NOVEMBER TO REMEMBER

three consecutive days of mail, including a box from montpelier with a package of navettes de provence and a card, which was correct in reminding me that i'm lucky to be here.

LO QUE DUERME EN EL CUERPO DE LOS GITANOS

the truth, to admit it from the beginning, is that i didn’t do my (any) research. and my excuse, to allow myself at least the one for having admitted the truth from the beginning, is that i thought i’d have more than enough time to myself in lebrija to discover something appropriately historical or to wander myself into an interesting anecdote. but the truth is that i needed something, because i hadn't done much investigation into the show. and i should have had all night, because the last train from lebrija for sevilla leaves nightly at nine fifteen (fifteen minutes before the show was scheduled to start), and the first one out on a saturday morning wouldn't have come for me until seven fifty-four. the night didn't, however, end up as i'd foreseen it, because i was offered at seat in a car at (almost exactly) the eleventh hour of the night before. of course, i was happy at the prospect of company, and also for the excuse -- and i let my nursing a sore throat that found me off my guard on friday morning and threatened my passing of the night with excitement (company or not) excuse me from buckling down to any research before i needed to meet my ride at the arch of the macarena at seven. the truth is...something like that.

and of course i wasn't at all unhappy when my ride turned out to be the angolese portuguesa to whom i was introduced (as a friend of hers) the night that i met lakshmi. (maybe it was because i'd left her that night expecting to see her again sooner than later that, when i didn't, i expected that i might not see her again.) but she was the one who got out of the driver's seat of the car that pulled up next to the arch, in front of the basilica. she then got on her phone to find out what none of the rest of us did, which, outside of a bus or a train car, was the way to lebrija.

the way seemed clear enough, though, for the person with whom she had a brief conversation in portuguese, and it wasn't too much past seven thirty when we crossed the river on our way out of town and made our way onto the highway. from there, i can't say exactly how long it took us to arrive at our destination, but it's about an hour by train, and i think it must have taken us about the same. i thought we'd arrived earlier when i saw that church lit up on the hill above that town just off the highway to the left. that was about where we exited, but then we took a road that veered off to the right and left what, from the road signs i could see, i took to be las cabezas de san juan behind us.

it didn't seem that anyone in the car had been to lebrija before, so when we arrived a dozen or so minutes later, we didn't know either which way it was to the theater. and after we did find it, it turned out that we didn't see much of the city other than what was on the path between it and the car, although it was possible to see a lighted minaret of pre-reconquista arab design from road that sloped upwards from a larger plaza to where a crowd was gathered around the box office. i probably wasn't incorrect to assume that it was smaller than the giralda, but i hadn't done any research, and that vista, which i could see during my wait with the group in front of the theater and then saw briefly again on my way out, was all of the geographical history of lebrija that i got.

but there's definitely a strong gitano tradition in the city, and there was a beautiful history excerpted on the front of the programs for the show, "zarabanda: lo que duerme en el cuerpo de los gitanos." i'd missed the homenaje in jerez the previous friday (although jerez seems to like to throw those and there will surely be others), but i hadn't any idea about the singer who was being tributed and had been mostly enticed by the idea of staying with the family of a friend. i did, however, know of lakshmi, even from before coming to andalucía, and had, even, met her on that one occasion (or rather had introduced myself after recognizing her by reputation), and it was her show that was being given in lebrija. or, at least, it was lakshmi that most of the people that i recognized from sevilla seemed to be in lebrija to see.

unfortunately, i can't tell you much about the dancer herself. (no research.) but i do know, beautiful program histories aside, that she isn't gitano. she's from san diego maybe? that seems right when try to remember what people told me about the workshops she gave in portland. other than that she was gorgeous. and that she was, gitano or not, for her show in lebrija. the singing and the guitar and the percussion should be as closely followed as the dancing in any flamenco show, but it's still usually the diva that steals the show when she's on the stage. granted, the standing ovation started when the older man who had set the scene for each segment of the show with his spirited narrations took his bow, but only lakshmi took a bouquet -- and i doubt that anyone else's could have been bigger.

