The four horsemen of the Apocalypse chat at a milonga somewhere in Me Río de La Plata*1. They are not characters. They are archetypes. That is why they can express thoughts and have attitudes that, for reasons of social sensitivity, people cannot. They do not behave mechanically in relation to their particular characteristics. They are interrelated and behave like a cloud of personalities that flows and polarizes, like atoms in a molecule. They speak and think in different languages, suddenly jumping from one to another, according to what each language allows them to express better. To make reading less laborious, I made this rendition fully in English. Here are the links to my version in Spanish, as well as the original (which is written mainly in English and Spanish).
*1 "Me Río de La Plata" is a play on words, synthesizing a reference to a geographical location –Buenos Aires and Uruguay, the area where Tango arises and develops, and with it to a virtual space which contains anywhere a milonga and Tango takes place– and the literal meaning of this words, which translates as "I laugh about money".
The passionate – My animal is wild.
The questioner – How wild? It must be, somehow, domesticated. If not, you wouldn't have the language to express such a premise.
The passionate – It had been tamed by the and advantage-seeking machinery of our human organization, exhausted by it to the extreme of desperation, emptied and flattened like a soda can, recycled multiple times, and reused again. For most people, this is the only way they know how to live. But my animal remained wild and free in its organs after many decades.
The questioner – When you look at yourself in the mirror, can you see inside you, to your guts, and dissipate all the ghosts of fantasies and delusions you wish to believe?– says, looking at himself in the nearby mirror on the wall behind us.
The passionate – This is how I'm working it out to eventually remove myself, as much as possible, out of those gears:
I am taking personal control of my nutrition, learning about the most up-to-date knowledge regarding food, and preparing all my meals myself.
I started paying more attention to my sleeping habits, sleeping earlier at least twice a week, napping whenever possible, and avoiding caffeine, alcohol, and stimulants, especially after midday.
I integrated physical activity into my life, not by having a scheduled time to exercise, not as an obligation, not as an effort, but by allowing my body to playfully explore and make use of all its possibilities, enhancing them, allowing it to become stronger, more flexible, versatile, resilient, and calm, desiring to be my body in its glory, not feeling obliged to deal with it, as most people do. "I" am my body! I explore the elastic aspects of my flesh as a whole, looking at how it accumulates energy to release it like an elaborated spring. In doing so, I realized to what extreme my body is my spirit. Rodolfo Dinzel said it in the introduction to his “Tango - A dance. That anxious quest for freedom”: "Every adventure of exploration in the physical realm is also an adventure full of discoveries in the spiritual."
Breathing! We overlook this like fish in the water. We see it as natural, but it has been conditioned by education, culture, indoctrination, etc., and mostly neglected because of its lack of commercial value. I regularly practice breathing exercises; I train myself to breathe more efficiently, using exclusively nose breathing and having quick breathing solutions for dealing with emotionally distressful situations.
I allow my spirit to enjoy the treasure of leisure so it retains its ability to stay with itself comfortably and cheerfully. Consequentially, I don’t expect to make productive use of every minute of my life, and so I do not become anxious about the prospect of wasting time or losing it from the perspective of making profits, and I do not feel guilty because of it.
The questioner – What for?!
The passionate (now becoming L'autre) – What I like the most about reining my physiology is that I become nicer and more evil.
El rioplatense, intervening after finishing his expresso (to which he refers simply as "café") – Now I discovered that I can be stronger than humanity's machines, that I can be stronger than humanity itself. I realized that the solution was to be able to distance yourself, starting by first rejecting everything human, and thus, after having distanced yourself for a while, returning to them and using them as raw material.
The questioner– What would then be the value of that utility?
El rioplatense (now located in the depths of the Earth, from where the emanations that inspire the prophecies of the Sibyl arise) – Each thing should be a foundation for something higher. From below: a good physiology for good dancing. A good dance for a more profound spirituality. So on in both directions: up, but also down. What would be the basis for good physiology? What would be superior to a more profound, more distrustful spirituality? Beyond, towards the bottom, down, towards hell, there is an entire society that makes me possible, a mechanism and a multitude that prefer to become tools and thus be used.
