MsHedgehog

Metaphors and translations

2012-01-28T01:27:00.001Z

This week has been a week of metaphors that don't translate very well.

At work, a piece of software behaved inexplicably, and it turned out to be because of confusion among developers speaking about six native languages about the multiple senses of English "leave" (to quit the company) and "leave" (permission to be absent) combined with more confusion about "extended" (longer than usual), "extended" (given), and "extended" (performing an additional function).

In tango, I encountered two metaphors that totally failed to translate from the Spanish; one of them involved socks and the other one involved a table lamp.

There is a moderately well-known English footballer who used to play in Spain, and who made a second career as a pundit on Spanish television. Apparently he earned many fans by translating colourful expressions literally from the English, such as "handbags" and "it was six of one and half a dozen of the other", creating bafflement and hilarity in equal measures. (I can't remember his name, because I'm more interested in words than football).

About ten minutes afterwards it came to me that the bit about the table lamp was conceivably a compliment, but actually I have no clue.

Oliver Kolker on teaching and learning

2012-01-21T11:45:00.000Z

This is from November last year, but I think his reflections are interesting:

Oliver Kolker: Teaching and Learning Proocess: ... it was never an issue of getting bored when I had to just walk over and over again. I knew this was a necessary foundation for the dance and I enjoyed understanding I was building and developing my craft, my footwork, balance, etc… it’s like people approaching this dance with a goal of being good (obviously) but the approach and the goal should be a journey in itself...

This, I think, is important. If you always enjoy where you are, and you also always enjoy improving something, a lot of problems become unimportant, or even fun.

It makes sense to me to think of it as a process of independent research in which you consult, from time to time, anyone you think may have some information that interests you. What works? What doesn't work? What feels good? What depends on what else? In what way is each person's information coloured by their own tastes and limitations, and in how far is it more widely applicable? Like when you study history and you think about primary and secondary sources and their agendas.

You don't expect everyone to say the same thing, and you don't expect one person to give you the whole story. That would be ridiculous. It's not like being at school, where the game is about pretending to do no more nor less than is expected of you by someone else. This is a real thing in the real world, and it's a matter of finding out, rather than studying. If you needed exams and competitions to find out whether you were any good, you'd be doing ballroom.

Kolker (I think he's from New York):

... THERE IS NOTHING MORE SAD IN THIS DANCE AS WHEN LEADERS OR FOLLOWERS DON’T KNOW THEY DON’T KNOW ...

Research - as opposed to just learning - is a process of finding out what it is that you don't know. If that - "what's the next thing I don't know?" is always the information you're looking for, then you make discoveries. This is true no matter what the subject matter. Kolker:

... because at the end of the day when some of us become really good THERE IS NO MEDAL, NO SACK OF GOLD AT THE END OF A RAINBOW OR AND OLD MAN TO HAND YOU A DIPLOMA.

I'm not sure why I would want any of that (although I wouldn't say no to a random bag of gold, I suppose). But, so far, there are lots of very pretty balloons.

That said, there are conditions under which a thoughtful stare and an approving nod can feel like a medal.

I was reading The Economist earlier today; it reviewed a book about people who learn lots of languages. It suggested that those who do this successfully are simply those who find the hard work part of it fun; who enjoy the parts everyone else finds boring. That's probably all the answer there is to this stuff.

Anyway: go ahead and read the whole thing. I haven't presented all his thoughts, nor even the most emphatically expressed.

Positive Thought

2012-01-11T00:03:00.000Z

A very special thank you to the person who told me she made a donation to Centrepoint when I posted about them at Christmas.

Here, from Periodic Videos, is the Professor setting off the smoke alarm in the lecture hall: Chromium Trioxide FAIL. It's quite enjoyable.

Hibernating and philosophising (other people's problems)

2012-01-08T22:53:00.001Z

I really want to hibernate at this time of year. Some minor upgrades in my flat, together with a bit more interest at work, should mean better sleep and a more awake and creative hedgehog over the next few weeks. But I don't like winter very much. At least the days are getting longer now.

Tango helps me a lot in winter - most of the time it's a guaranteed mood-lifter, and even when the social side can be emotionally tricky, stepping on a few emotional mines is much better for me than just hiding away from this stuff.

My first week back at work contained far too much stressing about big-company problems. More or less all big companies that have been around for the time it takes to get big, have more or less the same problems. They include organisational stupidity: not stupidity of the people, as such, but stupidity created by the mere size of the organisation. Pointless and irritating problems that go unsolved for years, or even decades, because they are on too big a scale for anyone who can actually see them to solve, but too small a scale to be seen by anyone with the power to solve them, while at the same time being too embarrassingly stupid for the person whose problem they are supposed to be, to acknowledge their existence at all. It happens all the time.

