Last night I decided to go to the Avalon, the cool new tango venue in Boulder, just 40 miles north of Denver.
I left at 6:30. Drove on the highway called I-25 to Boulder, missed the exit, drove north quite a way, noticed something wasn't working, turned around, missed the exit to Boulder on the way back down, drove south several miles, turned around, headed back toward Boulder.
Saw the exit for Foothills Parkway/Table Mesa Drive.
I knew one of them had to be the right one. Somone told me they take Foothills Parkway to Table Mesa Drive.
I remember this is quite an easy drive. After you turn right on Foothills Parkway (or possibly Table Mesa Drive), you just keep going until you find the Avalon.
I took Foothills Parkway. There was no right turn, but I kept going.
I found Longmont, 20 miles east of Boulder. Turned around, found Boulder again.
Apparently missed an exit because Foothills Parkway suddenly transformed into the highway I-25, going back to Denver.
After 2.5 hours in the car ... I arrived at a different milonga, this one at the restaurant Little Europe, which is 15 minutes from my house.
The music was lovely, the company was fine, but it was not what I intended.
Best I don't lead, really.
Sorry.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Norman Mailer Does Tango
“Even processed paper still contains an ineluctable hint of the tenderness God put into his trees.” (Mailer, The Castle in the Forest)
A man who could write a sentence like that, who could place those words in the Devil's mouth, is a man who would tango naked.
Not undressed. Tango is not sex. It is revelation.
There is no such thing as safe revelation.
Mailer’s tango would be untamed. Entering his embrace, you would know you are crossing the line. You’re never safe with Mailer.
His tango would not be pretty; his ego has no respect for the bounds of musicality. No respect for your boundaries, either.
Mailer’s tango would be all visceral, all aggression and tenderness. He would charge, he would walk right through you. Gathering you to his breast, he would carry you as part of his heart.
He would not ask permission. He would not let you wriggle away.
Mailer had his own way of saying “namaste.” In his mouth, it didn’t mean “the sweetness in me recognizes the sweetness in you.” It delivered a blow, the greeting of one raging ego cherishing the same in another.
Aggression and tenderness. Ego and oneness. Tango.
P.S.
To NM: Sorry about the earlier entry, especially the bacon. Forgot you were Jewish. Had no idea the health you were in. Got carried away by the rhythm of my rant.
(I want to delete the old post now. It seems small-minded, not the lovely One Heart I’d like to present to the world. What would Mr. Mailer do?
“He never committed the ugliness of insinuating that he screwed up for art’s sake. He let the ugliness and the imprudence of his actions speak for themselves.” [NYT])
OK, it stays. Namaste, baby.
A man who could write a sentence like that, who could place those words in the Devil's mouth, is a man who would tango naked.
Not undressed. Tango is not sex. It is revelation.
There is no such thing as safe revelation.
Mailer’s tango would be untamed. Entering his embrace, you would know you are crossing the line. You’re never safe with Mailer.
His tango would not be pretty; his ego has no respect for the bounds of musicality. No respect for your boundaries, either.
Mailer’s tango would be all visceral, all aggression and tenderness. He would charge, he would walk right through you. Gathering you to his breast, he would carry you as part of his heart.
He would not ask permission. He would not let you wriggle away.
Mailer had his own way of saying “namaste.” In his mouth, it didn’t mean “the sweetness in me recognizes the sweetness in you.” It delivered a blow, the greeting of one raging ego cherishing the same in another.
Aggression and tenderness. Ego and oneness. Tango.
P.S.
To NM: Sorry about the earlier entry, especially the bacon. Forgot you were Jewish. Had no idea the health you were in. Got carried away by the rhythm of my rant.
(I want to delete the old post now. It seems small-minded, not the lovely One Heart I’d like to present to the world. What would Mr. Mailer do?
“He never committed the ugliness of insinuating that he screwed up for art’s sake. He let the ugliness and the imprudence of his actions speak for themselves.” [NYT])
OK, it stays. Namaste, baby.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
In Memory, Norman Mailer
In January of this year, The New York Times Book Review ran an article “Maestro of the Human Ego,” reviewing Norman Mailer’s last novel, The Castle in the Forest.
The reviewer took nearly four pages of tiny type to get to the book at hand; all that came before was big-picture analysis of the author’s beliefs and being, and how they evolved over 60 years to arrive at this grand work.
Readers wrote to complain. Who did the reviewer think he was, wasting their time on context?
But the reviewer knew this: The Castle in the Forest would be Mailer’s last major work. (His final book was already posthumous, prepared with the help of his literary executor.)
