Saturday, September 21, 2002

The Bienal continues. We saw Alejandro Granados, the dancer, in a Bienal show at 9 PM. We saw our friend Pilar from San Diego and she sat with us in the first row. Then we all took a taxi to Hotel Triana to hear Rancopino sing at midnight, outside in the courtyard looking at the full moon above the clouds. There were others singing too, but Rancopino was the best of the night. We saw Luisito there and many others we know. I also talked with a woman sitting one seat down from us. We talked about last night’s show, how bad it was, that nobody liked it. She asked me if I had been to all the Bienal. She said that she had seen us here at Hotel Triana for nearly every one that happened at this venue this year. People remember you here. And people are friendly. The woman spoke in that soft, high, very fast and almost mumbled Andalucian accent that is so hard to understand. I started to panic that I wouldn’t/couldn’t understand her and then I realized that I did understand her, just barely, but I did. I could carry on the conversation. I guess my Spanish is still improving. How wonderful. I’m not afraid to talk on the phone anymore. It’s fun and interesting to keep seeing the same people at the same shows. It builds a kind of camaraderie. We saw John Moore at the show too. He is also from San Diego, and he, Pilar and Freddie and I all shared a taxi home. I first met John Moore when he was a linguistic student in the 70’s at UC Santa Cruz and used to come to Manuel’s restaurant in Sea Cliff Beach (Santa Cruz) where Steve Peterson played guitar every Wednesday. Freddie and I were always there too, when Freddie was living in Santa Cruz, and of course I continued to go to the Flamenco at Manuel’s after my good friend and buddy Freddie left. I was already hooked on Flamenco.

It is now 3:15 AM and we are finally in our cozy little apartment and I am taking a few more minutes to try to capture the feeling of the evening and being in Spain during the Bienal season. You see lots of American Flamencos you know from all over the country (but mainly from California and New York and sometimes Florida) and you go out to great Flamenco shows and stay up very late almost every day for a month. Of course during the week I take my two dance classes a day with Concha and I usually end up spending three or four hours in the studio at La Carboneria (This includes my classes). And then I watch and study my tapes. And I don’t have enough time. —a theme of my life. But my life certainly is not boring!

We have scheduled to see a bull fight tomorrow at 1:00, if it doesn’t rain. This will be my first one. We will go with Souren, the handsome, gray haired Armenian Oud, Nai, and Clarinet player and Rayhana, his voluptuous, dark haired, round faced belly dancer girlfriend, both from New York City. They stayed at La Carboneria for a month last year performing almost every night, and we all hung out together. (They have been coming here to work at La Carboneria one month a year for years) Last year Rayhana and I worked out some simple belly dance routines and I borrowed a costume from her and danced with her. This year she e-mailed me to bring some costumes and I did. But, I am putting off practicing and dancing with her until my thigh heals. It is already much better today.

And I had better get to sleep. It’s almost four AM and Freddie is already asleep.

Saturday October 5, 2002

We have one last Bienal show tonight. Our Bienal season is almost over. We have seen some marvelous shows, including the singer Inez Bacan who sang incredibly, and the dancers Manuela Carrasco (I wrote about her magnificent show in 2000), and Juana Amaya, who will come to perform in California this February. They were all fabulous. There was another show we actually walked out of and we saw some fusion thins that we didn’t care for. But then there are these wonderful shows that make up for the others.

Freddie has the flu and is in a lot of back pain right now so I will go alone tonight and I will meet Concha and her family there. Concha’s sister Pepa Vargas, and brother-in-law, Curro Fernandez, of La Family Fernandez, will perform. Last night was Concha’s night. She received a full standing ovation from the enthusiastic crowd at the sold out show. Her sister, Pepa (of La Family Fernandez) was one of the two older and traditional Gypsy female singers who sang for Concha’s Buleras Romance from Lebrija with which she closed the show. Pepa looks a lot like Concha, but a little older (near my age!) and not as wild as her younger sister. Her black hair does not frizz out over her head, flying with energy, like Concha’s hair does. Her face is a little more square than Concha’s round face. But there is definitely a family resemblance. Pepa is a beautiful and supportive singer/sister. During Concha’s dance she really sang to Concha, singing, “Mi hermana, mi hermana” (my sister, my sister) to her with both love and pride in her voice. Pepa’s son, Pacquito, played the guitar for Concha. He is a wonderful guitarist. And Concha’s son Curro, also played guitar in the show, along with Antonio Moya, a well-known guitarist who plays Lebrija style.