Working for a big organisation also has advantages, and I know very well what they are. If I can't take big-company problems any more, the only answer is to move to a small company. Small companies have different problems and different advantages. Generally speaking, I can take big-company problems. Every now and then I just have to have a rant to my Mum or something. But I'm keeping an open mind. If you want a really good writer and "applications" bod who can talk to programmers, isn't a fool or a pedant, and frankly enjoys International English, feel free to make me an offer. I don't like long hours but I'm good at thinking, and I never lie to project managers. If I don't know the answer, I'll say so. But I'm all right where I am. Oh, and I can draw diagrams that make my boss less confused rather than more.

Everybody has problems. When I am feeling fed up about something, it's a good idea to ask myself:

What, exactly, is really the problem? Does it even exist? How do I know?
Is there anything that I can DO about this problem? Would it work?
Is it actually, primarily, when it comes down to it, MY problem?

Nothing necessarily gives us the obligation or the right to try to solve other people's problems. Other people have a right to their own problems, and they have a right to understand them, solve them, or neglect them in their own way. Even if a problem is to some extent a problem for me, it may be that there's someone else who has a better claim on it. I'm entitled to protect myself from harm, but I'm not entitled to run around clearing plates or moving furniture when I'm supposed to be a guest. That's irritating and officious at best; controlling and manipulative at worst. And if you don't know how the dishwasher works or where anything goes, it's harmful. The guest also has a role to play.

It's sometimes a good exercise to look around your life for things that are Somebody Else's Problem.

My new year's resolutions - well, I'll call them plans:

1) Stop worrying about big-company problems
2) Work on my leading.

New in my RSS feed:
Ta-Nehisi Coates, a superb writer and thinker on many subjects, but I particularly admire his willingness to distinguish between what he knows and what he doesn't know. That's how you tell real imagination from Bullshit. I love his articles on reading books - he's been reading George Eliot and Jane Austen.

Sad story

2012-01-03T23:01:00.000Z

I had never met Andrea Misse, and know nothing about her that wasn't the purest hearsay; but she had a lot of influence on people who dance tango. And either personally, or because of that influence, she meant a great deal to people I know. And I want to say so and send a virtual hug, even though I haven't got anything else to say.

Car accidents - we should all bless every day that no such thing happens to us, for there is no reason why it wouldn't. As some legendary philosopher said - grandfather dies, father dies, son dies, and this is a blessing. A sad start to 2012.

Merry Christmas ...

2011-12-24T00:28:00.000Z

... but don't feel guilty if it isn't. That only makes it worse. Merriment is optional.

If you have enjoyed this blog, please consider making a donation to Centrepoint, right now. They are short this year.

Love
Hedgehog

New toys

2011-12-23T22:37:00.000Z

Since I started doing regular classes in Brazilian Samba*, for fitness, and because it's good for my figure, I've got stronger in the muscles that go around the body from the top of the hips to the shoulders. The column firms up and gets more mobile and obedient to command, especially at the back between hips and ribcage.

A side effect, which I would never have thought of, is that now my tango partners can clearly feel through my embrace, not only which foot I am on and where it is, but exactly where my hips are in rotation. You can lead one of those little forward and back floor-level boleos, where the free leg just does a little curl around the standing leg, and you can feel the whole movement happening. I can tell that they can tell exactly how I am doing it, softly or sharply. A movement that seemed nice-looking but otherwise fairly pointless, suddenly becomes a true sensual pleasure for both of us, and a way for my partner to hear my music.

Everybody wants to play with it!

*It doesn't look like the ballroom version at all.

Hilarious Translations Department

2011-12-17T01:26:00.000Z

This post is a present for those of my Argentinian friends who get wound up by bad English translations of song lyrics.

One of the ways I like to practice a language is to read something too difficult for me. I'm relaxed about not understanding two-thirds of it, I learn lots of new words, and I get a sense of achievement from just making sense of the structure of a sentence.

In pursuit of that, I have been dipping into a book borrowed from my Dad - a translation into Spanish of a not-particularly-good English detective story. It hasn't been a good choice, except for one line.

Early in the tale, the writer quotes the well-known couplet attributed to John Ball, preacher of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England:

"When Adam delved and Eve span,
who was then the gentleman?"