that isn't, however, to say that she didn't earn it. gitano or not, lakshmi does seem to know what sleeps inside the gitanos' collective body. or, maybe i was just been taken by the exotic charm of the program -- or should be giving more credit to the stagecrafters and the directors. but, with all due credit given, the spirit of the show still moved essentially through the dance, which every other element was designed to showcase in a cycle of segments that moved the dancer through a full array of moods and styles but placed her at the end of her soleá in exactly the same spot as where she had begun the sigueriyas amid the storm that opened the show.

the zarabanda was arguably the most gitano of the dances, and lakshmi's adornments and phrasing for that segment were the most similar to the picture of the dancing woman on the eighteenth century advertisement for "Bayles de JITANOS" reproduced on the program. nonetheless -- and maybe even a bit ironically -- it was the alegrias that best demonstrated lakshmi's talent for interpreting flamenco as a form in general. her footwork sections weren't anything to criticize, but despite the (expectedly) spirited tempo of the percussion and the song, lakshmi danced the dance almost subtly, although the overall essence of her interpretation might be better described as simply controlled -- and impeccably -- to imply that no movement or set of movements was allowed any special explosion, even as, at the same time, nothing was held back. and the dance's captivating synthesis -- by way of its seeming contradictions -- with the music was nowhere more visible than in the simple but careful movements of lakshmi's shoulders and hips as she made her way through her paseos, defiantly compliant with the style of the palo.

so i was only expecting the best when, near the end of the soleá that closed the show, lakshmi fell. which is to say that i didn't recognize the fall when i saw it, especially for lakshmi's quick recovery which, as the friend who confirmed to me after the show that the dancer had in fact fallen pointed out, was a physical feat unto itself and executed perfectly in compas at that.

and that is what must be sleeping inside the body of the gitanos. or else it probably came out at the reception after the show (for the artists, friends, family and anyone who'd come from sevilla apparently), or at the juerga that followed the reception in the same reception space in the restaurant behind the theater. it was obvious, at least, that whatever sleeps inside the gitanos sleeps during the day. after we'd had our fino and had a wary laugh over deciding that any one of the displaced or expatriated of our group could easily be the spy, we waved goodbye to the bit of lebrija to which we'd become acquainted and headed back to sevilla by the still unfamiliar road by which we'd come.

from what i'd seen, i wouldn't have had any easy time finding my way into an anecdote after three thirty en lebrija, but the new flamenco club in triana was full when we got there sometime after four. the portuguesa wondered how long the place would be around after our interaction with the bar staff, but later it seemed certain that our drinks were paying for the sharply dressed security crew which did end up breaking up a fight and ejecting one patron in the after after hours, about a half an hour before the lights came on and everyone had to leave. thankfully, the night itself had the consideration not to break into daylight until after the breakfast group had gone on its way and the windows were shuttered, twenty minutes or so from when my train would pull in from lebrija.

F*CK U JIMMY FALLON; or, AUSTERITY MEASURES, part 5

the guy who does jimmy fallon during the “f*ck u jimmy fallon” segment of “otra movida” doesn’t look especially like the american late night host. (from what i saw of both men during the one episode of “otra movida” that i’ve seen, the spanish comedian’s suits fit much better.) but, i haven’t seen enough of the american late night host’s late night show to know whether the “otra movida” segment is a good send up or not, but after i’d stayed a moment on the channel airing the show to appreciate one of the hosts, the name of the segment alone was enough to keep me there. that and the perfect maintenance of that one host’s and the other guy’s stubble.

i heard it recently proclaimed -- by a television personality -- that the social force of television (in spain) was fundamentally democratic, so it’s good to be watching lately as we wait to see how sunday’s historic electoral victory for the popular party of spain affects the democracy. already on sunday, when the socialists were outvoted by nearly four million votes and ceded its legislative majority to the wave of “popular” support, there were cries from the opposition camp that rajoy’s succession to the presidency signified a return to franco. granted, a conservative shift in spain might not be as drastic a transition to the right as it might mean elsewhere, but rajoy’s election night rhetoric of “a government for all” on the verge of certain cuts to federal social programs definitely sounded the charge for a return to politics as usual.

there were those sevillanos who celebrated the popular victory with champagne, even as the province of sevilla, joined only by the province of barcelona, awarded the majority of its seats in the legislature to the socialists…although the majority of historically socialist andalucía voted for the populars. elsewhere, only the nationalist parties in cataluña and país vasco were able to take more seats in their autonomous communities than the popular party.

who can say whether there will be more or fewer champagne toasts under rajoy than under aapatero. we’ll just have to stay tuned. It should be an interesting several months as the variety show regulars hone their rajoys. and sure, those will get old at some point, but democracy will always have something to beg our participation, and, sure i’ve only seen it once, it’s probably a while until people get tired of that beaming picture of jimmy fallon riding that middle finger.

