May 31, 1999

Tranquila. Spain. That is what I must learn in Spain, it is in the dance, the cante, the music; a held back, leisurely quality that is not lazy at all, but is precise and strong and delicate, controlled to the max, but tranquila.

I journeyed last week to ask for help getting myself to practice, to build its discipline into my day. And now tonight I have discovered that right here in our own sweet room I am dancing and I can continue to dance to Freddie’s practicing. It is what we did together more than twenty five years ago when we met. It is what we did together for years, probably until after we were together and I started seriously working on Flamenco technique and choreography. When I danced and practiced in these last two years I focused more and more on doing it right, doing it in compas (rhythm), spotting on my turns, making clean and controlled sounds with my feet; I focused on my posture and my arms and hands and head and shoulders, my gaze and my directions. And I focused a lot on learning choreographies. I forgot that I could just dance to Freddie’s music as I had for most of the years I have known him. Tonight, for some wonderful reason, as Freddie practiced, I opened the wardrobe Paco has let us put in our room and I set its smoky old mirror that is attached to the inside of one door so that I could see myself, though not in clear detail, while I practiced arms, hands, head, upper body and walking. Yes I was practicing specific things, but in a way that I was able to dance it at the same time, to the feel of Freddie’s repeated scales, embellished with exquisitely beautiful and difficult finger exercises. It felt so good to dance. I realized that I can practice and dance to Freddie’s music up here and just have to practice my footwork and full choreographies on the stage down below us in the garden room of the Carboneria. I love being with Freddie and hearing his music. I love his concentration and his stubbornness in learning this new and difficult guitar technique. He was frustrated in his lesson with Carlos this morning and so his reaction was to practice all day. And now tonight, actually two in the morning, his playing sounds clean and he is mastering the material that so eluded him this morning. His strong and limber fingers struggle in their new patterns and positions, reaching for more, pushing to learn more, growing daily in skill and agility.

And I have been dancing to his music ever since I returned from bar hopping in Triana (sounds worse than it is) with Carla, Miguel, Jill (an American who has lived in Spain for many years and who is the widow of the wonderful gypsy guitarist Pedro Bacan), Lynn (an American who also has lived in Spain many years) and her husband, Spanish lawyer Manolo and their eight year old bi-lingual daughter Julia. Roberto and Alicia, and Juan and Lucy were supposed to meet us but never showed up after their pedal boating excursion on the Guadalquivir river which divides Triana and Sevilla. Freddie and I did that with Roberto and Alicia last week and loved it. The group of us went to three different bars this evening, sampling and sharing the tapas (hors d’oeuvres that people go to tapas bars specifically to eat) in each one. In most of the bars you stand at the counter and drink and eat tapas and the Spanish people all smoke. Trash is usually, but not always, thrown directly on the floor and is periodically swept up. People talk and have a good time, sharing the food which comes with however many forks there are people in the party. Then everyone eats from the same dish. And you get to taste a wide variety of each bar’s specialties. And sometimes these bars have little round outdoor tables and we sit or stand outside to eat and drink, even if it is right in the middle of the sidewalk. Freddie stayed home and practiced the whole time I was away. I had gone across town to Evelina’s in the early evening, when the sun was still bright and warm, to say good bye to Carla and Miguel who leave tomorrow and to buy the tape recorder/CD player that Miguel had brought here from the US to use and then sell and which we want. So from there I carried our new machine from bar to bar down the narrow winding cobblestone streets of Triana with Carla and Miguel’s help. Triana is an interesting place to walk in, one that once was the “wrong” side of the river. I know that Gypsies lived there. Now it is more of a working class neighborhood, except for the street that borders the river where there are restaurants and outdoor tables. We had a nice time but I missed Freddie and I could feel him wondering why I didn’t call when I had said I would. So a little after midnight I said good bye and took a cab back to the Carboneria. Freddie was still practicing and that inspired me to start moving my hands and then my arms to his music and then of course I was dancing. And now I want to put up mirrors on the walls of this room and practice a lot with Freddie in this way. I will dance to his practicing and of course at times he will take time to go with me to the stage and play while I practice so I can tell for sure if I am in or out of compas.

Just before I started dancing tonight, I had turned the computer on to write an e-mail which is still waiting to be finished. But I realized, that as I got a thought I could walk or dance over to the computer and type it in and then return to dancing. It was great. Any thought that popped into my head that I wanted to remember could be written into the computer in hardly any time at all; but only thoughts important enough to interrupt my dancing, if only briefly.

I am so thankful that I have realized that I can dance up here in the room and that I have the time and the space to dance, to focus on my dance the way Freddie is focusing on his guitar. Freddie is such a teacher for me, in so many ways, both in teaching me actual things and in being such a good example. I am thankful too that I am writing again. And I thank the spirits I see in my journeys who have helped and counseled me. They have strongly encouraged me to both dance and write and now I am finally doing both. That spiritual focus has helped to keep me on track. Now that I am dancing again I feel I have even more of “me” back.

I did laundry here for the second time this morning. There is a small washing machine in the bathroom between the sink and the seatless toilet. The bidet is between the toilet and the tub. No one in Spain seems to have dryers but this time of year I hang the laundry on the metal clothes drying rack near the trap door or on the small clothesline at the bottom of the stairway to our room or on the balcony outside our room. In hours our laundry is dry. The domestic streak seems to be sneaking out of me a little bit. I find that I sweep our floor periodically and I am the one who carries our dishes in a blue plastic bucket down the stairs to the bathroom where I wash them in the sink. I still have to remember to buy a sponge. The dish soap I bought the other day works well and the glasses now look clean.

May 31, 1999

I practiced today on the stage again, with Freddie, after our breakfast and a small walk through the Barrio Santa Cruz to the Giralda and back with Paco. The Barrio is always cooler than anywhere else, with narrower streets. Now Freddie is having class with Carlos and afterward we will go with Carlos to a guitar repair shop to get Freddie’s guitar fixed. It fell on the tile floor and cracked again where the he had repaired the break it had received last year at Sweet’s Mill. Paco is lending him a guitar while his is in the shop.

Last Saturday we drove to visit Luis and Rubina with Jose Luis and Paco. After lunch Freddie, Rubina and I practiced on the old wooden door we had procured during our last visit. We lay it down on the dusty ground in front of Luis’ house. My Siguiriyas is coming along and I think I finally have the hard part I have been struggling with. I want to have this part down when Concha starts giving classes again in a few days.

June 3, 1999

Is it being in love? Whatever it is I am thoroughly enjoying it and my physical body has been healthy and strong and seems to be getting stronger. Perhaps the lack of tension and the increase of walking are also helping me. I am sure the second hand cigarette smoke isn’t. But climbing all these stairs constantly should also count for something. I think of the stair masters in the gyms and know that I have my built-in one right here. My dance, my dance is inspired when I hear the beautiful music my lover, the love of my life, is practicing. I try to practice each detail of my dance the way he must practice each detail of each exercise to be clean and controlled. His music drives me to dance, to practice, to move, just like it did when we met and I knew that I had to study Flamenco to dance to his music the right way. Now, as he approaches sixty and I fifty five, after more than twenty six years, I can start to do his music justice.