Don't say "Adam". (Ball's point, for my non-native-speaker readers, was that no-one is a "gentleman" by birth: if all humans were descended from the same parents, the feudal hierarchy of nobles and peasants could not be based on the law of God).

It looks pretty straightforward, to me. But what they've put is this:

Cuando Adán sondeó y Eva se revolvió,
¿quién fue entonces el caballero?

And I said to myself: that can't possibly be right, can it? "Span" is the past of "to spin" - and yes, that can mean to revolve quickly on one's axis, but here it doesn't mean that at all. It means to make thread by twisting together fibres, such as wool or flax. Which, of course, is what Eve was doing while Adam was delving (that is, digging) the earth, to grow food. 'Se revolver' can't possibly mean that - why would it be reflexive? She wasn't standing there and turning around, like Malvolio in Twelfth Night. She was spinning fibre.

I was a bit doubtful about 'sondear'. I wondered if the translator was seeing both "delve" and "spin" as metaphors for some kind of deep thought. They're not - they mean using a spade and a spindle, respectively, to grow food and make textiles. In this English sentence, neither of them can possibly be taken in any other sense.

My dictionary being inconclusive, I checked with a Spanish native speaker. Not only is the 'spinning' wrong, but it seems 'sondear' is catastrophically wrong too. It actually means 'to sound' or to 'take soundings' - in the maritime sense of to measure the depth of the sea using a long rope with a weight at the end. Nothing to do with spades at all.

So what they've written is:

When Adam took soundings and Eve revolved, who was then the gentleman?

Which sounds like some sort of Dada-ist poetry; it is bizarre, dreamlike gibberish. And there's a place for bizarre, dreamlike gibberish; but not as a translation of this direct, forceful utterance, persuading the workers to throw off their chains.

Disastrous. My informant pointed out that the choice of a perfect tense rather than an imperfect is also questionable. It should probably be 'araba' and 'hilaba,' because the digging and spinning are usual actions rather than a single event; but I think that's minor. Maybe they wanted to make it rhyme.

Anyway. While thinking about this, I wondered, did Eve really spin? How far back in the history of humanity, as opposed to religious stories, does spinning really go? I remembered reading about this research, which uses the genetics of human body lice and head lice to infer that the practice of wearing clothes goes back at least 83,000 years and perhaps 170,000. If these clothes were made of skins, spinning was not necessary; but if they were made of cloth, the thread must, I suppose, have been spun.

As for evidence of spinning itself, it seems to go back a very long time before recorded history, but nobody really has any idea how old it is, as far as I can tell. Ancient pots are embellished with patterns created by pressing a cord into the wet clay. The Greeks of Homer said that spinning was taught to humans by Athene, who turned Arachne into a spider for getting too good at it. The Navajo say they learned it from Spider-Woman.

From what I can find, it seems to be old; at least in the tens of thousands of years. I don't know if there are humans anywhere that don't traditionally spin, but there are climates where clothes are a useless burden, and where local plants and animals do not provide any suitable fibres. So even if there are, they might have forgotten how, rather than never learned. There's no obvious upper limit on how old it might be.

Here is someone spinning, in the Himalayas.

And here is a Navajo elder doing the same thing with a longer, but otherwise similar, spindle, while explaining the technique. There are many different techniques, and many forms of spindle, but the essence of the process is much the same.

Goodnight.

Miscellaneous lessons learned

2011-12-12T19:16:00.000Z

Going out when you wouldn't otherwise have gone out, merely because someone else is going, is virtually always a mistake. The dance or conversation you intended to have will not happen, and the perfectly good reason why you wouldn't otherwise have gone there, will still be true.

If you're going to do it anyway, (which, if you are anything like me, you will, just because you have to roll the dice sometimes) always have an alternative point to the evening. Even if it's a humourous one.

Barcelona

2011-12-07T15:09:00.000Z

Barcelona - brilliant sunshine, 10-15°C.

The Tolkien Facade

The Sagrada Família was designed by Antoni Gaudí, but what it looks like, is J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft got drunk together in Bali. One of the facades definitely has a tentacle thing going.

Detail of the Tentacle Facade

It has fruit on its pinnacles. He persuaded the Catholic Church to build this thing?

Miranda Hats

I last visited Barcelona about 20 years ago, and at that time, I don't think you were allowed inside yet. Since then the building works have progressed very well, and the inside is absolutely enchanting - a forest of limestone, granite, basalt and porphyry-clad columns, full of dappled light.

