inventive. His lead says, “Let’s do this … no, oops, let’s turn that into this and how about this, too?”

The key to dancing with the new Glenlivet is to be poised on a dime. Don’t relax into thinking you know what’s coming next. At any moment you will shift-shift-shift weight, change direction, transition to a wholly new concept of the music, all on that one, tiny dime.

This is crazy good fun!

Fun, but not easy. I struggled for months until my cool new hip action kicked in and I found my balance.

One week ago today Grisha and I worked on ocho cortado and, yet again, hip action. At one point, it all came together. He said, “You have perfect balance.”

Later that night Glenlivet appeared at the practica after a long time away, and …

Whoo-hoo!

So it’s thanks to Grisha and Nina and Glenlivet and Brigitta and all that crazy good fun that today in the Denver airport, a little kid’s face got saved from an escalator’s shark teeth.

Mom had three bags, two kids. I waited while she got the first kid situated on the escalator, then herself. I didn’t notice the toddler until she turned around to help him on board. She was already four stairs down and he had decided to follow. Now he had one foot on the top landing, one foot on a step and was doing the splits, clawing for a handhold on the Plexiglas wall. As the escalator dragged him down, the foot on the landing lost its grip. Slowly he tipped forward, his face heading straight into the serrated edge of the stair between his legs.

I have long arms and I know how to snatch up a child. Now I had one foot on the landing, one on a descending stair. Now there were two stairs between me and the upper landing, now there were three. Now I was doing the splits. Now my suitcase and briefcase on the landing above began to teeter. Now the mother was reaching out.

Handing off baby, I used my cool new hip action to do a little rock step--shifted my weight to the foot on the landing, collected ever so slightly to land my left foot on the next step up even as it descended. Three or four quick rock steps and—voila!—both feet were back up on the landing, nicely collected, suitcase and briefcase upright, and me too.

Wow! Who knew tango could give you superhero powers? Somebody, get me a cape!

Why credit tango?

Despite the awkward, off-center, half-splits position, the quick grab came straight out of heightened, turn-on-a-dime awareness; the shift-shift-shift-rock-step maneuver was Brigitta-Glenlivet’s tricksy ocho cortado; and all was made possible by the hard-won technique of cool new hip action and the voiced blessing of Perfect Balance.

How to Get into a Boat, Tango-Style

Getting into a low boat from a dock is a trick.

Me before tango:

You bend over and put one hand next to your foot on the dock. Then you put one foot in the boat, and then the boat drifts away from the dock and you have to sort of drag it back with the foot that is in the boat, using the muscles of your inner thigh, and then you, quick, before it floats away again, do whatever it takes to get your other foot into the boat. You look like a beetle's gracelss cousin. Sometimes you look like a beetle's soaked, seaweed-covered cousin.

Now

Now I step lightly onto the edge, move my center, collect ever so briefly and hop down ionto the boat.

Family Vacation Tango

Tomorrow night I go to tango at the University of Michigan Monday Night Practica.

I am uncertain.

Not about my dancing.

Not about my shoes, even though they are falling to pieces. They will hold for another few hours--and I have my backup flats.

A little bit about what to wear. I have a dress, but it's cold here. I could wear my tough-grrrl power outfit, black jeans and a tight black t-shirt. But we are not far from Motown, and someone might take me up on it and then I would fold.

Not about the directions and how to get to the "Pittsfield Grange," which I assume is some holdover from the Good Old Days, when the grange hall was where the farmers gathered in their Sunday best to dance to the music of fiddles and spoons.

Normally I would worry much about how to get to a new place. I get lost at the drop of a hat.

Not this time. I have a local driver. I think. At the moment, I have three. Tomorrow I could have a half-dozen, or none. This is how my family organizes things--like commodity traders in the pit. Right now, I am the ticket held aloft, and all the shouting surrounds me:

Ride, ride, she needs a ride!

I'll take her! No I have to get the dog groomed! She can borrow my car! No, don't let her drive, she always gets lost! I said I'd take her! Last week, you said no! You take her! No, you can't drive! Let Cx take her! She's only 17! (That's me shouting; last time Cx came to tango I sat next to her glowering at every man who threw an eye her way, as if I were her Sicilian grandmother.) I have to get the dog groomed! I could take you at 6 and you could take a book and read... and I could come back for you at 8. Will that work? Are there buses? The highway is under construction... Don't worry, One Heart, we have 20 hours, we'll figure it out!

