La Nuit Blanche

A short film made with photographs.

People’s reactions to the paper:

I had a strange dream last night.

A friend of mine was playing the bandoneon, except it was made of paper cut-out, folded into origami…

“El Ultimo Bandoneon”
Fragmentos

Trailer

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 (featuring Geraldine Rojas y Javier Rodriguez)

Part 4

…But memories are in color.

I know it comes maybe once in a lifetime.

And it has passed, for both of us, into nostalgia, mingled (always, don’t deny it) with regret.

(I saw it, the thing that encompasses the whole essence of you, that one thing that marks us unto death, the memories relived with the copies of copies of copies of people and places that we wish could replace the void it left inside of us when we realize it has gone away, irretrievably, into the past.)

Now I know I have never been your’s.

And someone else is here.

Artist: M.C. Escher, “Bond of Union”

“Gall, amant de la reine, alla, tour magnanime
galamment de l’Arène à la Tour Magne, à Nîmes.”

Ou bien:

“Galle, amant de la reine à la Tour Magne, à Nîmes
galamment de l’Arène alla, tour magnanime…”

The story of my life…

Until I found the Tango (or the Tango found me), and I discovered that:

1+1=1

It is that simple.

And when I met my Lover, it became:

1X1=1²

Or, rather, in truth, it is more like:

(1X1)+(xoxo)+(xxx)+143+(2X4)=

Words are emotion in action. (No, sex is. But that’s not the point.) Words seem flimsy and incongruent, poor artificial instant pseudo-substitutes for an evolving emotion…

And did you know, there is nothing tastier than an icecream cone in the dead of winter?

Especially when the flavor is dulce de leche and it is being eaten on the way to a milonga, my Lover’s right arm around my shoulders, the coldness of his icecreamed tongue on my lip, my fingers numb from the frost, the combination of brain freeze and heart throb creating an electrical circuit for a pleasureable sensation of anticipation of the evening to come…

The lovely La Tanguera wrote an interesting post recently “On Tango Jealousy, Freedom and Growth“. My own Lover happens to be a tanguero, and this got me thinking of our own “precarious” situation in the milongas. Precarious, yes. Contemplating the story of the married couple in La Tanguera’s post, it seems the tango can be the conduit for some disasterous scenarios, if the couple isn’t careful.

I have heard of horror stories where married couples actually divorce because of tango. But it is not “because of tango.” Granted, this dance is close, the bodies of friends and strangers pressed against you to the sound of magical music, lips a mere few inches from each other, the sweet scent of perspiration filling the senses, the sensuality of hair always within reach, hands and legs brushing over muscles and tendons at all times within the duration of the dance. Yes, the sheer physicality of this dance is a bit intimidating, not to mention the enormous amount of emotional engagement it takes to connect wordlessly with another human being. So I can understand how some couples can freak out over it — especially when the milongas and festivals are filled with such beautiful people twisting their bodies every which way in each other’s arms.

But I am a firm believer that whatever problems surfacing in tango between couples were already there to begin with. These problems would have manifested themselves in any activity the couple engages in, the tango merely being one of those activities.

Examining my own situation, I am thankful that the man I am falling for has the mature intelligence to understand that tango is tango, and love is love. That dancing with someone, and falling for someone are two different things… That sexual and emotional attraction between human beings is a fact of the Universe, and Tango is a part of that Universe. That there is a definite divide between feeling attraction and pursuing that attraction, and human attraction of whatever form is a natural part of what it means to tango. And most importantly, that tango is something to be shared with many different people, not confined and caged inside a twisted world of jealousy, suffocation and fear.

It is true that the dance changes when you fall in love. But then again, it transforms with every person you take into your embrace. That is what is beautiful about this dance. It is a constantly evolving Kaleidoscope — multifaceted, crystalline, mysterious — and the more pieces you have inside of it, the more sumptuous the experience.

And Love is like a brightening of the light that shines through the glass.

The pieces burn, and the colors glow.

Artist: Marc Chagall, “Birthday”

“Bring your lips to mine
so that out of my mouth
my soul may pass into yours…”

-Chansons dans le goût de la romance, Diderot

My first real soul-sucking kiss happened the summer I turned 16. When my mother found out about it, she started referring to him as my “Lover.” I informed her that when girls are in highschool, the boys are actually referred to as being “Boyfriends,” not lovers. “Ohhhh,” she said, smiling. It is very hard not to love my dear mother…

So anyway, having a Lover does indeed take time away from blogging.

But not my tango. Well, not as much as I thought it would. Because as it turns out, my Lover is also a tanguero. A tanguero Argentino… A very cute and gorgeous and brilliant and funny tanguero Argentino. I don’t think anyone can make me laugh quite like he can…

When this fledgling romance began, the “Golden Rule” of keeping my tango and my love-life apart did cross my mind. For about a flicker of a second. And then I broke it with — what else? — a soul-sucking kiss.