The forest

Fifteen metres above the congregation are galleries with capacity for about 1,000 singers - you can see them clearly in the picture above. The organ was played briefly while I walked around inside - it sounded good, without annoying echoes.

The canopy is stunning:

Canopy

And, looking down -

Sky Turtle holding up a pillar

- look at the little Sky Turtle!

Out of Office Message

2011-12-01T11:17:00.000Z

I'm off the grid again - back on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Dalston Tango in the Evening Standard

2011-11-30T00:03:00.000Z

Despite some hilarious but unimportant errors (er, Luis is not Brazilian) and the bizarre headline (headlines never have anything to do with the writer) this is rather sweet:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-24014972-strictly-come-dalston-dancing-the-tango-in-hackney.do

Especially in the way it presents tango as a civilised entertainment for young people, and specifically a hell of a lot more pleasant and interesting than alternatives in Dalston. It's true; if you're dancing tango, getting drunk or high as well is very much optional rather than compulsory, and there are tight practical limits to doing both at the same time, at least unless you've had a lot of practice.

I was going to say that the article exaggerated the role of the East End; tango is not new to London, not by a couple of decades, and the East End is the latest place to get it rather than the first. But, on reflection, it changes all the time, and the milongas they mention certainly have an important role in the way it's has gone in the last couple of years and the way it's likely to go next. For the person likely to be interested in the article, that's what's important. (Then I started looking for my review of the Light Temple - it's stuck in draft, I can't remember why, and I haven't got time to fix it right now).

Congratulations to Luis and Elizabeth for managing to sound quite sensible and more or less like themselves, when transmogrified by print. That can be a bit of a lottery, I think you did well.

I have been to this milonga a couple of times, but not since the place was refurbished. I felt then that it was good choice for beginners, depending on who was teaching, and it sounds like it still is. In theory it's much nearer me than central London is, but it's a lot less accessible given the day and the time. That's nice in a way, as it might stay local and get its own crowd, which can be a very good thing.

Dance is not necessarily Art

2011-11-29T22:45:00.000Z

When people dance at parties or in nightclubs, they are not making art. People dance to celebrate good luck, or to encourage their team, or for religious purposes, or because it's what they do, like the round dance they do in Catalonia on Sundays. I don't think any of that is art. But all these things are timeless and common and part of daily life.

Sometimes I enjoy watching good dancers dance, but that doesn't mean they have any artistic intent, and it doesn't mean that I am doing the same thing as someone consuming art.

There's nothing wrong with artistic dance. Lots of dance is certainly art. But it is wrong to talk as though dance is necessarily performance, and that non-artistic, non-performance dance is some sort of inferior 'just-for-fun' offshoot, defined as low-quality, because high-quality dance would be art. This belief does real harm to people who would enjoy non-art dance and be good at it, and real harm to dance communities.

The concerns, priorities and purposes of art are totally different from my concerns, priorities and purposes when I'm dancing, and they're mostly incompatible. This is a problem that non-art dancers have to solve when they are asked to give a demonstration to satisify other people's (totally reasonable) curiosity - a problem tackled by Elizabeth here and by Melina here. I like performances that solve this problem well and inform the curious without without misinforming them. It's not easy to do, it requires thought and self-awareness as well as empathy with the audience.

You see this unexamined assumption, that dance is a subset of art, in virtually all mainstream-media references to dance. It irritates me how non-art dance - surely the majority of all dance, considered worldwide - is either presupposed out of existence, or horribly deformed by a totally imaginary requirement that it make sense as a performance.

There should be more people dancing, more commonly, than there are, without being obliged to feel all artistic about it. And without feeling that if they ever get good, they'll automatically be artists and expected to teach or perform. Those are all totally different vocations and have no necessary connection with each other, or with just dancing. They're not needed to validate the quality of anyone's dance. (And they don't, incidentally).

Being an excellent social (or indeed solo, or religious, or football-terrace) dancer is a valid and possible goal, and it's always nice to have more of them.

Chacarera

2011-11-21T23:42:00.001Z

As discussed on the train ... some links.

Video playlist that walks you through most of the basic steps really, really s-l-o-w-l-y (in very easy Spanish) so you can learn them. Half an hour of this is pretty good exercise, actually.
Monica Paz demonstrating the whole thing. Includes the bit at the end not demonstrated in the previous playlist, and shows much more clearly how it fits the music.
Clear drawings of the whole procedure in sweet little old-time cartoony pictures, with ...
list of the steps in order - and also the longer chacarera doble
Diagram of chacarera doble, with little curly lines showing where you're supposed to be, instead of the cartoons.

