I have a real cold now. Freddie is better but my nose is running and I am sneezing and coughing. Luckily today was a Fiesta day, so Concha decided to rest and not to teach classes. This is the day that Spain celebrates Columbus day and everything closes in its honor. Christopher Columbus is buried in the Giralda, the large and beautiful church that is one of the major sites in Sevilla. It is an interesting link to America. And so, instead of taking classes today, I practiced most of the day, first with Rubina and Shihu, a Japanese dance student who is staying at the Carboneria for two weeks until she returns to Japan. And then I practiced with Elizabet. It felt good. Freddie went off to the flea market with David, but it didn’t happen today because of the holiday so then they went over to David’s house. When he returned we were just about done practicing but he played for the end. Then Alexi, the Italian violin player who lives with Elizabet in Luis’ old room, cooked spaghetti and we ate. Afterwards Freddie put guitar nails on Alexi, who plays some Flamenco guitar in addition to his wonderful violin. Guitar nails are false fingernails, this time fortified by hoof lacquer, that guitarists need to make their nails on their right hands strong enough to play the Flamenco style of guitar. Guitarists have their own culture about what they use to strengthen their nails and how they do it, and it differs from one guitarist to another and of course changes as the cosmetic industry invents new and better nail products. So not only do guitarist trade falsetas, they also trade nail strengthening tips. It has been raining and cold here. Now they light the wood stoves in the Carboneria and the wood heat is nice. It is starting to feel like winter here. Luis Agujeta has started to sing again here, with Gary Hays (from Vancouver) playing guitar for him several nights a week.Gary played guitar on Luis’ CD that Rubina produced last year, the one that Freddie played Flamenco harp on for the first two cuts. Gary and his girlfriend Francine just arrived a few weeks ago and are now living in Jerez for six months. Freddie just came up to get his guitar, saying that Luis wants him to play Siguiriyas for him right now, at one AM. So I, instead of climbing into bed as I had planned, pulled myself together and went down stairs. I was glad that they were in the small room by the front door, not the patio room which is colder. The small room in winter is cozy and definitely more intimate. There was a fire in the fire place and the room was crowded with people. David Serva (Jones), David Gutierrez and a guitar maker from California were seated around the table by the stage along with Gary, who comes up from Jerez to accompany Luis. I felt like I was entering the “boys club”, as all of the women I know here seemed to have stayed home tonight. Freddie was up on stage, his turquoise blue tee shirt peeking out from his sueded maroon button down shirt. Unprepared for the sudden honor of playing for Luis, his wiry gray hair pushed out at odd angles, loosely tied behind his head. Several days growth of beard darkened his grizzly face and his skin still looked lined and sunken from being sick. He had forgotten his teeth. His face, as dark as Luis’, had the feeling of an old scraggly gypsy as the beautiful Siguiriyas flowed from his magic new guitar. His long, sensitive fingers played the notes clearly and cleanly, following and accenting the raw cante that boomed from Luis’ open mouth. I was proud of my Freddie and happy that he had been invited to play for Luis. Unfortunately Luis said “no”, when he saw the camera that I had grabbed on the way down, so I didn’t get a photo. Afterward, sneezing even more from all the cigarette smoke, I said good bye to the men and came back upstairs. Now at one thirty, I will try to sleep.