Concha’s other female singer, also black haired and somewhat dark complected and wide in girth and stature was Pepa de Benito. There are photos of her and her husband on our website in the 2000 Spain writings. We spent a wonderful day at an outdoor restaurant in the country with David and Clara and Jill in 2000, when Clara had her Fullbright grant and was interviewing the Gypsy women artists. This Pepa too is a wonderful singer and her love and feeling flowing toward Concha was beautiful.

Concha used two male singers for her Soleares, which she danced first. One, Antonio Malena, is a primo hermano (first cousin on the male side) to the great singer Curro Malena. Antonio is much younger than Curro and is a powerful singer in his own right. He also has dynamic palmas.

The other singer, from a family of artists in Jerez, was Luis Moneo. Of course, he too was excellent. Our young friend Luisito did palmas. It was a beautiful show and the audience was amazed. This was a dynamic example of true Gypsy Flamenco.

I will be happy when the Bienal is over, as of tomorrow. With these midnight shows (of which many of these are) it is impossible to get to bed before 4:00 AM. And so, I have written very little.

It is now twenty minutes to eleven (at night), so I am taking this time to write before I catch a taxi around eleven fifteen to Hotel Triana for the last show.

I want to write about Rayhana and I want to write about Elena, two wonderful women I know here. I wrote about Rayhana, my beautiful belly dancer friend, last year. This year, after my leg healed, Rayhana and I worked out a beautiful duet to the Saidi piece that Souren and the band play. I have a short solo and then we do a little ending. I wore my gold sequin skirt over my gold Persian lace skirt. My belt is a black scarf with large round sequins that Carolina and I used for our candle dance duet years ago. I used those same skirts in that too. My top is a gold on gold beaded lotus flower design bra that Linda made for me according to my request. For my stomach piece I attached a kind of chandelier looking draped chain with large rhinestones set in. It is beautiful. I wore a gold beaded necklace and upper arm drape and of course my gold dance sandals. Rayhana did my make up magnificently. We have now done two shows together and will do more when I don’t have to go to midnight Bienal shows. Rayhana’s show usually starts between twelve and twelve thirty at night. Sometimes it is a little later. Both the audience and the band loved our duet. When we practice, Rayhana tells me not to use my Flamenco face, which I was doing unconsciously. In order to change it I had to access my deeply buried belly dance part of myself. I feel as if I am pulling that part of me out of a deep and dark cave where it had been sleeping in hibernation. It is fun and familiar to belly dance again. And Rayhana assured me that when I performed I had my belly dance face and feeling the whole time. We are having a wonderful time together. She is a lovely and kind and strong and perceptive person. She is also fun! Rayhana is trying to convince me to teach belly dancing again because it is good for my body. She teaches belly dance, aerobics, and body sculpting in New York. If it happens, it will happen, but my primary energy is still with Flamenco and Freddie and I do both want to teach comps and technique sometime after we return. We also want to offer a supportive environment for people to learn and to enjoy Flamenco. We want to continue to grow our Flamenco Romntico Academy of Gypsy Flamenco Arts.

But back to Rayhana, beautiful, round faced, dark haired, exotic Rayhana. She will be leaving on Wednesday. Almost a month has passed since she arrived and it seems like just a few weeks. Rayhana is a cat person and buys cat food every day to feed her adopted alley cats. The other night when she was asleep, she was awakened by a howl outside her window. One of her cats was hungry! So she opened a can of cat food and threw it down and the cat was happy and let her sleep again. She has a lot of cats at home. Well it is time to stop writing and go to the Bienal. Freddy is asleep and Rubina’s phone number is by the bed in case he needs anything while I am gone. Rubina is another good friend.