For those who weren't on that particular train, this is a country dance in 6/8 (or I think of it more as groups of 4 triple measures) danced in a line formation with specific steps in a fixed order, so if you want to join in you just have to learn them and practice at home till they can't go wrong. People play it sometimes at milongas, Beto sometimes plays it after the end at Aldenham. It's much cooler if you can keep the lines straight, so some of us were half-arranging to practice it together.

The most likely 'gotcha' looks to me like the full (swapping places) turn and the introduction being sometimes over eight and sometimes over only six measures. (Is it consistent, so the introduction would tell us which?)

First album I found on itunes, as far as I can tell from the previews this seems to have at least one example where the full turn is over only 6 measures:
Los Mejores 13 - Folklore - Chacarera - Various Artists

Balloons

2011-11-19T19:37:00.000Z

When I've had a really lovely dance, it seems like the little girl inside, the little girl who didn't have to go to school yet and was full of joy, is smiling and holding a balloon.

Sometimes I like to stop, and just enjoy having a balloon for a while.

If the DJing and the dancing is going so extremely well that I just can't stop, I can end up with a whole bunch of balloons, each different, to look at on the way home.

Aran Vase

2011-11-14T20:27:00.000Z

Aran Vase

Here's the other object I started on the Eurostar.

I like pottery. I was thinking about the beautiful pots that archaeologists sometimes find in tombs, and how distinctive they often are to particular times and places, but also how regular; so that styles and shapes of pottery can date a site with surprising precision.

I was also thinking about the way textiles hardly ever survive. And the way that the women and men who knitted traditional seafarers' garments of the British Isles would start with a more or less fixed basic design and set of techniques that worked well with the materials, and then execute them with a range of motifs and variations that they personally favoured, or that they learned from family members or friends, or that their own invention suggested. Always bearing in mind that the result had to be a practical and beautiful garment, acceptable to the intended wearer. More or less the same conditions, then, that governed the production of pots.

Glasses

Anyway, this came to mind, more or less as it looks, although I work out a lot of the details as I go along. It has four little feet so that it stands up nicely, and the inside is the same shape as the outside.

Generally, it's designed to be looked at, but it's also an excellent place to put down a pair of glasses.

I'm going to be working on some more designs like this.

Embrace (dialogues) part 2

2011-11-14T19:09:00.000Z

Interior, Practica

Hedgie
Ok, I just want to try this because if I understand what it is, I'll be able to do it or not do it on purpose instead of accidentally. I'm going to do it normally first.

- Dance -

Mr. Hu

Yep - ok - this is what you normally feel like.

Hedgie

Right, now I'm not going to move anything, but I'm going to try doing it another way.

- Dance -

Mr. Hu

Oh!

Hedgie

Is that the kind of thing we were asking about? It might be a bit exaggerated.

Mr. Hu

Yes, that's it. Change it back!

Hedgie
Ok, just a sec.

- Dance -

Mr. Hu

... yes, that's back to normal. Wow. That's totally different. Show me again?

- Dance -

That's quite disturbing. You feel like a totally different person.

Hedgie

I was still following you, though. I wasn't not following, I mean, I wasn't having any problems following, that I was aware of.

Mr. Hu

Yes - you were - you were doing everything, but, in comparison, it felt totally disconnected. What are you actually doing? I can't see any difference at all.

Hedgie

Ok, we're standing like this. And the way I think of it in my head is ... my arms and head are the same, whatever is comfortable and seems to work for the partner, it doesn't really matter.

Mr. Hu

Hedgie

The way I do it is - I go fuzzy - I want to blur the boundary between your nervous system and mine. And then - I want to to be really, really curious about what's going to happen next. So I go curious and I go fuzzy-fuzzy ... I want my point of concentration, where my mind is, to be in there, about where your centre is. Now, I'm guessing that what happens is, people dance like it makes sense to dance in classes, which mostly isn't like that.

Mr. Hu

Hang on a second. Let me try doing that too.

Hedgie
... okay.

- Dance -

Mr. Hu

Oooh, that's really interesting. I like that, a lot. I'll try that next time I'm following. But I really like it when we both do it.

Hedgie

I'm not sure if I can tell the difference yet, let's stick with it and see how it goes.

Mr. Hu

If you do that and somebody is trying to wrestle you ... it'd be a disaster. So, you turned it off ...