The review eulogized Mailer’s whole body of work, the only eulogy a writer needs. After a summer of near-homelessness, the article is still here in my briefcase, wrinkled and marked up and torn:
“Insofar as the forest represents natural goodness … ‘forest’ and ‘castle’ are, you might say, the two poles of Mailer’s work and life. The popular conception of Mailer sees only the former: unrestrained expression of impulses and instincts; sex as freedom; absolute candor as the ineluctable hint of God’s presence.
“But Mailer is also … a castle-builder, expert in the different paths along which people can wander and become lost in a forest without a castle, and yet trick themselves into thinking that they inhabit a resplendent fortress or chateau.”
Mailer is the next great American writer after Hemingway. You almost have to compare them.
Hemingway was a romantic. He fought in WWI, when the world still believed in regeneration through violence. He chronicled disillusioned romantics who were oriented always to what they had lost. In the end, he could not bear the disorientation, could not reorient himself to postmodernism. It’s no wonder he couldn’t survive the 1960s, a blessing he never survived to the ’70s.
Mailer fought in the war of Catch-22. The death of romanticism left a void. Mailer filled it with himself.
End of story? No. Only the beginning. Mailer’s tendency is to communion.
You shouldn’t reveal so much, Carleen tells me.
Why not? I ask.
She shrugs.
Mailer argues for me: You are never safer than in plain sight. Naked truth is power. Don’t let others usurp it. They are pretenders to your throne.
Own your ego. Reveal your Self. Say it all. Get naked in public, or don't go out in public at all.
The NYT reviewer says this:
“One way to take the measure of a writer is by considering the weight, quality and consistency of his obsessions. Mailer, from the beginning, has had a rage for what he calls ‘nakedness.’
“It is a passion for emptying his psyche onto the table in front of the reader, much as a person who has just been arrested will be ordered by the police to empty his pockets.”
And this:
“The overflowing force of Mailer’s egotism endows him with respect for the power and capacity of other people’s egos.”
The reviewer took nearly four pages of tiny type to get to the book at hand; all that came before was big-picture analysis of the author’s beliefs and being, and how they evolved over 60 years to arrive at this grand work.
Readers wrote to complain. Who did the reviewer think he was, wasting their time on context?
But the reviewer knew this: The Castle in the Forest would be Mailer’s last major work. (His final book was already posthumous, prepared with the help of his literary executor.)
The review eulogized Mailer’s whole body of work, the only eulogy a writer needs. After a summer of near-homelessness, the article is still here in my briefcase, wrinkled and marked up and torn:
“Insofar as the forest represents natural goodness … ‘forest’ and ‘castle’ are, you might say, the two poles of Mailer’s work and life. The popular conception of Mailer sees only the former: unrestrained expression of impulses and instincts; sex as freedom; absolute candor as the ineluctable hint of God’s presence.
“But Mailer is also … a castle-builder, expert in the different paths along which people can wander and become lost in a forest without a castle, and yet trick themselves into thinking that they inhabit a resplendent fortress or chateau.”
* * *
Mailer is the next great American writer after Hemingway. You almost have to compare them.
Hemingway was a romantic. He fought in WWI, when the world still believed in regeneration through violence. He chronicled disillusioned romantics who were oriented always to what they had lost. In the end, he could not bear the disorientation, could not reorient himself to postmodernism. It’s no wonder he couldn’t survive the 1960s, a blessing he never survived to the ’70s.
Mailer fought in the war of Catch-22. The death of romanticism left a void. Mailer filled it with himself.
End of story? No. Only the beginning. Mailer’s tendency is to communion.
* * *
You shouldn’t reveal so much, Carleen tells me.
Why not? I ask.
She shrugs.
Mailer argues for me: You are never safer than in plain sight. Naked truth is power. Don’t let others usurp it. They are pretenders to your throne.
Own your ego. Reveal your Self. Say it all. Get naked in public, or don't go out in public at all.
* * *
The NYT reviewer says this:
“One way to take the measure of a writer is by considering the weight, quality and consistency of his obsessions. Mailer, from the beginning, has had a rage for what he calls ‘nakedness.’
“It is a passion for emptying his psyche onto the table in front of the reader, much as a person who has just been arrested will be ordered by the police to empty his pockets.”
And this:
“The overflowing force of Mailer’s egotism endows him with respect for the power and capacity of other people’s egos.”
Friday, November 9, 2007
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Dropping Back to Move Ahead
Did you know that in Germany, memoir is sold in the fiction section of bookstores?
No wonder.
People writing 30 years after the fact aren't likely to give you the fact. For example:
1.
Thirty years after the fact, who remembers exactly what was said?
(Frank McCourt answers testily: Of course I remember exactly. If a conversation weren’t that important, I wouldn’t include it at all!)
2.
How can you be sure you are telling what really happened, and not your own interpretation clouded by sentimentality, face-saving, sibling rivalry, general cussedness, lousy coffee or the need to make sense of things from a 30-years-later perspective?