Oops. :)

Children, I will spare you the pathetic attempts at heady poetry that is manifesting itself amidst the whirlwind of kaleidoscopic sensations this new flame is bringing me… It’s like getting lost in Venice for the first time, but better, and without all the tourists. A bewildering shock of beauty and emotion and flowering and ravenous hunger — of fear and trembling and all-consuming desire — that I don’t ever want to end. It is too new to verbalize into concrete words that would make any sense to you (or indeed myself), whatsoever.

So this will have to do, for now. I will come back to this subject in a month. Till then, we’ll see what happens…

But here is something worthy of note, for your aural pleasure (grâce à my Lover, who is saying it will supplement my Argentine Spanish language education):

La 2×4 FM 92.7 – La radio de Tango de Buenos Aires

“2X4,” the musical term to describe this beat, is how the Argentines refer to the tango.

Enjoy.

…for the heat has been turned on~
and hot water has returned~
to my apartment, oh yeah
oh yeah, baby~~

la di da, la la la~~

Someone please, please compose a tango with these lyrics…

Heartbreak… Will you sing this for me if we ever meet?

“Grete in Dreamland”, by Lyle Rexer, Aperture Maagzine, Issue 187

I was flipping through a recent issue of Aperture Magazine, when I came across this. The fabulous photomontages of Grete Stern, German ex-patriot living in Argentina in the 1940s. She is relatively unknown, and there are very few galleries of her work posted on the web. So for your viewing pleasure, I’ve compiled some of her pictures here:

Grete Stern “Sueños”

Beginning in 1948, “the Wuppertal-born, Bauhaus-trained” Grete Stern created “150 Surrealist-inspired photomontages to illustrate a column written by two fellow intellectuals titled ‘Psychanalysis Will Help You.’ It was published each week in the women’s magazine Idilio (Romance) and presented the analysis of dreams submitted by mostly female [Argentine] readers.”

A little more background on this series, taken from Aperture Mag:

“Stern’s photomontages — she called them sueños (dreams) — were something else again, a lark, a goof, but a serious one, not unlike the games Borges would play with his artist friend Xul Solar. Idilio appealed to a bourgeois female readership with a taste for novelty. For the first time, it presented photostories, and of course the new fad, psychoanalysis, disguised as self-help. The very first issue solicited readers with a questionnaire: Tell us your earliest childhood memories, whether you were happy as a child, how often you think about death, if you are happy in love, what your favorite fantasy is, how much you dream, and, most importantly, what are the contents of those dreams — twenty-eight questions in all. For each letter the authors selected, they published an ‘analysis’ by the pseudonymous ‘Professor Richard Rest,’ framed in terms of the general thrust of the dream: ‘dreams of obstacles,’ ‘dreams of dependency,’ ‘dreams of chess,’ and even ‘dreams of photography.’ The approach was devised by Enrique Butelman, an editor and Jungian devotee, and Gino Germani, the founder of modern sociology in Argentina. It is not clear who asked Stern to be the illustrator, but it was her idea to use photomontage. This stroke of genius lifted what would have been a slightly academic self-help column into a tragicomic exploration of middle-class female psychic life.”

I love these pictures. They are child-like. And mysterious. It is almost just tipping over to the side of kitsch, but they are fascinating. They are, at times, hilariously clumsy — in one collage, you can actually see the shadow of the bottle against the fake backdrop! Which makes the picture even lovelier.

I admit I am a bit disappointed — not a single photomontage or dream included anything about the tango. Why is this? It would have been the Tango Golden Age at the time she was there, and everyone was dancing. Did tango never surface in these women’s dreams, or was Grete not interested in it? Was tango not a worthy topic of discussion for psychoanalysis, or did these women never talk about tango outside of the milongas? Have the photomontages of tango dreams been lost over the years?

Someone send me a picture postcard of an Argentine dream from Buenos Aires.

I desperately need to soften the sadness in the harsh shadows lurking pocketed along these Manhattan streets…

He’s left for Paris yesterday. I will probably never see him again. I guess it was never meant to be.

The Nightingale and the Rose, Christopher Wheeldon for the NYC Ballet
Photo by Paul Kolnik, 2007

It’s freezing all of a sudden, here in New York. It went straight from summer, to winter. One day, lovely cami jersey dresses and sparkly sandals… The next day, boots, hats and scarves. And gloves!! My fingers were so frozen Friday morning during a location shoot, that I could hardly operate my camera.