CHRISTMAS IN JULY

it was a good thing that there was quite a bit of reading that needed doing this week, because there was quite a bit of recovery that needed doing after friday’s early christmas meal. granted, we were still in the first part of november -- and not in winter proper -- when the group convened at the bodega across the street from the restaurant for drinks at two, but the sun was shining and had warmed the air to a degree at which it might have been summer -- not summer here, of course, but imaginably somewhere else -- and the pleasant temperatures held well after we had finished the comida de la navidad itself and moved to the covered patio of one of the cafés on the alameda. And hence the joke, which was toasted with coffees and digestifs to spirited rounds of “merry christmas.” twelve hours later, as i was putting the mistress of ceremonies into a cab at close to five, i had long since regretted my choice of footwear, but my short walk home wasn’t going to do anything worse to my feet than had already been done, and my socks had already been well ruined with blood. and it was from that observation that i planned to write something about our christmas in july the next morning, an observation that i made around three-thirty at our final stop, a venue off of calle calatrava that i knew hosted regular flamenco shows but had no idea drew a more standard dancing crowd afterhours on weekend nights. at the time i made it, that observation seemed to me intensely charming, not to mention evocative of the valiance of my efforts to give myself over to the spirit of the day and night as it moved me from place to place. so i was smiling as i danced where i could amid the tightly packed crowd and as the conversation permitted. Before it was just the two of us we were three, accompanied by a german man, “lolita,” who produces the most prominent flamenco periodical in his country and who was in sevilla for the weekend for an international flamenco conference. at the previous stop (where most of the rest of the group had ledft us), the subject of our conversation had somewhere turned to semiotics, and i’d flailed, literally, in spanish and body language to depict an epic conflict between roland barthes and noam chomsky to the german. so, although i did enjoy his company, i was relieved when he excused himself to get whatever sleep he could before his morning business and left me alone with my hostess to not much talking at all. besides, the two of us had charmed each other enough already, and it was time to relax and enjoy not really being able to enjoy any more drinks. but that didn’t stop them from coming. maybe it was just our proximity to the bar -- and that we weren’t showing signs of instigating an end from our side of it -- but both of the bartenders came around whenever there was a lull in orders to join us in rounds of shots on the house. and whether they were tequila or honeyed rum, most of the second halves of my companion’s shots ended up in what was left of my glass of cruzcampo, possibly as a jesting challenge to an earlier assertion i’d made that someone who’d lived in portland for as long as i had could keep downing beers unto forever. but, i’m chalking the hospitality up to the presence of my companion. i can attest that the charms of a woman from san sebastian who neither dances nor plays the guitar nor sings and who owns a flamenco school in sevilla are endless, and when i kissed her into her cab, none of those charms showed any sign of waning, even for the hour or the alcohol. when i made the observation that had kept me smiling until we parted ways and i walked my ruined socks home two hours later, i had planned to use it as the departure for what i would write about the festivities in the morning. but there aren’t really mornings where a day and a night like those ones come from. luckily, the postal service had made a visit while i was gone. i don’t have a chimney, so someone must have buzzed them in. in any case, i had a box, and in that box i had some books. i was given quite a bit of advice on a variety of different subjects over the course of that first day (and night) of christmas, but “live it” is the only one that i feel compelled to recount so long after the fact. i can’t say whether my participation in the comida or the long hours of reading that have followed is the better example of following that advice, but to say so is, i suppose, to acknowledge the possibility that it might be both. or so i’d like to think on the eve of another friday. hmph. so it is written; and so it might be done. live it. and keep reading. merry christmas. and stay in school. you never know when that anecdote is going to come in handy.