October 13, 2000 Friday

I just realized that today was Friday the 13th and the full moon and I feel like I’ve missed it. I really had the cold today and even though I practiced I had to miss classes today. Concha had canceled my private so I tried to sleep for an hour but the sudafed I took kept me awake with a bloated, stuffed head. Then the alarm got me up for the five o’clock class which I went down to take but I just couldn’t concentrate or move my body very well, so I watched and got very frustrated. Then I went upstairs to sleep and skipped the palmas class and canceled my Spanish class. I am pushing too much, but I don’t want to stop, with less than three weeks left to learn “everything”. But this time I had to stop, like it or not. And I am going to rest this weekend and probably not practice. I can feel the tiredness in my body as my legs struggle to get up the stairs. Before this, I just bounced up the stairs and never felt winded like all the others who clump slowly up our stairs. I can even hear young, thin Mariano huffing and puffing and sighing as he comes up the stairs to our room to go to our verandah to work on the roof. But today my legs feel weak as they pull my tired body up and up to our room. I have also been feeling very emotional, like my hormones are our of whack, but I think it is because I have been over pushing myself and have not wanted to stop. I want to do it all now, as much as I can, and I think I have burned myself out, a little. I still go over the steps in my head because my mind won’t stop. I feel like I look awful, but Freddie says I am looking good, especially, he said, when I was helping Elizabet with her technique yesterday. I love to polish, be it myself or others. And I could easily see how Elizabet could make important stylistic changes in her dance. She was extremely open to it and grateful for it, as I cautiously made the first suggestion. So I continued, and I showed her a lot of what I have figured out about how to do steps, how to work with posture, and how to really dance to the accents. We had fun and it was a good workout for me too, which I wanted. Maybe I danced too much yesterday, but I enjoyed it. I was on the stage from one thirty PM until six, when it was time for Luna to practice and for us to eat spaghetti. But I never got a chance to practice alone. Perhaps it was today that I should have rested in the first place, because I had to push myself to practice this morning at eleven, which felt very very early. I did an hour and a half, rushed upstairs to wake Freddie and get ready to go eat. Unfortunately, Concha canceled my class late, at the last minute, and I didn’t find out until I arrived downstairs for the class after returning from breakfast. So Freddie and I practiced together for a while during my class hour and I felt like I was doing terribly. My body wouldn’t move. I was fuzzy from the sudafed and I was over tired and sick. I didn’t want to admit I was really sick. Then Carlos came early with Sarai bouncing behind him. He had some time before his three o’clock class with David Gutierrez and he ended up showing me a great buleras step with a snappy musician’s rhythm. Freddie says that Carlos should teach dancing too. I like it when he shows me steps and his steps are always good ones. I usually like the way musicians dance because they put their sense of music into it. That is also what Concha is trying to get us to do. And, even though I slept after that, I was too sick and exhausted to take my class at five, which is what I had spent the day preparing to do. So I slept all evening and Freddie went out and brought me back food. Intellectually I can see that I am in burn out, in overwork, but emotionally I am not ready to stop, I still have the drive to push myself. Paco Valdepea died today. I had never met him but had heard a lot about him and seen videos of him. He lived here at the Carboneria for a while, before we were here last year. His funeral will be tomorrow in Madrid. Concha had just received the news at the beginning of the five o’clock class. She was on the phone when I came down and her face looked white and drawn. I wondered what was wrong when I saw her, and then when she got off the phone she told us. She said he was Paco’s age. It’s that theme of mortality again. The life cycle continues its movement.

And then at the beginning of class, before I realized that I was too sick to take it, Concha gave me and a Japanese dancer who looks old a special buleras she had created specially for us older women. The whole class wanted to learn it so she taught the combination to everyone. It is put together with steps we have already learned in the class and is actually very nice. But I felt mortified at having to have a special buleras for old people. It is not what the “old people” do in the videos which is what I had asked for. But I didn’t want anything too easy, although with good styling it isn’t really easy. I think I didn’t want to be told that I shouldn’t do some of the other steps because they don’t look good on old people. I brag about my age but then get insulted when people treat me as old. I still don’t feel old. It’s just that my body won’t move as fast as a young person’s. At least my stamina is still there, better than many people much younger. But an almost fifty six year old body doesn’t have the strength of a twenty six year old body, no matter how strong I am now. I am still conflicted by this natural human process of aging that I can’t control anyway. So why be conflicted? I need to just accept it. Fifteen or twenty years ago I could power through a cold on sudafed and hardly feel it. Now I can’t, although I tried. Why is it so hard to accept that my body is doing exactly what it was designed to do and that it is on the deteriorating part of the cycle. It has served me well and it still does. And I don’t want it ever to stop. Ah immortality. What a theme for humanity. At least I know I am not alone with this dilemma. I always wanted to accept aging gracefully but perhaps I never defined “gracefully”. I remember my mother telling me that once she looked in the mirror and thought, “Who is this old lady?” How do I accept my age and not be limited by the acceptance? Obviously I am not too old to dance and to work on my dancing. Being old doesn’t mean I have to just stop. It just means that there are certain steps that really do look better on a sixteen year old like Graciela than on me at almost fifty six. These young people with their full lives ahead of them stir up the nostalgia in me. And maybe it is being in class with so many young people that brings up the awareness of my own age and my mortality. Last night Freddie spent lots of time with David Serva (Jones) again. Luis sang most of the night after I went back up. But I was too tired and sick to stay down anyway. When I see Freddie and David together I realize that they are both older men now. David walks with this beautiful cane because he broke his pelvis as well as his wrist in the bicycle accident. When he and Freddie talk about the past, it is about a past long before many of the people here were even born. They must be old. Their hair is white, they are missing teeth. And yet they continue to be two little bad boys still hanging out together, still able to hang out together as they age. But there will come a time when age will change it. How much time do they have left? They had better use what they have now. And then if they have years and years left that is great. And if they don’t, at least they will have had what they are doing now. Accepting the aging process means making choices based on that acceptance. There is less and less future to think about and more and more now to live.