Hedgie

I hardened the embrace a bit, hardened the surface, brought back the boundary, and concentrated sort of more behind myself. Doesn't prove anything general, but at least I feel like I understand what's working for me now. I hate it when stuff just changes randomly for no reason.

Mr Hu

Don't do it again.

Mr V [a visiting acquaintance interested in the discussion]
My girlfriend used to be like that, everybody would tell her how beautiful her feet were, and I was, "your feet? What about ME? Oi! I'm over here!". And she, like, she'd totally missed the point. And then I got her to try [some exercise or other, can't remember what] and she got it, and she went, "Oh!! ... I'm not sure I'm OK with you feeling like that with all these other women." But then she got over it and she danced a lot better, she feels really nice now.

Hedgie
Fair-minded woman, obviously.

Embrace (dialogues) part 1

2011-11-12T23:22:00.000Z

This is a subject that's been intriguing and puzzling me for a while. I'm finding a lot of friends and acquaintances who have various problems, experiences and solutions. This is one conversation, slightly edited but not substantially. Don't be freaked out by my friend's apparently bizarre martial arts analogy. It's normal for him.

Virtual Interior (Facebook Chat) slightly edited, but not substantially.

Hedgie
... I am trying to work out what his problem is. He was complaining about the women, that he can't dance with them because they have "zero embrace" and I can't see why it doesn't work.

Mr. Hu
After Friday i think I know what he means

Hedgie
Like, he tried dancing with X because he said she looked like she could dance, and then it was a disaster, he said there was very little following going on - and I don't understand that becuase it just can't be the case that she doesn't follow. So I have no idea what he means.
So what's your theory? (What do you mean, Friday?)

Mr. Hu
:collects thoughts:
Loosely speaking, being "plugged in" is a massive simplification of what it can be

Hedgie
okay
I mean, he seems to do okay with me, he even quite likes dancing with me
and I don't understand how what she is doing can be THAT different from what I do, it looks the same to me.

Mr. Hu
To use martial arts as an analogy, imagine two olympic fencers going at it full speed

Hedgie
okay

Mr. Hu
So there's imppecable technique, posture, rhythm etc

Hedgie
okay

Mr. Hu
Now imagine two samurai, facign each other standing completely motionless, swords undrawn

Hedgie
okay ...

Mr. Hu
trying to feel for want of a better word, each other's spirit / inner calm / experience

Hedgie
observing each other

Mr. Hu
very deeply

Hedgie
okay

Mr. Hu
but here's the twist
After a while one of them will bow deeply, turn and walk away. No swords are drawn
But the one who walked away lost

Hedgie
Right, fair enough, I suppose they know what they're doing.

Mr. Hu
So imagine the differnece between thinking you can beat this guy (fencing) and knowing deep down you can beat this guy (samurai)

Hedgie
okay ...
Not sure how this applies, but conceptually willing to go with it

Mr. Hu
cool
No go back to tango embrace
Imagine the difference between focussing on your technique as you dance and focussing on him as you dance

Hedgie
That's okay, it makes sense, but I still seem to manage just about (although it's tough) even after a 3-hour workshop

Mr. Hu
hee hee

Hedgie
So there must be a fair amount of leeway there
For potential follower distraction
And I would have thought it would be enough to accommodate her easily
It feels like a reasonable explanation but it doesn't seem enough

Mr. Hu
There's a difference between knowing that it's possible, being interested in doing it but being distracted , and not knowing it's possible at all

Hedgie
Oh. Okay
Maybe it's that then
That's tough to solve

Mr. Hu
Or I guess more simply, I can drive and talk and still get you home. If all I could do was talk...

Hedgie
We'd go nowhere

Mr. Hu
Yup

Hedgie
And if all you could do was drive we'd still get there

Mr. Hu
Yup

Hedgie
just less interestingly

Mr. Hu
Which is probably you in the above example

Hedgie
Yeah, okay
Above, when you said you thought you understood it since Friday
I don't know what happened on Friday, or which Friday
i.e.that you might know what he was on about

Mr. Hu
Last Friday had a ephiphany dancing with someone at Negracha

Hedgie
Oh right
What was the epiphany

Mr. Hu
that there's a lot more to plugging in than meets the eye

Hedgie
Was the dance working, or not working?

Mr. Hu
Working very well. never experienced anything like it in tango before

Hedgie
Ace

Mr. Hu
Yup. But conversely given that your friend is a lot more expereinced than I am, if he's after that and beyond, I can see why he's getting grumpy

Hedgie
Right

Mr. Hu
In a similar vein I can totally see why you would choose to dial it back with someone who had messed up posture / musicality etc

Hedgie
As in why the follower would?

