On Returning from Spain, Part 2 – Soul Busting
Lola Flores – Jerez’s “patron saint” of Flamenco I think it’s safe to say that the return to our every day normal lives was a bit of a task for most of us. Quite a few of us texted back and forth in our What’s App group in those first few days back home, comparing notes on our experience of the trip and the “re-entry”. I said that I felt like my soul just busted open, in ways, as a result of this trip. And that there were life lessons in it in going forward. We saw a large spectrum of flamenco music and dance – from very traditional to true boundary and genre expanding flamenco. What stood out to me most, was the level of passion I witnessed in the performances we saw. I turned to one of my fellow travelers, who was sitting beside me after one of them – of one of Spain’s most acclaimed flamenco troupes – at the Jerez Flamenco Festival – and asked “Where does all this passion come from?” It was an unabashed, deep passion – sung out, stomped out so loudly (in a good way) into the world – through voices, through bodies, feet and hands. After I asked that question, I said to him, “I know that it resides in me, too. It’s in my blood, in my DNA (read more about that in a later post). And it wasn’t just in large theaters. We stopped into a little cafe in Jerez for lunch, where there was a small stage flamenco performance. The pictures in this post are from that cafe. We all loved it, but I don’t think anyone enjoyed it more than the waiter who just couldn’t contain himself from the sidelines and jumped on the little stage, too. (See the video below) This is what it’s like to be truly immersed in a culture, I thought. And I saw the passion in Pepa, our translator – Barcelona born, and now a New Orleanian preaching the gospel of flamenco in that city. I said to Ned, our fearless leader and curator of this tour, in our post-trip chat, that a lesson for me to ponder was how to bring more of that passion into my life. The Flamenco Festival performance the night before the first above mentioned performance, was also one of those true boundary pushing – perhaps the most -performances. I felt the same thrill and awe that I did as a very young woman – and very young dancer – of seeing the Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey companies perform for the first time – full Broadway production values and all. It’s a gift to still be able to be thrilled in that way in what I’ve come to refer to as the “fourth quarter”. There was the classical guitar performance at the Romate winery in Jerez – home of sherry, as well as flamenco – on a Sunday morning ending our private tour and tasting, the night after those flamenco concerts, that felt like a Sunday going to church meeting. (Again – more about that in a later post.) So – the gift and lesson – more passion for life, and brought to our life, in this “fourth quarter”. All of the wonderful flamenco photos...
read moreOn Returning from Spain
I’ve just returned from a bit over 3 weeks in southern Spain. The second two weeks was spent with a group, on a tour curated by Ned Sublette, a favorite writer of mine, who became a personal acquaintance during the COVID shutdown, when he began a Zoom group showing wonderful documentaries, showcasing what he calls the Afro-Atlantic, and who’s now a friend. Our fearless leader, Ned. Ned said to us at the beginning of the trip that he hoped it would be transformative – a pretty big aspiration. But it was, for me, in several ways. BTW, the last time I took a transformative trip – a trip that’s stayed with me throughout my life – and the last time I crossed an ocean – was almost exactly 40 years ago. That trip was more overtly “spiritual” as it was an ecumenical religious tour to India. But during the course of a lifetime, what’s spiritual in ones life evolves, so this trip certainly fell into the realm of the “spiritual”, too. For several years, Ned has led tours to New Orleans (I didn’t really feel the need for that) and to Cuba. Although I didn’t join one of his tours there, it was something he wrote in his book, The World That Made New Orleans, that finally got me there. But when he sent out a feeler last year, saying he was considering an Andalućia tour, and wondering how much interest there was, I thought – now here’s a tour that piques my attention. You know how things go – at least they often do for me. I thought I really can’t afford it. Maybe next year I’ll be better able to afford it. Some other year will be better, perhaps … until Al, my younger brother left us; until he just didn’t wake up one morning, and I got a serious “wake-up” call from the “universe”, if you will. There is no other time. We are not promised some other year. So, shortly after Al’s funeral, I contacted Ned and committed to the trip. I felt Al with me on this trip – like he had given me a gift, even in his death – the wake up call to go out and live my life. One of my fellow travelers, at one of our last lunches together said something similar. She had spent time in Rwanda after the war and the rebuilding of that country. The image of a little boy’s eyes she had seen in a photo in a museum there haunted her. She asked the image what message it had for her amidst all this suffering. Go out and live. Live for me. Live your life, it said to her. I told her about Al, and we understood and shared the solemn charge. She was traveling with her husband who had admitted to me earlier that he was traveling with early stage Parkinson’s disease and a recent cancer diagnosis. It was a gift to me to see so many living their lives – in spite of the illnesses, the age, the uneven gait – a sign of degenerated knees – that I recognized and shared with them. Just go out and live. Live your life. Frankly, I’m still processing it all – and may be...
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