Sunday, October 6, 2002

The sounds of the street on Sunday —— Papaaa, papaaa, the young boy calls — and American rock music, a high, nasal female voice, blares from someone’s apartment. Dogs bark. Cars whiz by. Hardly anyone has to work on Sunday and most of the stores are closed tight. Only restaurants are open and tourist stores. Sometimes the small tourist food market on Santa Maria La Blanca stays open too. It is run by an older couple. Mercedes is from Sevilla. Her husband is from South America. We have shopped there for small items since 1999 and they know us and give us the local’s prices. Yes, I have seen them charge tourists much more for water than they charge me! But this year we don’t buy water because we bought a Brita filter which filters out the chlorine and tastes better and is more practical than bottled water. We never have to worry about running out of water this way.

Strangely enough, even with all the car and street noises, I sleep better here than at La Carboneria. The church bells are ringing —such a wonderful sound of Spain.

I had wanted to write about Elena. She is from Northern Spain but has lived in Southern Spain for about thirty years. Elena is Concha’s agent. We corresponded by e-mail when Concha was visiting us in California, but I had not met Elena in person. I was first introduced to her at Carmela, May’s restaurant on Santa Maria La Blanca where we have coffee in the mornings with Paco and his entourage at the outside round tables shaded with umbrellas. Short and slim with brown hair and about my age, Elena was wearing jeans and sensible shoes. She had a hip, earthy and interesting look; she certainly did not look like a typical middle-aged Spanish woman! She could have walked in from the North Beach of the old Bohemian days or New York, for that matter.

She was once married to Cabrero, the famous and eccentric Flamenco singer who lives in the mountains and herds goats. Elena has three grown children and lives in a large house just outside of Sevilla, with flowers. One of her sons, Emiliano, a gifted guitarist and pianist, hangs out at La Carboneria and we have gotten to know him a little. I had talked to Elena in bits and pieces here and there but when we all went to Concha’s show at the Bienal last Friday I got to know her better. Of course we connect in our love of traditional Flamenco and of Concha. We also connect through our affinity with computers and their possibilities. She e-mailed me yesterday needing a photo of Concha and I told her about the one Sergio had taken that had been on the cover of the Giradillo in the Bienal 2000. I told her that I had scanned it and that it was on my web page. She then wrote back that she had gotten it off my web page as I had suggested and that she loved it and will use it for Concha’s publicity. I have not met many Spanish women, especially my age, who have that facility with computers. It was nice to connect with Elena in that way. But there is something more between us. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but I like her a lot and I am excited about knowing her.

Since Concha’s show on Friday night many people have commented on how incredibly she danced. Many people have said that they have never seen anything like it. Concha really does have a special gift that goes beyond growing up with Flamenco, and great Flamenco artists and being Gypsy. She has an incredible talent and dynamism. Her dance is full of energy and expression and of course the contrast, as she puts it, of the storm, the tempest and then the tranquility, the serenity. People came up to me last night, knowing that I am her student, to ask me what time her classes are at La Carboneria. Having seen her perform they all want to take classes from her and to learn the true, primitive, traditional Flamenco that she teaches so well.