Mr. Hu
Both

Hedgie
Right

Mr. Hu
Which I think was what he was trying to tell me with a story about him dancing with someone who looked really good, but felt ugh

Hedgie
I suppose. Actually, I think I have an idea now about what it is. Let me try turning it off and on at the practica next week and you can tell me whether that's it, or not.

Mr Hu
Okay

[Part 2 to follow]

Music with Holes In - Biagi and the Dancing Flower

2011-11-05T20:32:00.000Z

Biagi, to me, is music with holes in; it has an open, airy texture, like a Swiss cheese. A lot of people find it challenging to dance to, perhaps in apprehension of falling down the holes and embarrassing themselves. It's wonderful stuff, though.

Here, then, by the request of some very dear friends, (one of whom said that her perception of El Flete had been transformed by the Dancing Flower's interpretation) is Biagi's "La Viruta" danced by a piezoelectric plastic flower. Just in case you were in danger of taking this tango nonsense too seriously.

The Dancing Flower loves Biagi! Analyses in the comments please. (I know the video quality isn't too good - the original is high quality but my internet connection doesn't really have the upload speed for HD - sorry).

Mucho Mucho - D'Arienzo

2011-10-31T21:10:00.000Z

A-ha! I can now give you links to (some) things I'm listening to. You might not have to download the Spotify player for this link to work - but if you do, it seems pretty reliable, and makes talking about music on the internet easier. You can stream it:

Juan D'Arienzo – Mucho Mucho

The above link gives you a high quality stream. There's a version on YouTube with some meaningless graphics, and you can get it on iTunes. It doesn't sound great on my computer speakers - if you have quality earphones you'll probably want to use them to hear the bass. I can't hear it at all if I don't plug mine in, and it's very important.

It comes on this excellent-value 10-cd set El Tango. Some of the recordings are messed up - there's one D'Arienzo milonga which seems to play at half speed, and there's something wrong with all of the Di Sarli. But it's full of interest.

I listened to this one a couple of times and absolutely loved it - most of all because it reminds me of someone I know. In fact, when I played it to my regular practice partner he thought of the same person.

So why had I never heard it played? As a piece of music I think it's brilliant.

I can only make out some of the words, and as usual I've failed to find them online. But I think it's about that sensation of being in love for five minutes while you dance, forgetting everything else, and the music seems to be about the sensations of being in love generally.

The violins have these butterflies of melody (at the start, and at 00:45)- the piano catches its breath a few times, skips a beat and goes crazy (01:05-01:15) - the bandoneones enclose you in a swirling, disorienting, obsessed wall of sound, especially when the voice comes in after 01:40. What a dark voice (apparently Armando Laborde, recording dated 1953). The sung melody has a little change at 02:30 like a plea. It's telling you to dance along the edge of chaos.

Oops. That doesn't sound like a great idea.

D'Arienzo in general makes some people feel a bit seasick, and this is a very marked example.You might listen to this and feel alarmed and queasy rather than excited - it could go either way.

And, on a few more repetitions, I decided that I just don't think it's a good choice for social dancing. At least, not when the voice comes in and pushes and pulls at the rhythm. It's great as art-song, but both melody and rhythm are really strong, and whatever you do, you're going to be fighting one of them. That's not a good thing on a social dancefloor. There's this beat, this melody, and the swirling walls of sensation, shutting out reality, the sense of risk and disorientation - I can just see this causing mayhem, purely by people dancing to it in ways that make perfect musical sense. It might be rather good for an exciting stage performance, I'm not sure, but when I play this and try to imagine a social dance floor as a whole, it just doesn't work for me. You may disagree, and another practice partner said he had heard it played, just not anywhere I went.

But I love it for listening.

FCA2011 - Carole Beauxis et Bernard Casas-Reales

2011-10-27T21:00:00.003+01:00

I've been raving about what a good time I had without actually telling you where I was. I was at the 2011 edition of "Festivalito con Amigos" in Saarbruecken, Germany. As for the social dancing, which is the actual point of the whole thing, I'll just tell you I had an amazing time and leave it at that.

The actual reason that I wanted to post this video of two of the guests of honour, Carole and Bernard, is that I thought her look, ROCKED. [~~Sorry - 2 links to same vid - will fix later~~ fixed, embed now shows the Rodriguez that I was trying to show.]