Don't listen to any of this. I don't. I know how it works. There will be much fuss and bother and in the end, there will be a ride or there won't.

Right now the plan stands as this:

One-of-Six will take me. So will Cousin D. So will a woman I have only really met for the first time on this trip, another cousin's wife. They will meet at One-of-Six's house and carpool to Three-of-Six's house, where I am staying, and we will all go together, possibly with Three-of-Six too, if we can convince her to let go of her life for a night.

For them, it will be ladies night out. They will drink if there is a bar, and laugh loudly and possibly break into the U-M fight song as I dance by. These are the things my family does, the things I love about them. They are fearless, and they know how to take advantage of a good time when it is presented to them.

I will wear my floaty blue dress and my lovely, tattered Comme il Faut shoes, and the sparkly polish my niece wants to paint on my toes.

This is the plan. Don't get invested in it. I am not. At any point tomorrow, anything could change. In the end, this plan will pan out or another one will. This is my family.

Still, I will go practice now.

Let's Dance!

A few weeks ago, I took the blog private. People want to know why.

I will tell you a story....

Agatha Christie once disappeared for 11 days. Some people think she went on a secret mission as a spy or a Scotland Yard investigator. Some think her marriage was breaking up. She had an affair. A nervous breakdown. Alien abduction. Dementia.

Whatever.

Where you have been is never as interesting as where you are going.

Let's dance!

My Fingers Are Covered in Shoe-Black

My fingers are covered in shoe-black. I think that’s what it’s called. There’s a small, flat disc inside a small, flat can shaped like a tin of chewing tobacco. I think that’s right. I have not used shoe black or chewing tobacco, so I am hazy on the details.

The shoeblack appears to have once been a paste. Now, it’s a shrunken, tarry puck too small for the can.

You are supposed to smear this stuff on your shoes, then buff the shoes with a cloth that came with the paste. The cloth is so little it’s cute.

I am not sure what you are supposed to use to smear the stuff on. Paintbrush? Sponge? Paper towel? I am an unartistic, stinky-sponge-averse environmentalist. I settle on the only disposable paper product in the house.

There is a milonga tonight, and I’m taking no chances on staining my hands. I need rubber gloves but have none. I wrap my fingers in the only disposable paper product in the house.

* * *

My fingers are covered in shoeblack.

I am polishing my lovely, lovely Comme il Fauts. They are black leather, with a strip across the toes, a cup around the heel, and a skinny strap across the ankle. They are adorable, black leather bikinis.

These shoes have seen better days. Between leather’s natural stretch and a recent mishap that blew out my best buckle-hole, the bikini bottoms are downright baggy.

The bikini top, too. It sags—the right one does, anyway. I have stuffed two gel pads in there and am considering a third.

The gel pads fill the space, but they do not solve the problem: My shoe slides off-center, so that Roast Beef, Had None, and Ran Wii Wii Wii All the Way Home dance on the bare floor. They do not like it, and the heel complains.

This is easily remedied: Whenever I get a spare split-second, I collect with a little kick, that is, I smack the bunion of my left foot with the bunion of the right, to force the shoe back in place.

I believe the leads do not notice... or, they admire my innovative adornment. Yes, that’s what I think!

This solution has two shortcomings:

1. It hurts.

2. All the leather is worn away from the shoe-bunions.

The intake nurse at Dardano’s shoe repair shop points out some ripped stitching on the left shoe. Also the whiskers sprouting from the remaining buckle-holes, and the threads and flotsam that trail from the straps as seaweed from a ship.

[I trim the whiskers and weeds almost weekly. A cuticle scissor would do the trick, but I don’t have one. Sewing shears and paring knives and teeth make poor substitutes.]

Thirty-five dollars to replace the straps, $3.95 to outfit the bikini with enough padding to stop the slip-slide, she says.

Deal! I say.

Next Friday, she says.

Deal-breaker!

The Strawberry Moon milonga is Saturday. Sunday, Patricia’s house party. Tuesday, a private lesson. I could give all that up, but on Thursday I fly to Michigan—home of the University of Michigan tango club--and I am taking my shoes!

I need an interim measure.

If you’re selling a car that has seen better days, the first thing you do is wax it. If you’re wearing battered shoes to the Strawberry Moon milonga …

A Great Way to Start Your Day

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xe5w0_ray-charles-jerry-lee-lewis_music

MIT Tango

Tonight I tango at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Building 36, Floor 7, Lobby, is what the website says.