There is a pause, and I signal the waiter to bring me another cortado*2.
*2 - Coffee expresso with frosting and milk, typical of Buenos Aires and its area of cultural influence.
El rioplatense continues – There are three levels to organize:
1. The everyday.
2. The urgent.
3. The long term.
In a group, a company, an army, a religious order, an institution, a country, etc. (but also in an individual), specific resources need to be dedicated to each of these levels. In a grouping, assigning different individuals or groups of individuals to each of the three aspects of planning would be pertinent. In an individual...
–And avoiding all that does not let me dance!– Interrupts, now turning back to be The passionate. – Those who believe in the need to be fully organized cannot dance. To dance, you need to accept a measure of uncertainty and risk. Risk constantly challenges all forms of organization. We may consider looking at the processes of life as cycles of increasing and decreasing levels of organization.
–Some humans are like insects that we need to tolerate.– El rioplatense tells us, looking into our eyes one by one, like one-eyed people, or cyclopes, and gets up to dance the Troilo/Fiorentino tanda with a blonde Russian woman.
The questioner takes advantage of the fact that no one is paying attention and murmurs to Me, pointing with his nose towards the dance floor – They are so superficial that they are superficial just on the surface. If I choose to be superficial, I do it with courage and I become superficial to the core, damn it!
Realizing that his favorite was looking at him intensely, The passionate also goes to dance.
I ask The questioner – What sh did he mean by "more evil"?
The questioner – He said whatever You understood.
I – Now I understand less.
The questioner – The fundamental question is missing (moving the right hand with a fundamental question gesture)... For what purpose?
I'm left alone.
I get lost in the mental chaos of half-asking myself half-assed questions.
Isn't that how purposes are decided?
I look at the dance floor. Most move without being there. They allow themselves to be moved by a foreign mechanism. They submit. They feel safe like this, avoiding everything that clearly presents uncertainty to them, that is, life. They have become accustomed to not living, making small concessions every day, choosing to do what seems right to others. And it is good that it is so. We need many to accept to lock themselves in that type of life that Calamaro points out in these verses:
"Life is a prison with open doors
Verónica wrote on the wall with her bowels in disarray."
so that some of us can be free. There is no option. What is repeated so much that you have to work hard to get ahead and become millionaires is what justifies their sacrifice and not living, that is, a standardized life to make this society possible.
–That's why they have to be superficial– I answer The Questioner, even though he's not there. And I think – The greatest danger is not recognizing how much we have of what we accuse others of, especially at the precise moment of pointing it out. It is the curse that falls on every serious and profound statement. Life happens on the surface. It would be impossible without it. "Depth is the surface that rotates in all directions," wrote Antonin Artaud.
Pay attention to one thing: all countries have always progressed thanks to their immigrants. The native population is as if they were the owners of a house that suddenly begins to be inhabited by the guests and by the guests of the guests who come from I don't know where. And well, you say, let them work and pay the floor fee. And the immigrants arrive, the new country imposes its culture on them, tools that they do not yet know how to use well, a new language with which they cannot delve deeper. They become superficial as they are born again into a new culture, thus becoming productive.
Maybe we should be grateful to the superficial ones. Didn't we come into the world thanks to that superficiality, did we? Our fathers and mothers would not have conceived us or given birth to us if they had not been superficial at that precious, precise moment.
Flames of something alive warm my eyes. They are my friends dancing.
There is an important difference between my friends and everyone else. For the rest, it is noted (as Nietzsche says of idealist philosophers) that “their legs do not support them.” Neither physically nor spiritually.