(Norman Mailer’s answer: *&!?^!
Oh wait. That’s Norman Mailer’s answer to everything. [Imagine him in his bathrobe and slippers, rat’s nest hair, bleary eyes—hung over if your imagination serves him up young, hacking his lungs out if you get the current picture. The maid comes in as she does every morning: “What do you want for breakfast?” Mailer replies: *&!?^! The maid brings him bacon and toast and coffee, as she does every day. Mailer falls upon it with gusto. “You’re welcome,” she drawls on her way back to the kitchen, where fresh fruit and croissants await her. “*&!?^!” Mailer barks. Bacon bits tumble into the scrubby brush he calls whiskers.]
That’s the short answer. Mailer gave his long answer in Armies of the Night.)
Life is a school of dolphins. If you want to write memoir, you have to be able to see the school for the fish.
All those arcs, rising and falling ...
… on one shared trajectory.
(Not to mention the tuna, which apparently lacks the cuddliness of dolphins. Save the dolphins! Can the tuna!
[Shane, is that you? Get out of my blog!])
Many story arcs, each independent, rising and falling not in concert, on a shared trajectory, with the occasional tuna. That’s life.
Memoir is not about life. It’s about trajectory.
How can you plot the trajectory while you are in it?
Here’s a proverb:
God helps those who help themselves.
This means:
Never trust life. Trust your ability to follow its lead.
The same goes for writing.
(And your tango partner.)
Tom Stermitz says tango is a Rorschach blot: everyone reads into it what they will.
From the second Shane asked me to join tango, I knew what my blot would be. Blots change their shape but never their nature.
Once you know your blot, you can pretty much see your dolphins. All those arcs. That trajectory. The nets.
Here’s what I’ve learned about writing memoir in the moment:
No matter how good your memory or ubiquitous your notes, you’re going to have to fill in some gaps.
Memoir is sleight of hand. I am a magician of literary technique, a master of strategic omission.
It's impossible to avoid the temptation to infuse experience with meaning. Or to mess with readers' heads.
A researcher should never become involved in her subject.
A writer can devise more distractions and avoidance mechanisms than you can imagine. News items. Photos. Poems. Riffs on Normal Mailer.
Eventually you empty your bag of tricks.
I am becoming visible. So are you. This is a slippery slope.
No wonder people don’t write memoir as it happens.
No wonder.
People writing 30 years after the fact aren't likely to give you the fact. For example:
1.
Thirty years after the fact, who remembers exactly what was said?
(Frank McCourt answers testily: Of course I remember exactly. If a conversation weren’t that important, I wouldn’t include it at all!)
2.
How can you be sure you are telling what really happened, and not your own interpretation clouded by sentimentality, face-saving, sibling rivalry, general cussedness, lousy coffee or the need to make sense of things from a 30-years-later perspective?
(Norman Mailer’s answer: *&!?^!
Oh wait. That’s Norman Mailer’s answer to everything. [Imagine him in his bathrobe and slippers, rat’s nest hair, bleary eyes—hung over if your imagination serves him up young, hacking his lungs out if you get the current picture. The maid comes in as she does every morning: “What do you want for breakfast?” Mailer replies: *&!?^! The maid brings him bacon and toast and coffee, as she does every day. Mailer falls upon it with gusto. “You’re welcome,” she drawls on her way back to the kitchen, where fresh fruit and croissants await her. “*&!?^!” Mailer barks. Bacon bits tumble into the scrubby brush he calls whiskers.]
That’s the short answer. Mailer gave his long answer in Armies of the Night.)
* * *
What if there was another way to write memoir?
What if you could write your memoir with the immediacy of a war correspondent?
What if you eliminated the possibility of retrospection and the imperative to make sense of things, to impose an order on experience so that the whole long arc of your life's story makes sense?
What if instead of starting inside your head (with the story you have told yourself about your experience for the past 30 years), you started outside your head (with your experience as it happens), and worked your way in?
What if you approached the writing in such a way that authenticity displaced literary construct?
What would all of that do to fact, memory, subjectivity? Would the memoir remain literature or become merely a diary?
This blog is my literary experiment: Memoir in the moment.
* * *
Life is a school of dolphins. If you want to write memoir, you have to be able to see the school for the fish.
All those arcs, rising and falling ...
… on one shared trajectory.
(Not to mention the tuna, which apparently lacks the cuddliness of dolphins. Save the dolphins! Can the tuna!
[Shane, is that you? Get out of my blog!])
Many story arcs, each independent, rising and falling not in concert, on a shared trajectory, with the occasional tuna. That’s life.
Memoir is not about life. It’s about trajectory.
* * *
How can you plot the trajectory while you are in it?