ONCE...

if the proprietors of the discount furniture superstore next to the hotel macarena had made it just a few more hours, they might have had the luck to avoid the fire or whatever it was that brought all of those patrol cars and fire engines (and the one news van) out last night to block the traffic running west toward the andalucian parliament building just down the street, in the anterior gardens of which, just like on every other weekday evening, the marching band of the hermandad of the basilica of the macarena was practicing for the next time it would accompany the city’s favorite virgin into the streets for the night. and the band made itself heard, just like on every other weekday, even above the noise of the sirens, which might not have had to announce the hurry of so many emergency response vehicles to the discount furniture superstore had whatever it was befell the proprietors not befallen them until this next, more auspicious day: today, the much anticipated eleventh day of the eleventh month of 2011.

i suppose, at least, that this day has some significance elsewhere, because when i went searching last night (just before passing the fracas next door to the hotel macarena) for the time of the special lottery drawing to find out if i still had time to buy a ticket this morning, the “news” articles to which i was directed were generally bent toward the same vague dime store numerology that insisted on the universal luckiness of the numbers one and eleven. but, cosmic or esoteric significance aside, el once del once del once will certainly be a lucky day for a lucky twelve people here in spain, because those twelve were lucky (or just foresighted) enough to have bought tickets for the special ONCE lottery, which will award eleven million euros to one lucky contestant and one million euros to each of eleven others. and, apparently, as of yesterday morning, tickets were all but impossible to find, sold out from nearly every ONCE lottery outlet in the country.

which, i suppose, should be seen as auspicious for the issuing organization itself, as we can expect that ONCE (organización nacional de ciegos españoles, the national organization of spanish blind people) will have made more than enough from ticket sales for this special drawing (it runs other -- some of them daily – lotteries, all of which offer tax exempt prizes to winners, throughout the year) to cover paying the lucky winners and then to devote a sizeable amount to its social and cultural projects. and who could begrudge them the opportunity to capitalize, since, as the news has pointed out, they won’t have another opportunity for benefiting from the synonymity of a date for another thousand years.

the essential thing is, however, that i don’t think anyone here would think to begrudge them. like any charity, ONCE, founded in 1938, has surely had its share of intrigues, ethical inquiries and administrative snafus. or not. the most i know of the organization is from the commercials for the special drawing -- and as a result of those, which include spanish subtitles to accompany the voice describing the collective celebration that is to be 11/11/11, i can only say that the organization has been nothing but helpful in my personal experience. and from what i can tell from the action in the streets, many of those who participate in the daily drawings do so because they want to support the ONCE staff that sell them their cupóns, many of whom are visually impaired or otherwise disabled.

the secret of spain’s dual economy -- the one legitimate and the other, no less pervasive and functional, but illegitimated by the legitimacy of the first -- is pathetically poorly kept; and if international monetary policy is the means by which the two could be rationalized and everyone brought into the fold, then perhaps spain should be left to its own devices. here, the other half may not live at the top of the world economy, but it does, if simply, live well. of course (of course), there are still the homeless and the extremely impoverished (although international monetary policy would have little to offer those people in any consideration), but that essential thing is that those lucky twelve ticket holders probably did want to help (regardless of how they might end up spending their winnings once they find themselves legitimated). nowhere else have i seen such genuine respect for and desire to assist -- publicly, in all senses -- the disabled, the elderly, the infirm and those friends in need, or such clear absence of guilt or vanity in the provision of that help, especially for its regular public display. (and the spanish call themselves catholics!) on average, it may never get that second flat screen television -- or the first, but it would seem that most of spain can expect to be fed -- or at least given a drink so as to share in the spirit of the rest of the people in the plaza.

so, as luck would have it, maybe the proprietors of the discount furniture superstore didn’t need to be thinking about luck after all. it’s likely that someone would have been there after the fact to help, in some simple but significant way, even if the emergency response could do nothing to prevent the fire or whatever from spreading to the hotel and razing the whole block as the band played. that’s what i’ve been thinking, anyway, this morning of el once del once del once, which, for me, will soon turn into the afternoon of the season’s first christmas party. and maybe it’s just the spirit of the impending season that’s clouding a feeling that would otherwise be something, if not guiltier, then certainly much vainer; but it’s also for wondering as much that i wonder if i haven’t already shared in the celebration of the day for thinking that, yeah, we should all be so lucky.