On occasions, we have danced with someone with whom we have felt such a connection, such an openness to express ourselves, such an encouragement to reveal our maximum capacities in the dance that everything that was not dancing disappeared, and the world and the other couples on the dance floor were there in an almost imperceptible way; everything found its meaning, and even the mistakes became necessary to that dance, so much so, that –now we know– they were not mistakes but capricious choreographic creations, daughters of chance and of our strength, intelligence, and preparation to integrate everything that happens in the thread of our choreography, of our improvisation, like pearls and precious stones, and exotic and unknown flowers and creatures which Nature, tangle up to Nothingness and Chaos, made to appear there, for us, for ours and nobody's enjoyment.
–That's the purpose!– I realize.
Sounds "Te aconsejo que me olvides". I watch my friends dancing and remember what Nietzsche wrote in this aphorism: "One could imagine a delight and a power of self-determining, and a freedom of will whereby a spirit could bid farewell to every belief, to every wish for certainty, accustomed as it would be to support itself on slender cords and possibilities and to dance even on the verge of abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence." The joyful science - 347.
The passionate and el rioplatense return to the table.
I face it to The passionate – Don't you drink anything?
– No. Stimulant substances dangerously deceive you: they weaken you but make you perceive that weakness as strength. The feeling of strength is beneficial in itself. Believing that we are getting stronger is a good start, but more is needed. At some point, what is strong beyond belief prevails. Honestly, would you do something to weaken yourself by your own decision? Yes, perhaps by mistake, due to some religious misinterpretation, even if you are not religious, since religion has educated us for so many millennia and, therefore, has become transparent to our most insightful observations. Furthermore, Tango is already stimulating enough. Let's say I decided to change my moral duties for physiological duties. What we value should not be "being good", but rather being healthy (in strictly physiological terms); and to be healthy many times a good share of evil is necessary.
– What do you mean by "evil"?
– That so-called “good” values can make us sick, and many times, negative values, such as selfishness, the search for pleasure, the desire for power, etc., contribute to increasing our health. If I were "good", I would have to dance maybe with that lady over there who no one asks to dance. I would do it out of compassion, and my action would have to be selfless, so I would do it without the intention of proving to anyone that I am "good", not to show myself as "good", and not even for the pleasure that my good action could cause me. That woman doesn't dance, that is, she dances very badly. I would suffer. That suffering would be a symptom that tells me that what I do is the opposite of what my body needs, what strengthens my physiology. Furthermore, that woman dances badly because she believes in those values of what is moral and what is good; she trusts, she believes that these concepts exist as a substratum of the world, they pre-exist and predetermine it, that is, they are more real than this world in which our existence and our dance take place, and that therefore its dance is assured, and if it does not happen this way is because evil has triumphed this time and a culprit will have to be found. She doesn't know it like this in the way I describe it to you. But she never thought about it. And that's how most people are. This is extremely dangerous because this way of conceiving reality leads us to destructive and suicidal conclusions. Therefore I, particularly, am selfish, I seek to provide myself with health and pleasure, to become stronger, that is, better, not “more good."
I take advantage of having him here and ask el rioplatense – And why "distrustful"?
– Because we always assume that the community we were born in wants the best for us. Our parents, our teachers at school, our educators could never really have anticipated the consequences of their teachings. They only "believed", had "faith" in the values they instilled in us. However, does that conviction prove anything? That's how we grew up. As children, it never occurred to us to doubt that conviction. That conviction was enough to grant these evaluations the certificate of truth. But we're not children anymore! How many of their own frustrations did they, perhaps secretly or unconsciously, blame on us? How much revenge for their failure, dependence, helplessness, and aversion to risk was there, perhaps in the way they sought to weaken us so that we would not be able to be better, freer, and more independent? How much, perhaps, did they castrate our instincts so as not to be disturbed by the castrations of which they had already been victims? Maybe with good intentions. Perhaps with innocent ignorance of themselves, that self-ignorance necessary to prevent stopping hiding that what they referred to as freedom was, in reality, submission. And all to make us good human beings, "good" men and women. But not good dancers. Why? Because that was perhaps the most significant sacrifice they made for our existence: they stopped dancing. What is the greatest legacy they left us? The fear.