One thing that I do not want to write about but will because it is part of our experience here is this. Last Thursday Freddie and I went to Salvador for our treatments. We were both experiencing sciatica as well as our normal physical problems. Salvador is a licensed chiropractor but usually he just does massage and ultra sound and sometimes gives sublingual pills or shots of anti-inflammatories. Last Thursday he decided to do adjustments on both Freddie and me for the sciatica. Freddie, who was getting the flu, was already in pain and Salvador also gave him an anti-inflammatory shot and said he would feel better within two hours. Freddie seemed to feel better just after the treatment but when we were walking to the taxi he said that he was starting to hurt again. Salvador had said that if he hurt on Friday to come in again, even though he didn’t have an appointment. But Salvador was pretty sure that Freddie wouldn’t be hurting. Well Freddie got worse and worse. Part of it was the stomach flu which he picked up from some visitors from California. (No, I don’t have time to write about everything and every person we see and interact with!). Thursday night Freddie didn’t want to take his pain medication but was having a terrible time sleeping. He moved to the single couch bed in the living room because he felt that the mattress was better for his back. He was groaning and tossing and crying all night. After hours of this suffering I gave him a sleeping pill to knock him out but even that did not put him to sleep because the pain was so intense. Finally in the morning he took some Vicodin and that helped him enough to let him sleep. He had been rationing his pain medication so it will last for our two months here, but he had to take the medication this time. He slept most of Friday but pulled himself out of bed to video Concha’s show for her. People said that his face looked green. The flu made him weak and he was sweating and then alternately cold. That night the sleeping pills worked and he slept for a little while, but he was back on his medication too. All night I heard him from the other room groaning and moaning in pain, crying that he does not want to live. It is very scary. He wants to go home immediately and have his back operation. He has now taken more of his medication and it won’t last through our time here. This morning the flu seems to be passing but his back still hurts and he keeps knocking himself out with sleeping pills so he won’t feel the pain. He has hardly eaten. Yogurt and a banana seem to agree with him but the chicken stew/soup I made him yesterday didn’t make it. I have never seen him in so much pain. I don’t know what Salvador did, but we think that the adjustment he made must have tweaked Freddie’s herniated disc. Freddie refuses to go back to Salvador or to see another doctor. I massaged his back yesterday and even that hurt him. We have been using heat packs from Nikken and that helps a little. Freddie has been in pain before, but not like this. I have never heard him say before that he wants to be out of his body, to die to be out of this pain. I feel so helpless.

Just last week Freddie was thinking that he loved Spain so much that he wanted us to stay an extra month, which is always OK with me! Then this back thing happened and everything feels like it is falling apart.

Freddie wants me to stay in Spain until November even if he leaves early. I want to stay because I am making phenomenal progress in my dancing with Concha. We are continuing to work on style and everyone is amazed at my continued progress. (Rubina thinks I should stay her for a year to keep from losing ground from what I am accomplishing.) Theoretically our tickets are not changeable. I worry about Freddie traveling alone, especially in this condition. One possibility is to schedule the operation at home from here and then to try to get enough medication from the States to last until he returns. Last year we tried to get Vicodin and Percocet here in Spain and they don’t have it. The codeine that they gave him last year didn’t help him very much. We definitely need to get his medication from the US.

So we are dealing with health problems and solutions here too. Perhaps we’ll have another x-ray taken here in Spain to see if we can get more information about what has happened to his back. But right now Freddie is living in bed, sleeping. When I read this to him a little while ago he felt asleep again. At least he ate another yogurt and banana.

Yesterday I was the Spanish housewife. Immediately when I woke up around noon (not typical housewife!) I got up and took my little red shopping cart to the supermarket before it closed for the weekend. I had to get us enough food for the weekend. Usually Freddie does this, but with him in bed I took my turn. I also got my cell phone re-charged which means I went to the little estanco, (store that sells tobacco and sundries) to pay twenty more dollars so I can make more calls from my phone. They call it re-charging, putting more money in my phone’s “card”. If I hadn’t gotten there on time I would have had to wait until Monday and then wouldn’t have had enough in my phone to call a taxi to get home from the Bienal that night. As it was, Rafael made two trips in their lovely new car, one to take the kids back to the house first and then he returned for Concha and me so I didn’t even have to take the taxi home last night after all.

When I got home from the market I cooked the chicken for Freddie which he couldn’t eat. I also made some OK gazpacho. (Concha’s is much better). I did laundry in the tiny machine in our kitchen and hung it up to dry on the roof and took in the things I had hung up the day before. If I did this every day I would not have time to dance. When I told Concha how I had spent my day she told me that she had done the same thing. Shopping, cooking, cleaning. It feels good once in a while.

SPAIN CHRONICLES 2002

Aug 31 – Sept 18 Writings & Photos
Sept 21 – Oct 6 Writings & Photos
Oct 7 – Nov 15 Writings & Photos
Freddie is very ill, but doing better!

Update on Freddie’s Health, Jan 14, 2003