FLAMENCO, FLAMENCO...REPRISE

on a corner near the end of where calle vascondagas goes nowhere, there’s a fun bit of graffiti that reads, from about knee level, “i hate flamenco music [signed] - seville.” and the not so cryptic message written into that bit of graffiti near that not so hospitable cul de sac probably isn’t far from expressing the sentiments of many of the locals here, especially those of theirs that surface when they’re confronted with the fawning adoration of so many of the visitors. it must feel at times like working at the mall at christmastime (which season has already started here, by the way, company parties and all -- but certainly not to any complaints from this visitor), and it’s understandable that there are those (if not the most of them) who are simply doing their time because they have to until they can put something else on. and, for their part, there are even those visitors who have been at it long enough in the vacated posts of the locals to have learned to request something else from the dj before the party.

but -- and maybe it’s just the early spirit of christmas (which, here, es una cosa, en serio) -- the calling of whatever it is that moves people into and inside of the sphere of flamenco (and there beyond overly earnest conversations on arte and ambiente) still makes its proud appearance in the streets -- at least in those others away from that dead end of calle vascondagas. and it was there in the plaza de la gavidia the other day when the spare changer put that empty fruit box between his legs and started playing it like a cajon, and then singing; and then some of the diners at the edge of the patio of the dos de mayo started singing with him, and then the man who had brought his guitar (there was actually a man who had brought his guitar) started playing as some of his friends danced (or at least moved) to the music with some of the children who had been playing in the plaza. or maybe they hadn’t been called by anything and they’d just had enough to drink; but, then again, so probably had the rest of the patrons of the restaurant and the one next door (and everyone sitting at any of the benches in the plaza), enough at least to ignore the group of impromptu flamencos if they’d had enough.

FLAMENCO, FLAMENCO

the group that gathered for lunch yesterday at number 12 calle duque cornejo was mixed, although we invitees were all common in our foreignness. luckily, by the time that the french woman, the dancer, arrived with her polish friend, the guitarist, i’d already made my regular mistake of offering my hand to the female roommate of our host and did the cheek kissing thing with the appropriate newcomer.

the lunch itself was far grander than i’d expected, and of extraordinarily bohemian proportions: a giant stew of lentils and tomatoes and chorizo that went by some andalucian name that i’ve already forgotten, with sandwiches of sliced chorizo and jamón iberico to necessitate washings down with beer, followed by a round of tea and cakes, which were prepared and served during the rolling of cigarettes and the sipping of digestifs. (and all of it sustained with much less pretension that all that.)

i’d expected to be alone with the host, but with the french woman and the polish man and the two roommates we were six, and my spanish was by far (by far) the worst of the group, and i was, even for the comfort of the food and the drinks, even more afraid of sharing with the group than i’d already expected to have been when i thought i’d be in the situation one on one. but i could listen; and yes, i had seen “flamenco, flamenco,” and i’d seen “flamenco” too, but i didn’t contribute my opinion on either, although the conversation was familiar.

the guitarist thought “flamenco, flamenco,” the latter of those two of carlos saura’s films, a work of kitsch that seemed intended for viewers outside of the world of flamenco, and our host, who had worked as an assistant on the film after finishing film school in madrid, did his best to justify the elements of it that he thought justifiable. it’s true, the film absolutely did not need those long close-up shots of farruquito’s face as he was just kind of jiving to the playback. and it may not be true that farruquito is handsome, but the film does also (although perhaps not for self-described “purists”) have justifiable elements. like i said, i didn’t contribute my opinion this time around. but i was charmed and humored, nonetheless, and not just by the graciousness of our host and the fine meal -- and not only because the french woman at one point inexplicably broke my silence to compliment my posture.

it was the atmosphere, and that the group was talking about art and atmosphere, and about art films and whether a film expressly about flamenco should be one or not, and about whether it needed any affected atmosphere in addition to what the art itself already had. and amid all of that i smiled to myself while musing on arte and ambiente and informal spanish lessons from get-togethers past, and thinking to myself what you’re probably thinking about all this description of it. that’s right. this is really gay. And nobody ever suspects la mariposa.