We stayed silent, looking at the dance floor.
I think about how I was raised. Indeed, I guess, in a different way, in many aspects, from how el rioplatense was educated. Beyond the education I was given, the most important part of who I am has been achieved with the education I gave myself; everything I learned because my curiosity asked me to, what I found by getting into many wrong places, not advised, or explicitly prohibited. My life consists of a chain of mistakes that led me to this failure, which can be seen as a success from certain points of view. Because, let's get to the point: I am poor, that is, I am already well into the second half of my life, in my decline, and I do not have the “first million” (or billion, I reason) in my bank account. I did not invest in the stock market or my retirement. I invested in myself. What happens is that I “chose” to be a milonguero. I have nothing, but I am what I wanted to be. And I'm still building myself. If it had been any other way, I wouldn't have danced.
I once had a millionaire student. She lived in one of those mansions you see in Claremont, in Berkeley. I was going to give lessons at her house. I was served by her butler, who was a guy dressed just like that, as is the Californian style: jeans and a T-shirt with a sweater. From the door, we went to the living room, where I taught the millionaire the lesson. Two minutes into the first dance, two minutes after, not even a whole song had passed when the butler enters and says something to the millionaire, who apologizes and leaves the room. She comes back after ten minutes, and we start again when a beeper rings; she separates herself from me and goes to read the message on the beeper. Well, that was the whole first lesson, the second, and the third. The fourth week I go to her mansion as usual, the butler receives me as usual, but this time the butler tells me that the millionaire is not there. Ok, no problem, I tell him, and I think to myself “it doesn't matter, this lesson is paid for.” I know she called me that afternoon, but I was busy and didn't answer. She didn't leave me a message. I didn't call her either. I was not at all interested in continuing to work with her.
As a child, I realized living in an imaginary world was much easier. Taking what we imagine to a more objective world, to the body, is very costly in multiple ways. Furthermore, we tend to regret everything we must abandon, leave out, and forget to choose just one thing and make it real. So, living in a virtual world makes sense, except that if we can't create any lasting reality, we may become sick, destructive, and self-destructive. It would make more sense to propose dancing as a solution to an excessively consumerist population so eager for distractions. The problem with a virtual existence, such as the one marketed today under the name "metaverse," is similar to what happens if we consume a mixture of all the substances that make up an apple instead of eating a real apple. It has been experimentally shown that consuming all the simple substances that make up an apple is less nutritious than eating a real apple. This phenomenon is called "texture," which means that the substances that make up a meal alone are not enough to nourish us, but the particular arrangement they adopt in their tissues is also necessary so that our subjectivity participates in the process of nourishment, through our perception, through the aesthetic-sensual characteristics form with which we endow what is presented to us, through how it seduces us, and we actively abandon ourselves to its seduction. I borrow this term to call our specific phenomenon "the texture of life.”
Money makes it easier to live in a fantasy world. Everything we experience is somehow a fantasy anyway. We always hope and dream about the future, and we tell ourselves the story of our lives in a way that satisfies us, even when we tell it to ourselves in a depressing way, because maybe that's how we want to see ourselves in the world, depressed, maybe because depression makes the hours of our lives longer, endless, and thus we manage to use depression as a strategy to extend the subjective time of our lives. Good times always pass very fleetingly, and so do the lives of those who consider themselves lucky. I once told this hypothesis to a girl I like to dance with, who is a psychologist, and she told me, “We should ask depressed people what they think about that.” Now, a depressed person would not be qualified to respond because being immersed in depression gives them no perspective other than that of a depressed person. And it is the same for all kinds of subjectivities: we are immersed in it. We cannot remove ourselves from the universe and thus know what everything would be like without us.
