Private Dancer (Part 3)

The radio plays on. She could never live in silence. She loves listening to classical music, there was a time that she would, all day if she could. As always her favourite station, BBC radio 3 is on as she goes about her housework on this Sunday afternoon.

That is the station that introduced her to so much of what she adores and listens to other than the classics: Tango. It came to her life with its music first. It was the mesmerising beautiful works of Piazzolla that made her rush to her local library looking for her first Tango music CD. She found it delectable, delightful, and moving.

Piazzolla's music touched her soul. The love affair she always felt for the music of Bach, Schubert or Mozart were different. Their music played their magic with her mind and soul outwardly.

Piazzolla's played its games with her heart. She felt elated and in love with the earthy melodies of his compositions. His playing of his bandoneon, a sensation that moved her mind and soul inwardly, this was an experience seldom brought about by another.

She switched from the radio to her CD player. "The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night", one of her most favourites. It is a Piazzolla's own recording. She turns up the volume. Its first track "The Prologue" (http://www.piazzolla.org/music/rough01.ram) , a delicious lazy tango. A journey that is very strange; to begin travelling from the destination, evolving through to the point of arrival! Piazzolla's Prologue to "the cycle of 14 dances"; an incredibly touching tango, she knows it to be the destination that she will arrive at at the end of this suite.

She does not find this a sad tango in its nature but inviting to be, an opening as a window to a melancholy that is more akin to nostalgia. The feeling it brings is simple. It is of a love that is now missed. This a gift Piazzolla promises her, to bring her back the Prologue as his Finale on the 14th track, leaving her still wanting for more after all tracks have come and gone.This is a little cruel, but since it is tango – Piazzolla plays on.

She sits in her sofa, next to the bay window, stretching her legs across it, losing herself in the tracks that follow. Everyone is a journey. Piazzolla's music is like no other composer.

For her there is a mastery like that of Bach who she also loves, these are reflected in many of his works. He is a bit like a rainbow with his music. She finds so many different worlds in the same suite of his works.

He now takes her into his other world of colours, he carries her senses to tasting interesting scents and flavours of Jazz, an addition to his music's colourful make-up.

It is during the 10th track, Milonga for Three (Reprise) ( http://www.piazzolla.org/music/rough10.ram ), where she finds herself again smiling. Piazzolla's music is inviting her to dance to his dreamy tango jazz, closing her eyes and watching herself moving and stepping into this other world that she only has known by its pictures. They are painted in her mind.

To her, "This, here, is Buenos Aires" are words that do not refer to any specific city or place. They refer to a feeling of a place she has known to exist in her heart. It is somewhere she has known very well, it is a place where she dances. Piazzolla now mingles his music with the words of a poem that she knows for this very piece:

I do not know if we will recur in a second Cycle,
like numbers in a periodic fraction;
But I know that a vague Pythagorean rotation
Night after night sets me down in the world

On the outskirts of this city. A remote street
Which might be either north or west or south,
But always with a blue-washed wall,
the shade Of a fig tree, and a sidewalk of broken concrete.

This, here, is Buenos Aires. Time, which brings
Either love or money to men, hands on to me
Only this withered rose, this empty tracery
Of streets with names recurring from the past.

--Jorge Luis Borges.
From "The Cyclical Night."
Translated by Alastair Reid--

These words bring her new thoughts. Life plays itself in two paradigms, – as it must do for everyone else too, she supposes. One is an illusion and the other is real. They both exist in one plain.

Between these paradigms there is no paradox, inconsistency or absurdity. They are just different. They both exist; neither is right nor wrong. There is no better or worse. Everyone chooses one, the one that suits their soul and mind. She feels that she has chosen "the real" to live within.

She has longed for the amour of the other paradigm, an ill-affordable commodity in her reality - but to dream with, maybe - therefore she indulges.

She had managed to let go of her anger. This she did a long time ago. The unfairness she was forced to have seen, not as a witness but as a victim, its bitter taste, like no other. Now she feels fine. She had decided "she is fine!". She had done her very best to leave her baggage behind.

Her string of thoughts are broken. the phone keeps ringing. Her new friend, the younger looking girl whom she met at the milonga, it is her. It is a little strange to hear from her, today on the phone, she is sounding very upset, unlike the bubbly, lively character that she had known her to be.

She is now listening to her telling and talking of pain, anger, humiliation, of being rejected, but wanting the blame to be taken away. After a while she calms down with her words and tone. They arrange to meet later that day.

It is difficult for her to cope with what she had just heard "it is better to have loved and lost than not to have ever loved at all". These are the concessions of someone who has clearly lost. Perhaps the winners will be saying " IN LOVE AND WAR, ALL'S FAIR ". Does that mean that it is fair-play to fool another?

Falsification of feelings of love is not a crime, but if it were to be, then what would the punishment be, in terms of time? Isn't it funny how the cheat is not the one who is ever alone? So who is the one who is doing the solitary confinement and the time for a crime they haven't ever done? These are too dark, she does not want to think these. She wants them to stop playing on her mind.

She decides to allow herself to be transported somewhere else instead. She wants him there with her; he is never far away from her mind.

She can see him, he approaches her, again he is smiling at her as he always does. Just before he embraces her, he holds her hands reassuringly, bringing her near he puts his arm around her, she closes her eyes and they sway slightly till the embrace is in place and right.

She knows he belongs to her alone. He is hers, her only private dancer. She blushes, and her daydream continues to take over. She knows she must tell him these, but how and when?

(....Private Dancer continues!)

A Short Tango Story by MilongaCat.