Here’s a proverb:
God helps those who help themselves.
This means:
Never trust life. Trust your ability to follow its lead.
The same goes for writing.
(And your tango partner.)
* * *
Tom Stermitz says tango is a Rorschach blot: everyone reads into it what they will.
From the second Shane asked me to join tango, I knew what my blot would be. Blots change their shape but never their nature.
Once you know your blot, you can pretty much see your dolphins. All those arcs. That trajectory. The nets.
* * *
Here’s what I’ve learned about writing memoir in the moment:
No matter how good your memory or ubiquitous your notes, you’re going to have to fill in some gaps.
Memoir is sleight of hand. I am a magician of literary technique, a master of strategic omission.
It's impossible to avoid the temptation to infuse experience with meaning. Or to mess with readers' heads.
A researcher should never become involved in her subject.
A writer can devise more distractions and avoidance mechanisms than you can imagine. News items. Photos. Poems. Riffs on Normal Mailer.
Eventually you empty your bag of tricks.
I am becoming visible. So are you. This is a slippery slope.
No wonder people don’t write memoir as it happens.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
My neural pathways are becoming accustomed to the sensory input patterns of tango*
Something has happened.
People call me by name. I recognize their faces and ways.
I have become a fixture at the door of the Turn, taking money and greeting people. Every week, a certain lead walks out the door at the beginning of the community dance. He averts his face as if that renders him invisible. I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd, but in that moment I know him.
I eat even on days I have tango.
A tanguera whom I admire told me my dance is coming along.
Leads have begun to invite me to dance. I accept dances with those who attend the same classes I do ...
… and with one who doesn’t.
I can make my presence felt in the embrace.
The girlie-quotient is rising. Still, I never do faux, flash, skin. Except when I wear the biker-bitch cropped-and-zippered vest that Andrea insisted I buy, along with an earring made from a real saw blade. It’s a pretty cool outfit. What with the cigarette-leg pants and stilettos and all.
I wear it once a year, at the Denver festival alternative milonga, Well, yes, there are two festivals each year. So that’s twice.
And on Halloween.
But that’s all.
I make eye contact. Every few weeks I try the cabaceo.
I changed the time I work at the door of the Turn so I am free during the community dance. Normally I go home. Twice I followed The Man with the Averted Face outside. (I pretend I don’t see him; he pretends he doesn’t see me.) Once I joined in the dance.
I let some people do the tango greeting thing on me—hugs, cheek-kisses, whatever. Not everyone. Some.
I once kissed a lead on the cheek. Voluntarily.
I have gained five pounds.
I engage in social contact outside of tango venues: I send email. I returned a call from a classmate.
When I walk into a milonga, I look to see who is there.
I recognize shoes.
I am no longer around tango but of it.
I am becoming visible. So are you.
This is the prelude and the conclusion.
___________
(*The title is a quote from Data, Star Trek Generations. With a few changes. He didn't dance tango. Too bad.)
People call me by name. I recognize their faces and ways.
I have become a fixture at the door of the Turn, taking money and greeting people. Every week, a certain lead walks out the door at the beginning of the community dance. He averts his face as if that renders him invisible. I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd, but in that moment I know him.
I eat even on days I have tango.
A tanguera whom I admire told me my dance is coming along.
Leads have begun to invite me to dance. I accept dances with those who attend the same classes I do ...
… and with one who doesn’t.
I can make my presence felt in the embrace.
The girlie-quotient is rising. Still, I never do faux, flash, skin. Except when I wear the biker-bitch cropped-and-zippered vest that Andrea insisted I buy, along with an earring made from a real saw blade. It’s a pretty cool outfit. What with the cigarette-leg pants and stilettos and all.
I wear it once a year, at the Denver festival alternative milonga, Well, yes, there are two festivals each year. So that’s twice.
And on Halloween.
But that’s all.
I make eye contact. Every few weeks I try the cabaceo.
I changed the time I work at the door of the Turn so I am free during the community dance. Normally I go home. Twice I followed The Man with the Averted Face outside. (I pretend I don’t see him; he pretends he doesn’t see me.) Once I joined in the dance.
I let some people do the tango greeting thing on me—hugs, cheek-kisses, whatever. Not everyone. Some.
I once kissed a lead on the cheek. Voluntarily.
I have gained five pounds.
I engage in social contact outside of tango venues: I send email. I returned a call from a classmate.
When I walk into a milonga, I look to see who is there.
I recognize shoes.
I am no longer around tango but of it.
I am becoming visible. So are you.
This is the prelude and the conclusion.
___________
(*The title is a quote from Data, Star Trek Generations. With a few changes. He didn't dance tango. Too bad.)
Monday, November 5, 2007
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.”
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.
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.
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