Returning to the general topic of fantasies, the important thing is, do they strengthen me or weaken me?
Human beings have no choice but to be one thing, although we always regret everything we have abandoned being. Most do not choose, at least consciously and with passion. To live fully (here's the confusion), we have to choose a single goal and align all our other desired ways of supporting that goal. In my case, be a good dancer.
The majority solve this problem by fitting into already-produced molds. These provide them with a feeling of tranquility, certainty, etc., while we, those of us who, for whatever reason, do not fit into those molds, have no choice but to take the risk of creating our own molds and our own ways of living.
There, we see Blas dancing. Blas understands that being a good dancer is the same as being free, not needing the recognition of those who want to believe that they know what it is to dance, live, and know, yet they know nothing because they misunderstand everything. He was never interested in compromising his freedom, that is, his dance, in exchange for fame and recognition from the many, the mediocre, the ignorant, and the timid, who never left their comfort zone to search for something beautiful, deep, and valuable. And if you go and tell Blas that he is a good dancer, he will answer that he doesn't know if he is a good dancer. He doesn't go around greeting everyone at the milonga, so they think, "What a nice guy!" He doesn't care about that. Let others think what they want. He is not going to dance with that "teacher" because there is a possibility of giving a workshop at a festival. Nor will he pay attention to anyone because they could take classes from him. Nor is he going to make you believe that he gives special treatment to someone because he tries to get that person to come to a milonga that he organizes; neither is he going to pretend to be your friend and make you believe that he can listen to your advice just because he is interested in how much business he can get from you. Today, we have become more expert, precise, and efficient in strategies to obtain economic benefits from others. We go straight to the point without being aware of it. It's part of our nature. All psychological research carried out since the human animal has been investigated has been synthesized, simplified, and formulated to the point of being integrated into our daily lives and behaviors so that society's productive machinery becomes more profitable. Sometimes, we discover these traits in others and point them out with an accusatory gesture, but when we meet those who grew up in Blas' time, we realize that our defensive subjectivity did not allow us to see the straw in our own eyes. For him, what is valuable is to dance well, to have conquered the maximum possible of that fragment of reality that is our lot, and not the abstractions in the heads of those who whisper inside and out like sources that are fixed on the earth, babbling until they dry up; because conquering that fragment is since everything is connected to everything, equal to conquering the world.
Once, we were together after a class, and I told him –Let's go, Blas, to the milonga”
I will never forget what he answered me:
- Stop! No rush... Why rush? It's the milonga...
It seems like nonsense! For us, people of this era of computers and smartphones, everything has to happen immediately because all time is destined to produce. All of our time is a debt that we have to pay, which increases while we pay for the past because we still have to buy the future. For Blas, who was born and raised with these tangos that we hear and like to dance, that is, who was born and lived within Tango, as opposed to us who are in Tango because one day we discovered it, because we became sensitive enough to see it, although it had always been there, for him time is something else; it is being present, not running with the sensitivity focused on what is next, on what will come, as one of Piazzolla's first compositions is called. In Blas's friendship, I understood that Tango is something that is found in what is shared with you by those who have already been Tango all their lives; they, like Blas, already close the circle of life, and with a hug, they pass the emotion of living in itself, that which cannot be offered as a commodity. Blas is our direct connection to the golden era, when this plant called Tango flourished, opening its magnolia petals to the starry night of the forties and fifties after having developed in a fertile but adverse terrain for several decades. We will always be grateful to Blas for having opened to us the bridge to the Tango of that time with his embrace.
The tanda of valses ends, and Blas accompanies the young lady with whom he was dancing (the one who appears to be Japanese) to her table. He comes to sit with us and greets us with a round of hugs.
And why Tango?