The elevators open onto a patch of geek heaven: small, functional and forgotten by time. Two walls of glass open to mid-distance vistas. College-dorm plants and beat up wooden tables have accumulated in one corner. Computer monitors, the big, old-fashioned TV-set kind, line the base of one wall. The floor is linoleum. The elevator doors are gray; in the ladies’ room the stalls are red-orange. Everything is circa 1970 and aging well.

At 6 p.m. on a weeknight, the space is filled with silence—not the silence of a deserted building, but the stillness of concentration. You sense computer and human brains absorbed in one another behind the locked double doors marked Alarm Will Sound.

From the ceiling hangs a bright blue banner, the directory for this building. It says:

Quantum Computation and Communication
Circuits, Systems, Signals and Communications

Tango!

* * *

Actually, I’ve been deep into tango all afternoon. I’ve been listening to Patti Maes, founder and director of the MIT Media Lab’s Interactive Experience Research Group, talk about just-in-time information.

You may have heard of just-in-time, the buzz word of the 1990s. It means don’t stockpile inventory, make the stuff as orders come in, and use FedEx to ship it.

That’s not exactly what Patti means by the phrase. This is MIT, after all. Take the quantum leap.

Personal Interaction with Augmented Objects.

This is cool stuff. There’s a lot of RFID and Bluetooth and infrared gadgetry. Databases and messaging and matchmaking (that’s technotalk for networking). Fantasy applications for health care, the environment, shopping, research … and, though Pattie doesn’t know it yet,

Tango!

By way of example, consider three gadgets:

Wristband Know-It-All
It looks like a sports watch with a chip instead of watch face on it. The chip knows what you like. Never mind how.

Now, let’s say you go shopping at a (real-world!) bookstore, where every book is outfitted with a chip of its own. Every time you touch a book, your chip and the book’s chip have a little chat. If they like each other, your wristband sends a message to your cell phone, and your cell phone searches the web for more information about that book. After all the searching is done, your cell phone calls you.

This is MIT, so of course, the cell phone is an overachiever. It offers you everything it learned on the web: product description, images, reviews, comments from other users, rankings, related products … and on and on, right on down to the table of contents and sample chapter. All meant to help you to decide whether to buy the book in your hand.


The Ring of Power Shopping
This one is much simpler. Just like the wristband, your ring has a chip that knows what you like. The merchandise has its own chip. You buy only organic peanut butter? In the grocery store, just start pointing at jars of peanut butter until the ring lights up. Bingo, you’ve found a match!


Gaze-Based Interface: Caught You Looking!
You wear a cell phone earpiece with an infrared receiver built in. You stand before an object—a car’s engine, let’s say, since Pattie Maes does. The engine is covered with infrared beacons that are constantly send out signals. The beacons are like little lighthouses.

When your gaze falls on a certain area of the car’s engine, your receiver picks up the signal from the nearest beacon. Bingo! That part of the engine talks to you.

Pattie Maes showed a video of this. In the video, a woman is examining a car’s engine. She stops to look at a part that resembles an octopus.

The engine says to the woman: “Would you like to know how the air intake manifold works?”

The woman says, “Yes!”

Everyone laughs. Of course. I assume that, like me, they already know.


The MIT Version of Real-World Applications

Wouldn’t it be great, Pattie says, if you wore this wristband, and every time you picked up a can of diet soda or Dunkin’ Donut, you got a brief message about health risks?

She is drowned out by laughter. We honestly think she is joking.

Wouldn’t that be great? she persists, but in the wake of our hilarity she sounds forlorn.

Someone asks whether the Media Lab patents its inventions.

If they have commercial application (read: useful), the lab registers patents, Pattie says. How many so far? Five, Pattie says. She’s been at it 15 years--but of course, usefulness is not the point.

Pattie is a small, tidy woman, but in her mind she is that crazy guy from Back to the Future. She and her crew are inventors and, like all mad scientists and academicians, they are clueless when it comes to the real world.

A wristband that gives you the table of contents for the book you are holding in your hand? Please.

What these gadgets need is big, ubiquitous, perplexing problems to solve. They need opportunities to do things so much better than the way they are currently done that no one can imagine how they managed before.

Killer apps, that’s what we’re after!