The dress, the hair, the necklace, the shoes. You can't easily see it, but the skirt is translucent, and embellished near the hem with two plain bands of black velvetyness, about two fingers wide and two fingers apart. I just loved this look. It was a sort of fairy-goth-mother incarnate. (I know that's a shop in Spitalfields - link not necessarily safe for work - there is no connection - it was just the name that came back to me when I saw this outfit in action). Here's their other dance, the Biagi. I also think her following is superb, and her dancing really inspires me. But it's the look I wanted to rave about. I can rave about dancing whenever I want.

The other guests of honour were Alexis Quezada and Céline Giordano, from Barcelona, and Monica Paz. Here are Alexis and Céline doing a lovely squiggly Di Sarli to unusually well-informed applause, and another Di Sarli, but a milonga. (Here's Monica Paz dancing with Andreas on the Friday). The two small demos plus this seemed rather shorter than single demos seem at home, possibly because it was different people, possibly because I was actually sort of interested, and possibly because the night was so much longer than at home that the demos seemed very short in proportion, plus I was already knackered and rather enjoying a rest.

I enjoyed watching all of the guests, especially dancing socially. People who have social dancing as their main focus like this, tend to dance even better socially than they do for exhibition, and it's a big part of the fun of these things for me.

The DJs this year were Uwe Willié, Andreas, Bärbel Rücker and Lampis Zalavras. Bärbel was new to me, I found her music really interesting and I remember enjoying the Pugliese tanda a lot. Lampis had an amazing day - this was my first experience of the DJ getting an ovation from the floor at the first notes of the last tango of a tanda. The whole thing went brilliantly for me. I was blown away. By the middle of Sunday afternoon my inner self was somewhat confused about whether I was currently physically dancing or not. I also believed, during one dance, that I had giant wheels, like a Ferrari, that went round exactly once with every step of our walk.

I wrote up details last year; as expected, they abandoned the workshops (there were none, at least not as part of the event) and simplified the whole locations business. Info at http://www.tangodesalon.de/en/ehome.htm (link goes to English-language page).

I heart dancing tango

2011-10-22T15:06:00.000+01:00

The high from last weekend has only just faded. My regular practice partner says I feel like I've had an upgrade.

At the end of it I was back to something I have thought before - how does it come about that I can do something that much fun with all those men (and some women), and not catch anything or get pregnant or arrested? You don't even have to fancy them; they can be any age or appearance, everyone goes home afterwards, and it's all cool. It all seems so simple.

And it was so great to dance with so many new partners; some I'd seen (but not danced with) before and some I'd never seen at all.

Who thought this up? Sheer genius.

The upside of being crap

2011-10-22T12:10:00.000+01:00

A brief exchange on Twitter between two Arsenal fans that deserves a wider audience:

GarethDParker Gareth Parker
Looking back on yesterday, can't help but worry that I celebrated the 2nd goal as though we'd won the league. I'll be cheering corners next.

@HighburyJD JD Evans
@GarethDParker don't see it as a downside, that's the advantage of being crap dude.

Never forget to celebrate and enjoy small successes from moment to moment. If you can keep doing it when you get good, you're laughing.

Mouth Mouse

2011-10-19T22:34:00.000+01:00

I was so bored knitting the garment I was working on that I just had to make something else. So I knitted this on the Eurostar and the ICE high-speed to the festival and back.

Mouth Mouse.

I had no idea what it was, it just came out of my head. I showed it to Carole Edrich and she said "It's a Mouth Mouse".

This is the back.

Rear of the Mouth Mouse.

That's it really. Who needs a reason?

Central Europe Rock

2011-10-17T19:09:00.000+01:00

I'd been dancing till 3 in the morning on Friday. I danced from 2 till 6 in the afternoon. I had an hour's nap, then fell into the bistro under my hotel and ordered a pizza, a salad and a cup of tea while I wondered how I'd cope with 9 till 3am that evening.

Five middle-aged guys came in with two guitars, a blues harp and a drum kit. They set themselves up while I ate my pizza. The singer chatted me up for a bit while the pianist faffed with the mikes. Then this happened:

I'm sorry about the disastrous video quality - you can't see a thing - even though I had half-understood that there might be live music, I was so dozy it didn't occur to me to take my proper camera downstairs. But they were called Doctor Tom and Friends, and they played boogie woogie, blues and rock and roll from about 8pm to about 21:30, and gave me my energy back for Saturday night. Then they stopped for a break and I went to the milonga, with my buzz back. They rocked!

The speech in German at the end is the singer taking the piss out of the guitarist, although the two of them spoke French between themselves, as happens a lot in that area.

I love my life.