The world appears to us in fragments. Each corporation offers you an essential fragment of your life at a price that market studies ensure profits. But life is not life for entire humans if it does not flow like the current of a river. What was evident for Heraclitus is absent today. Ordinary humans settle for their subscription-based life and savor this here, have fun with that there, are embraced by something different in another place, and later go to sleep without themselves. The large global companies sell them time, and they call it "Lifetime", yes, a registered trademark, they wake them up in the morning with "Awakening", according to branding formulas, they feed them with "Meals", etc., etc. With their black magic tricks, they not only rename what makes up our lives, but more, they place themselves at the beginning, in the baptism of everything real, naming everything that makes up life as if they were gods, re-producing what makes life possible from its naming. They don't have to rename things. They legally register the names that things already have, and from then on, life is made up of the products you couldn't get if you didn't subscribe to their services. Do you want to be happy? They offer you various solutions for that problem, what you lack, and what they lead you to think you lack. The words now say something that is on the shelves; they are objective; they name merchandise, more or less abstract, and all with their logos. And that ordinary human beings have faith in the satisfaction these products promise, even though the sensitivity of their bodies and organs lets them know that these products do nothing but weaken them. Finally, the force of conviction with which marketing invests its products leads them to ignore it, to deny the signs and symptoms of alienation and dissolution of their own existences, and to continue consuming.
All will go this way until it crosses a horizon, and then these marketing techniques become ineffective.
The passionate now rotates his head from left to right to make us hear him –¿Did you know that according to the scientists, when you cross the horizon of a black hole, time and space get inverted, so time wouldn’t have a direction anymore, but space will?
With Tango, we allow ourselves to flow with the river's current, with that unique current that we are, because we are the river itself. The current becomes complex and is simplified a multitude of times, and everything that you are and belongs to you is and ceases to be and returns to being that current, which is you and which is not you alternately, which is unique and different at times, and many and identical others.
Dancing could be appropriating the course of time and space of life.
El rioplatense, stretching his legs — As dancers, we are a different species. I will explain it in this way (keeping in mind that all explanations and rationalizations are simplifications): Self-preservative measures are necessary for our survival and prosperity. That is why, consciously or not, we separate ourselves from non-dancers and the majority's way of life. They judge us from the perspective of non-dancers. It is mortally dangerous that we let those judgments affect us. For example, I would rarely really enjoy dancing for an audience other than dancers. Furthermore, I use the tools that the way this world is organized provides me; that is, I consider it essential to charge money to those who want to come to my world, to our world of dancers, as a way to limit the interference of those who do not dance in the world of those who dance; It is a protective measure—something like an entrance fee.
The dancers from before 1990 already knew it, those who looked at you up and down and sarcastically asked “Do you want to dance Tango?”. At that time they told you: “Boy, do you want to learn to dance Tango? For that you have to be born, Tango cannot be learned.” It did not cross their minds that they could make profits with their knowledge of Tango. They didn't teach anyone to dance, either. Tango was outside the world of wages, buying and selling, and payment for services. Today, the main error lies in considering money as money and nothing more. Money involves much more. It is somewhat similar to what sex between lovers means. It is not only the satisfaction of a need but much more: a pact.
When I saw those old men dance, I knew it would take me a lifetime to learn to dance the Tango. Today, people are used to immediate results and looking for the cheapest.
— For those who don't dance, the yerba is always greener in the neighbor's mate. — I think.
The passionate—Also, money can be a contribution, a recognition of our value from those who appreciate it but cannot or do not want to dance, fully or partially, for whatever reason.
To which el rioplatense adds — And, of course, money as compensation for the knowledge that the Maestro grants to the student. All artists need benefactors. Each mode of production in history has generated a consistent way of supporting its artists. In aristocratic societies, they were the men and women of the nobility. During the Middle Ages, it was the church. The capitalist world brought more individualistic and varied ways of supporting its artists. In this case, the students are the patrons of their Teachers.
Because, let's face it, you don't have to dance well to thrive in this world. Now, what does it mean to thrive? — El rioplatense closes the conversation with an open ending.