E-mail is one. Here’s another:

Tango Is the Killer App

Yes, tango is the killer app for Pattie’s whole array of Personal Interaction with Augmented Objects inventions. Consider the options:

The Lead Detective
It’s Friday night at the Merc. The place is packed. You’ve enjoyed dancing with the leads you know. You’d like to expand your circle. But dancing with strangers is so hard…

You are wearing a beautiful bracelet. You can hardly see the eenie-weenie chip embedded in the scrollwork. As you enter the embrace, your bracelet passes by a chip embedded on the back of the lead’s neck.

Bypass the ringing cell phone. A chippy voice files its report in your ear:

“Style: Classic milonguero. Ranking: Intermediate. Best for vals. Does not lead the cross. Would you like to hear reviews from other dancers? Would you like to leave a comment? Would you like a list of other, similar …?”

This application has the weakness of complexity. When you’re building a killer app, it’s best to simplify. Let’s keep looking.

The Sorting Stone
My what a lovely ring you are wearing! Look at the size of that rock! You circulate. As you pass by each lead, you raise a languid hand. If the stone glows emerald, you will catch his eye later. If it glows ruby, you pass.

High-Tech Cabeceo
He looks at you. You return his gaze. The beacon embedded in his temple sends a signal that strikes the diamond dangling from your ear. A chippy voice murmurs. Perhaps you smile. Perhaps you look away.

New Company Seeks Investors!
From the prospectus:

…Personal Interaction with Augmented Objects, Inc., recognizes that these apps require leads to undergo the minor inconvenience of surgical embeddings: A chip here or there, an infrared beacon… This should be considered inconsequential, like microchipping a pet.

It’s all outpatient, local anesthetic, you’ll feel a pinch, a few small lumps under the skin. The rate of infection is less than 8%. Side effects may include redness, swelling, itchiness, twitching. Chips may malfunction, causing a screeching or squawking sound. Chips may migrate.

Personal Interaction with Augmented Objects, Inc., anticipates that early adopters and investors will be women. For this reason, PIAOInc is offering free, onsite implants to the first 100 investors’ leads.

The prototypes are done. The patents are pending. I’m putting Pattie to work on Phase II: stealth-implantation technology. All I need is an investor.

If this were 10 years ago, venture capitalists would be ringing my phone off the hook.

I miss the technology bubble.

Writing Word Music, Part 2

All of this listening feeds into my work.

I was being disingenuous earlier, when I said I had exhausted by songwriting career. Everything I write is a song.

When I write, I spend as much time on rhythm as on image or meaning. Even when it might interfere with the meaning, I’ll take rhythm first. See there? I had to have the word “first” to end that last sentence. It wouldn’t land right without it. And there—“land” had to be a one-syllable, accented word. And there—I rewrote that last sentence twice until I came up with the musical phrase, “one-syllable, accented word.” (A previous draft said “one syllable word that carries an accent.” See? No music there.)

You never noticed? No matter. Reading is like dancing. You don’t need to be a master of musical theory to have a nice dance. You don’t need to understand meter or rhetoric to enjoy a good read.

(See there, I instinctively added “al” to music theory. Why? I don’t know; it’s not correct. I go back to look for a cause: It’s because my rhythmic sense wanted both of those last two sentences to have exactly the same number of syllables.)

Now I’m just showing off.

* * *

During the Denver Tango Festival, I attended a lecture/performance about tango music. Grisha talked about what makes music inviting to dancers. As Grisha spoke about music, I made notes about writing.

Here’s a writing problem:

Authors must create “tags” to identify characters. A tag is a subtle clue that leads readers to easily identify a character. For example, in a mystery, Albert might have a sniffle. If the murderer sniffled just before clobbering the good guy, you would assume the murderer was Albert. Sniffling is his tag.

Dialogue is difficult, because you don’t want to overdo it. Albert might use a habitual phrase, but not too often. He could have a dialect or accent, but no one since Zora Neale Hurston has gotten away with long passages of that.

You need something subtle, something that won’t snag the reader’s attention but will make an impression almost subconsciously…

Rhythm!

Grisha said, Where you put the emphasis is different between waltz and zamba.

That prompted me to write: “in language--changes in accent or tone of voice emphasize meaning.”

Duh. That’s the oldest trick in the book. Just try saying this sentence three times, each time emphasizing a different word: I saw that.

Why would I bother making that note? What I really was thinking was this: What if you had someone who spoke in Waltz rhythm? And someone else who spoke Zamba? How might the different speech patterns interfere with understanding and create mayhem?

