Generosity

It's hard to dance tango if you're selfish.  It's also easy to have selfish moments when you're at a milonga.  Perhaps it's even necessary to have those moments.  Otherwise, we'd all be perpetually beholden to those who use guilt as an alternative to the cabeceo.

At some point between selfishly avoiding eye contact with those we don't want to dance with at the moment, and taking up the embrace to dance with somebody we do want to dance with right now, we have to switch off from 'me' mode and switch into 'she' or 'he' mode.

The best amongst us can bring this generosity to bear on almost every partner they dance with.

The very best can even do so with the selfish ones.

Foreign

There are visitors at the milonga.  Strangers from a strange land, or maybe just strangers from one town down the road.  You might not notice them at first, but they take a few steps on the dance floor and all eyes are on them.  They must know they're the centre of attention, but they look cool and calm and take their time.

All the leaders in the room want to dance with her, because she closes her eyes and half-smiles and walks as though the world will make way for her.

All the followers in the room want to dance with him because he makes way for the world.  He pauses, as whirling dervishes scythe past.  He keeps her from the flicks and kicks and waist-high stilettos.

We wish we could tell them that, no, we're not all knuckleheads here.  But they will make their own judgement.

We hope they'll come back.

We think we need them.

Edification

Taking a compliment -- without being a complete arse -- is an art.

I feel I've still not grown out of my 'complete arse' phase.

I'm certainly not approaching art.

• Take the compliment with a smile.  Not a smug one.
• Return the compliment.  Not with a glib or hollow one.
• Be glad that somebody had something good to say about you.  Don't believe your own publicity.

On average, I achieve one out of three of these.

My all-time best effort was two out of three.

I aspire to the art.  I expect I'm an arse.

Damage

If it hurts when you do this, stop doing this.  If it's painful to do that, don't do that.

But who listens to doctors when this is what you love or that is what makes you happy?  There must be some other answer.  Can't I do this a bit more gently, maybe?  Or maybe I'll cut down on the amount of that that I do.

I'll go out dancing, but I'll only dance a few tandas.  I'll come home early.  I'll watch and listen when normally I'd be out on the floor.

And then, thankfully, you come up with a logical answer that means you can carry on without changing any behaviour at all: It must be painful only because I'm doing it wrong.  I'll practice more.

You rub your foot or your knee or your back or your shoulder or your neck and wince, happily.

Confluence

I do like going to a new venue.  I like the moment when you park the car, knowing you're in the right street, but nowhere leaps out at you saying 'The milonga's here, come on in'.  I like the underground feeling.  If you didn't know it was there, you'd never stumble on it.

And then, standing in the street staring at blank walls, you have an idea.  You look around.  Sure enough, someone's walking the streets clutching a shoe bag.  Here's another one.  They converge on a doorway.  You approach it hesitantly.

Then there's the sound.  You can only experience it once in each place.  That first time you hear the music echoing down unfamiliar hallways and corridors.  It reassures you that you're okay, you're in the right place, your journey's been worthwhile.

So all in a line, like the Pied Piper's children, you follow the sound.

Breathe

Take a breath.  Pause.

Sometimes you synchronise with each other, other times you don't.

One day the music makes you sigh.

Sometimes as slow as a snore.

Occasionally forget to breathe at all.

A different day.  The same moment, to the millisecond, in the same music makes you gasp.

Breath as fast as pistons in a steam engine.

Oxygen can make you high.

How can music recorded eighty, ninety, a hundred years ago still hold a surprise?

Every time you hear it?

Arms

It's all about the hug, the embrace, the connection.  For a few minutes, you define the world between you and your partner.  Everything that happens outside that circle happens on a different planet.

Oh, the other planets have gravity.  They affect each other.  But when it all works perfectly they share a common orbit, and you can give all your attention to shaping your own little world.  And your partner populates it with all the things that make you smile and cry and laugh and hope.  And she turns a world into paradise.

Until the music ends, the arms release each other, the circle breaks.

Sometimes the hug remains in the body a long, long time.  I've carried some with me for years.  I hope to carry them a long time still.

Patience

Paciencia... la vida es así.