While we were talking, I remembered what I answered to someone who asked me what The passionate was like teaching Tango:
“He is one of the few who still have that modesty that prevents him from making Tango something fully commercial; that pious modesty of those who understand to be dealing with something sacred, something that the majority will never understand because they are constituted, either by birth or education, of another matter (of pure matter?), so to speak. He is not one of those who ends the class advertising his other “products” and “services.” More likely, he will share with you his reflections on what it means to dance and live Tango.”
We were looking at the dance floor, and suddenly, this occurred to me, and I said:
– It is really difficult to dance Tango. You need to work in a good posture and a great balance, then learn to walk, to embrace, to lead and follow, to listen to the music and learn about the music itself, and then the figures and steps, and with all that, which takes years of constant and dedicated learning, you still won't be dancing Tango, you'll still need to forget all that, and with all that as a second nature express your true emotions, which are always away from us, peoples of this third millennium.
Now that woman arrives and looks at the rioplatense in his eyes and tells him in a long-suffering but rebuking tone – You don't ask me to dance anymore! What happened? I thought we were friends! To which the rioplatense, straightening up in his seat as if he were waking up, as if he was preparing for a serious debate, and says - I don't have an answer to your question. If this place were an office, a business, a corporation, an army, etc., I would be held accountable for what I do or don't do. However, we are in the milonga. Here no one has any obligation other than respect. And that is one of the most beautiful things about the milonga.
A The passionate’ student joins us. The passionate quiz her and asks who she thinks dances well. His student says – That guy with the hat facing backward! To what The passionate responds – No. You think that guy dances well because he does a lot of steps and moves all the time, no stopping. That does not mean good dancing. Look at his face. Doesn't it seem like he is absent? I’ve noticed him because I know him, he is known as a popular teacher, and he has his website full of very correct words about “códigos”, Tango etiquette, etc., but he practices nothing of what he preaches. It’s been several tandas that he stays on the dance floor while the cortina is playing with the girl he is dancing with, and he keeps dancing again and again with her in that same absent manner. I noted him when, during a cortina, he was standing between me and the girl I wanted to dance with, impeding me, unawarely, to make eye contact with her. To dance Tango, you must be fully present and aware of everything happening around you. You do not need to do many moves, but you need to do them with presence, emotion, taste, and wit… And he dances every orchestra and rhythm in the same way!
– But you say he is popular.
– Correct. I suppose that is what the majority wants.
– What about the bold guy? She says.
– Neither. You may think he dances well because he puts on a serious face. He actually makes me laugh. Tango is joyful. He dances with the same attitude that guys have in front of the machines at the gym when they are working out. Now, he is in front of a human being, but it seems that a workout machine wouldn’t make a difference.
– What about her?
– No. Look, I meet her at a party. She told me her goal was to achieve a good enough dance level to make all the tango teachers ask her to dance. To her, it does not matter what she feels but how they think about her. You can see it clearly in her dance. She does not dance for any reason other than that you, and all those inexperienced like you, believe she is a good dancer. She is one more of those who want to say about themselves that they dance Tango but do not want to dance it in reality. I bet she will soon be joining the growing list of tango teachers who don’t know anything about Tango. Like life, the dance floor is full of foolish goals and misinterpretations.
Some guy comes to join us. He pretends to be a friend of el rioplatense. However, no one pays much attention to him, and The passionate makes him feel like an outsider telling insider jokes that make us laugh and leave him clueless.
He starts a conversation with The passionate’ student to ease the situation.
Since that conversation didn't interest me at all, I looked at Blas and said:
–Blas! Please tell me what you think. Why can't anyone dance?
– What happens, brother, is that they dedicate all their energy to work. They kill themselves working. For that? To earn money to buy everything. They work until they are exhausted, and thus, they cannot dance. They want everything, including dancing. But everything is not possible. Every choice is a sacrifice of the others. Furthermore, the most important things are those you can't buy.