If my default speech pattern were 1-TWO-3, then, if I said to my colleague in a meeting, “Do YOU agree?” it would be a simple question from my point of view, but my colleague might hear it as a power play or an attack.

Wow!

If I wrote for Star Trek, I would plunge Captain Jean Luc Picard into a diplomatic misadventure in which two cultures on a planet are immersed in a centuries-old feud based on Waltz versus Zamba speech patterns.

Only Data (the android) would be able to resolve the dilemma, because only he would be able to separate the meaning of words from their various emotional/rhythmic colorations.

With Data serving as interpreter for both sides, the crisis is averted, the feud ended. Thanks to Data, the planet is saved! The people beg him to stay. They will make him Chief Councilor, he will rule forever!

Data declines, because of course the two cultures must overcome their differences for themselves. Tentatively, resolutely, the two cultures reach out to one another.

In the end, Data stands in the captain’s office with a sympathetic Jean Luc Picard, gazing through a window at the stars flying by, bereft because this success only points up yet again that he is not human, he will never achieve his dream of becoming so.

Jean Luc Picard, being the sexiest know-it-all prig in the galaxy, sums up the whole thing with a little Latin poetry. Unfortunately, its meaning is all wrapped up in its cadence. Data doesn’t get it. (This scene lies on the cutting room floor.)

* * *

I did no writing at the coffee shop. All I could hear were new rhythms.

Now in my spare moments I am obsessed with silly games:

Describe a scene using sentences that contain four beats, then five.

Write a dialogue, one person speaking Waltz, one Zamba.

When this man gets agitated, he speaks in syncopation. Heeeere’s J-Johnny!

This girl speaks only in 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2 with the accent rotating from 1 to 2 to 3:
Marilyn, have you seen Jerry?
Will someone please answer the phone?
Oh my God, that was great dim sum!

Writing Word Music, Part 1

E.L. Doctorow wrote the novel Ragtime in ragtime rhythm. Not the whole book, of course, but enough to create “a stunning conjuration of ragtime music,” according to one reviewer. He won the National Book Award for it.

* * *

I am in my favorite coffee shop. Every day the music is different. Today it’s what I call jazz, which is to say it’s not rock or classical or tango, and that’s all I know. It’s a guy with swingy rhythm and a rough voice. Whoever it is, I like him.

I have been out of town for several days. I need to write! But as I open the laptop, something catches my ear.

“Ain’t nobody, ain’t nobody home…” the guy sings.

Four beats, then five. Four beats, then five. The asymmetry catches my attention, over and over yet again.

I close the laptop.

In the next song, the accented beat is always on 2. Sometimes the music skips the first beat altogether. Who needs it?

In the next song, the accented beat is on 2, the same as before. No, wait, there’s something … The accented beats are both 2 and 3! How cool is that?

Alert! If triplets are merely adornments in tango, they’ve staged a coup here. Triplets are overrunning this song!

Here’s a nod to Lawrence Welk: and-a ONE and-a TWO…

This one is syncopated. Every “and” beat is late, so it almost runs into the following beat. I love that!

Enough now. Enough beats, enough coffee, enough basking in the sun. Time to work.

* * *

You know what I like? I like dancing to music that is lazy. It slides hither and yon, and then it runs up against a beat. I like it because it goes all limp and boneless and then suddenly catches itself on a beat. I like both parts, the limp and boneless, and the sudden catch.

I cannot think of a single piece of music that you could describe in this way. But I like it anyway. Sitting here in the sunny window of the coffee shop, basking in the sun, filled up with music, I can feel it …

Hey, One Heart, no nodding off!

* * *

When I was a kid, I wrote a song that went one-two-THREEand-four-FIVEand-six-SEVENand-eight. The 3, 5, and 7 were accented quick notes. You snuck them in with your pinkie finger while your other fingers were doing the serious work. It was great fun. It repeated six times with various chords. That was it. I couldn’t figure out what to do next, so I just played that little fragment over and over again. I think this is going to be the extent of my songwriting career.

No matter. My wordwriting career is going just fine. Though it could use a little attention right now. I will do this: I will take a bite of biscotti, and the loud chewing will drown out the music that is distracting...

wait, what’s this?

Not the accent, but the pitch!

In this song, the rhythm section is a piano. Beats 1 and 3 are low notes, beats 2 and 4 are high ones. The momentum of the music is not carried along by accent but by a predictable pattern of pitches. How cool is that?