My crazy landlady recently fired her superintendant (for the 11th time), so there is no one to turn on the heat. Ofcourse she won’t do it herself. And God forbid her Sumo son (who lives upstairs from me) moves his ass down 3 flights of stairs. I woke up breathing frosty air, the tip of my nose turning into an icicle… Afraid to get out of bed… So now I will have to bring out one of my favorite things:

The Viro Cyramic Halogen Heater

This ingenious halogen heater is shaped like a fan, has an occillating mode, four different timer settings, four different temperatures, including a “Bonfire” setting which glows like a real fire, and comes complete with a remote! If I put this inside one of my (non-functioning, but beautiful Victorian) fireplaces, I can pretend I am burning wood. With no cinders to clean up. The bricks retaining the heat and my toes warm and toasty as I read on my settee. The thing is ugly as hell. But I love it…

So, in the glow of my makeshift fireplace, I am looking at a picture postcard, sent to me recently by a pianist during his travels through Croatia. He was writing to me on a boat, at night, under a full moon. (Now doesn’t that arouse my sensibilities?) As I gaze at the photograph of two pointed towers set atop a fairy castle reflected in the Adriatic Sea, I try to imagine the instant of an instant in the life of this man who was thinking of me. When he called forth the image of me in his mind and found the words that he would pen and send via post across leagues and leagues of sea and land for it to reach me. It is fascinating, how such a tiny little stamp can send a piece of paper swimming and flying across such a distance. His handwriting is childlike, very unlike the passion of his music, of the sophisticated touch of his fingers on the piano… He doesn’t dance the tango. I wonder what sort of tanguero he would make?

I had another practice session with TA1 earlier today, and I found it difficult. He pushes me to the very limit of what I think I can dance, and I discover muscles I never knew I had. I think I’ve finally succeeded in relaxing my toes, and really using the floor for groundedness, and “lift-off” during pivots. I have a tendency to curl my toes and grip the inside of my shoes — a kind of battle with, and rejection of the floor, probably due to being so tense and nervous all the time. Now I relax my toes and press in, bracing the floor and using it for gathering and releasing strength. I am proud of myself, for this small achievement. I could feel a marked difference — everything felt so much stronger, smoother, and more stable in my dance. My torso and shoulders are more relaxed. The extension of my legs feels much, much longer.

Near the end of the practica, we danced in open, and he of course started flipping me upside down and throwing me into the air like a ballerina again, and I loved it. I did this one typical stage move where he sends me flying into the air and I flip my legs like scissors, then land sitting with crossed legs on his lap. Damn, that man is strong! I bet he could carry me around on his shoulder all day, and not even bat an eyelash. He has very nice eyelashes, by the way…

Afterwards, I went downstairs with him and we chatted while I had a cigarette. HZ (henceforth to be called my Tango Angel II) had also been at the practica with his own dance partner, and had asked to dance with me a couple of times during their breaks. My two tango angels are getting curious about each other, as they have never met… TA1 asked me if TA2 was my boyfriend. “NO!!!” was all I could say… er, yell.

He was slightly disconcerted with my curt and abrupt answer, especially after all that laughing. But there really isn’t much to say about my love life, as I don’t have one. Right now, the thought of love feels like a thorn in my side that had been ripped out in the emergency room, and I am still licking the wound, having been negligent about nursing it… I have been giving it lots of chocolate and warm bubblebaths, but that’s about it. I guess I need some major alone time before I can handle the headache (and heartache) of men again, at this point in my life. For now, I just want to dance with them. And laugh with them. And smell their yummy skin.

And kick them with my CIFs from time to time.

4 days till Venezia, with my loverlies…

Dawn had broken when he said: “Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know.”

“There is still one of which you never speak.”

Marco Polo bowed his head.

“Venice,” the Khan said.

Marco smiled. “What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?”

The emperor did not turn a hair. “And yet I have never heard you mention that name.”

And Polo said: “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.”

“When I ask you about other cities, I want to hear about them. And about Venice, when I ask you about Venice.”

“To distinguish the other cities’ qualities, I must speak of a first city that remains implicit. For me it is Venice.”

“You should then begin each tale of your travels from the departure, describing Venice as it is, all of it, not omitting anything you remember of it.”

The lake’s surface was barely wrinkled; the copper reflection of the ancient palace of the Sung was shattered into sparkling glints like floating leaves.

“Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,” Polo said. “Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.”

-Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

I am going to be floating along bubbling canals amidst the creaking of a gondola.

In 22 days.

With two loverlees:

Poupette et Poulette.

(Which makes me… Pirouette?)

Don’t ask us how it happened.

There is no how in magic — it just is!

The result of which will be three pairs of clicking, stockinged feet, echoing along the Piazza San Marco, mourning for the sinking of this city of dreams.

We will be thinking of our tangueras and tangueros.

Tell me a wish, and I’ll whisper a prayer as I throw beads of murano glass into the lagoon for you.

Ask it of me, and I will send you a hand-written picture post-card.

I shall, perhaps, sprinkle a few drops of the ever present water flowing through the heart of this city, in hopes that its fiery tears will reach your hearts too.