People want entertainment, distraction, to forget… what? To forget that they have a limited time to achieve all they want. Let’s repeat it: they seem to want everything, but to get everything, they need an infinity of time. They could focus on the few things that will improve them (as dancers). Instead, they look for more, for something else: a class, a workshop, a visiting teacher, something that will lead them to an epiphany. Why? The changes they need to make to dance better are changes in their lives that they are not prepared or willing to make, for fear, for nested interests, for compromises they had assumed, etc. They don’t want to risk being different, but since they are not good dancers, being good dancers requires making changes. This is a simple identity equation:
not a good dancer ≠ good dancer
Dancing implies being different from the person who doesn't dance, having other values, aspirations, and another way of life.
In any case, there is something worse: there are those who, realizing that being and having everything is impossible, smash the porcelain of life against the wall, shattering it, and with their faces wrinkled with anger, they decide to want nothing.
The questioner returns to the table, and the first thing he does is to hug Blas and says:
—Blas, you are the best!
- No! Blas answers, shaking his head — In Tango, there is no "the best." Tango is art, and in art, who is the best? None. Art is a subjective view. What you see, I don't see. Do you understand me? I go to the museum and you like a painting and I don't. And it doesn't mean that the painting is bad. I like a painting that you don't like. And both are paintings by two powerful artists, two first-rate painters. Do you understand what I want to tell you? And then you are left as if to say, and these people kill themselves to see this painting? And I go and say this: I don't like it at all! This is of no use. For me, it's just another painting painted by anyone. If you analyze Picasso's dove, and you say, and I'll paint it! Or it's painted by a kid who paints well. But that's not the point! It's not just that, you understand? It's Picasso with all his art! How did he start? That freedom, that purity. There is something else. Art is that. So if you think you're the best, that you're alone, you're screwed.
I think: “Participating in Tango competitions is a way of justifying the need to dance to spouses, parents, those who do not dance, etc., necessary for those who feel guilty for dedicating time to something that has no determined value from the perspective of what produces profits. The only competition is with yourself.”
We continue looking at the dance floor and say stupid things that make us laugh. We laugh because, in laughter, we find the same truths that dance suggests to us. Laughter relaxes, oxygenates, and leaves us in better conditions to dance.
A thought has haunted me for some time: we are already in the Third World War. There's nothing left to grab, so those who handle the frying pan have to fry the others. States need wars to justify our need for their governments. Conflicts emerge disconnectedly, like forest fires, where small fires appear at different points, without knowing how they started or their relationship with the main fire.
Humanity could self-annihilate without having clearly experienced the commitment to a different way of living, a way of existing in which we could hardly find elements already present in its history, in short, a non-human way of life.
But surely, that is something that would not be available to most.
Perhaps the general chaos in the world is a beautiful opportunity for individuals to achieve an order that is founded in themselves. Of course, truly genuine individuals are a scarce minority.
Finally, She looks at me. She has had my eyes fixed on her for several tandas. I am not interested in knowing why, if it is her vanity, a problem in her attention span, if she finds it stimulating to make me wait, although sometimes she responds immediately, or perhaps it is that keeping me in uncertainty as a way of defending her freedom to choose to dance with me, against the evidence of not being able to avoid the desire to dance with me, since it is for me evident that she loves it since no one makes her dance as I do, or could it be that sometimes she does not feel ready for my challenge, because that is how I conceive dancing, as a mutual challenge, as a duel, as a contest of seductions, or for so many other reasons that I cannot think of, due to lack of imagination, or time…
Someone might ask me, "Is dancing really that complicated?" To which I respond, "No, if your spirit is simple or cannot tolerate the multifaceted and uncertain." However, this would impoverish your dance and your life, turning you into something that barely exists, barely dances, is almost asleep, or is dead.
I'm going to dance full of joy while the opening bars of “Nueve puntos" by Carlos Di Sarli's orchestra, recorded in 1956, play. Perón was already in exile.