Here’s another song without drums. A big bass cello is keeping the beat. 1, 2 and 3 go up the scale, and on 4 the bottom drops out. Imagine yourself in an elevator or an amusement park ride.

Imagine yourself on a dance floor…

Beats, not Notes

One night in February, Glenlivet and David Hodgson and I were listening to music.

“That’s fast,” Glenlivet said.

“No, that’s slow,” David answered with his sly grin.

Many things David says are inexplicable. But I suspect he was putting us on. That music was fast.

* * *

Lately I have been staring fixedly at a certain track on the CITA 2005 DVD.

I love Osvaldo and Coco. Their dancing is simple and sweet. Osvaldo slips in clever footwork; Coco indulges his flights of fancy. Look: In their dance you can see their relationship, a courtship grown mature.

Look again: See them young, their courtship brand new. Osvaldo the suitor offers fancy footwork, a gift to say, “I like you, I want to impress you, do you like me?, here’s my heart.” Coco, wise in the ways of dancing men, smiles inwardly. Fondly they embrace. When the dance ends, they kiss.

What I can’t figure out, now, is why Osvaldo is wasting this milonga. Here he is, up on the stage, in front of a big crowd, in front of a camera. The music runs merrily over the couple like water, but Osvaldo is not dancing on the waves. He is walking through them as you would through deep water. Walking beautifully, but look at all those notes he is missing.

The younger dancers do it much better. They revel, they dazzle, they leap and sparkle. Yes, that is more like it!

* * *

We need to work on milonga, Grisha says.

I do.

He puts on some music. It is intimidatingly fast.

Wow, that’s fast, I say.

No, it’s slow, Grisha answers.

What’s this? I am slow-mo by nature, but by any measure, this music is fast. Have David and Grisha formed a pact to mess with my head? Or am I in Warp-world, where nothing I know, not even the definitions of everyday words, holds true?

We dance. It is fast. Trust me on this.

Then it’s not. Grisha has put on the brakes. He is dancing like Osvaldo. Warp-world. I have learned not to fight it. Then it’s fast again. Then we are done.

I am not panting; I have an efficient cardiovascular system. But I am not fooled.

That was fast, I repeat.

Grisha repeats, No.

He shows me sheet music. It is fussy with notes.

Don’t look at the notes, he says, look at the beats. He replays the milonga, taps to the beat.

For several measures I rely on his hand to tell me where the beat falls. Then I hear a few beats here and there, and then I hear them all. Wow! I feel my face go alight.

Who knew? Every milonga is two rivers at once: the sparkling surface, the quiet deep.

Osvaldo, you clever fox, your feet whispering secrets in plain sight. Coco, your inward, knowing smile.

This fancy bit whispers, “Remember, my dear?” This one teases, “We still have what it takes.” Slow steps murmur, “All that and more, dear, is ours.” Fondly they dance. When the dance ends, they kiss.

Let the young dancers leap and sparkle. Let the deep current run true.

* * *

It’s Friday night at the Merc, the big night of the week for Tango Colorado. This is when we dress up, to the extent that Coloradoans do, and show off our stuff.

I am dancing with a new, favorite lead. He comes to tango from swing dancing. We have scampered through all kinds of quick-step dances at the Avalon, where Donna plays alternative music on Sunday nights.

But this is a traditional milonga. He is lost. He rocks, takes a few steps, rocks some more.

Wow, this is fast, he says.

Sure enough. The notes are coming at us like a river in flood.

I don’t really know what to do with this, he says.

This is not a practica, not the right place to offer an impromptu lesson. I am no master of milonga myself. I have one piece of information that I can share, and I don’t know if I can explain it in a way that he will understand. I have a music background, so I already knew the difference between beats and notes; I only needed Grisha’s help to apply what I knew to this style of music. I don’t know what kind of music background this guy has. And, I don’t know if he would appreciate a follower offering a suggestion—many leads don’t. I don’t know …

What the heck. My new friend is dying here. I give it my best shot.

There are beats under the notes, I say. Listen for the beats. It’s not fast.

His face goes screwy with concentration. For several measures we stand stock-still; we are not even rocking in place. I can’t help him, I have shared the full measure of my knowledge. (Still, I’m pretty impressed with myself. I said, “It’s not fast” just like an old pro!)

All of a sudden, his whole face lights up

and we’re off!