October 15, 2000 Sunday

Freddie and I are both still sick. My cold is a lot better today, but when I got up this morning I started coughing again, but at least my nose is no longer running. Since Freddie finished his antibiotics, his cough seems to have returned and I am thinking about how to get him to a doctor. He sleeps about ten to twelve hours a day. But, we’ll be home in a few weeks and then we’ll get him to a doctor for sure and will also schedule the operation for his rotator cuff which has also been keeping him in pain a lot. As usual, I don’t want to leave Spain and am pushing myself so I can learn enough before I go. But this week end I am not dancing because I pushed myself too much and got sick. Yesterday, as a way to rest and take it easy, we drove to the country with David, Clara and Jill and ate at a restaurant which Freddie and I had actually eaten in last year during Rocio. But it was fun, although we might have gotten a little over tired. We came home around ten and I was in bed by eleven thirty and Freddie by twelve thirty and he is still sleeping now at ten thirty AM. It is cold and overcast again today. Yesterday was partially sunny and cold. I bought boots a few weeks ago but they have been too warm to wear so far, even in the rain we had before, but today looks like a good boot day. I am glad we brought raincoats because we have used them. We are a little light on warm clothes and haven’t had time to go shopping yet for more. Next time if we come in the fall we will bring sweat shirts! I almost brought one this time, but in the interest of packing light, didn’t.

I can hear the rain outside. Now I wish this room had a heater. David and Clara called and invited us to go to the flea market with them, but Freddie, who loves the flea market, said he was too sick. He is still in bed and it is almost one in the afternoon. We ate some left overs from a restaurant meal for breakfast.

Freddie thinks I talk about mortality too much, but that is what is on my mind right now, probably because we are both sick. The changing weather certainly got to us. And perhaps my upcoming birthday brings these thoughts up too. At least being sick gives me time to write. I will also try to put some photos up on our web page today. I guess dancing does take up a lot of time.

Have I described David Serva (Jones) and Freddie’s history together? They met when David was seventeen and Freddie was about eighteen or nineteen and they both played Flamenco guitar at the old Spaghetti Factory in North Beach in the Bohemian era of the fifties, before the Beatniks. Talking about the Spaghetti Factory would not be complete without mentioning the infamous Richard Whalen with his black vampirish cape, white navy pants, and hand made flamenco boots he had made himself. It was Richard Whalen who kept the flamenco alive and going at the old Spaghetti Factory in the late fifties and on until it closed in the eighties. He was also a father/mother figure to the young Flamencos working there, including guitarists, dancers and singers. Freddie had talked Richard into hiring David to play at the Factory shortly after David had arrived in San Francisco. David and Freddie became good friends and had many wonderful adventures together, from working parking cars at the Shadows restaurant, to working in Berkeley at the Cabal and Jabberwok playing Famenco guitar, and of course working at the legendary old Spaghetti Factory and Excelsior Coffee House.

After working the night at the Spaghetti Factory until two AM David, Freddie and Paul Shalmy would climb into David’s old woody station wagon, go to the gas station and clean all the windows, gas up, drop uppers and drive to their ritual place at Las Pulgas water temple on Skyline boulevard. From there they would head down to Davenport, arriving in the early morning, taking uppers and drinking red wine and playing music on the beach for the rest of the day. David and Freddie both lived in apartments in a little dead end alley in North Beach, San Francisco called Windsor Place. Freddie’s apartment cost twenty five dollars a month, but he couldn’t afford it so he had to take in a room mate and then they still couldn’t afford it. Then Freddie and David went to Denver and played in a night club there called the Exodus. From there they went to New York where Freddie opened up a guitar shop. It was on this trip that they both got involved with the Broadway production of Man of La Mancha and they both played guitar in that production.

Eventually David moved to Spain where he continued to play guitar. He has been living here now for over thirty years. Although with David living in Spain, they of course did not see each other as much as before, David and Freddie kept in touch and visited when Freddie was in Spain or when David came to the U.S. The stories of their escapades in the romantic Flamenco era of the Bohemian fifties will have to someday be its own book. I keep threatening to tape their reminiscing, especially when David was in the U.S. and Paul Shalmy was with them. With this background, is it even more poignant to see David and Freddie hanging out together now.

Flamenco Romántico
Marianna & Federico Mejia

SPAIN CHRONICLES 2000

Sept 3 – 19: Writings
Sept 21 – Oct 2: Writings
Oct 6 – 15: Writings & Photos
Oct 16 – 25: Writings & Photos
Oct 26 – Nov 5: Writings & Photos