True Nature
One morning last week, I was walking in Plaza de Mina, near the Anthropology museum. I heard a hubub and looked for the source of the sounds. A group of school children were yelling at a seagull who was making off with a pigeon. It had the wing of a pigeon in its beak. The pigeon was flapping madly. The kids made a lot of noise, gesticulating to the gull. But the seagull was undeterred. It flew a little ways to the other side of the plaza and then in a flurry of feathers, proceeded to finish off the pigeon. I was shocked. I stood there and said to no one in particular, las gaviotas hacen esto? seagulls do this? A man who was walking by, heard me. He stopped and said, yes, ellos si. son carnívoros. They are carnivores. And he walked one way, and I another. The schoolkids stopped yelling and there was silence.
I had heard stories of seagulls being aggressive and eating food off your table. But this was something else. To see a seagull kill someone from its own family of birds. To hear it. In a flash, I also thought of all the songs I’ve known about seagulls and love. Especially a fado song I really love by Cristina Branco. All the romance of seagulls. The melancholy of them. The metaphors we make from them, of them. And they are that. And they are also this. Which is all to say, here in Cádiz, I am learning about the true nature of seagulls. I am learning that they could suddenly do away with a pigeon. And also soar above the sea and inspire song. True nature is complicated.
Meanwhile, I am being greeted with all kinds of endearments by waitresses I don’t know. I understand they mean it generally when they say it but I take it personally when I hear it. It’s lovely. For example, “hola cariño, que te pongo. Hello darling, what can I get you? Or “claro, cielo, of course, heaven.” or “aquí la cuenta, hija, here is the bill, my daughter.”
And the wars go on.
It has been raining off and on for days. “We are having unusual weather for spring.” someone said to me. Someone else said, “all this rain makes me sad. I’m not used to seeing the sun peek out only for a few minutes a day in Cádiz.” But today, the sun came out. And there is wind from the west across the inlet of Caleta, you can see the ripples across the sea. I was reading the news and I saw that the Grammys had been on last night which I don’t really follow. But I was reading about it in passing and read that Jon Batiste, who I had only known as the bandleader of the Late Night/Stephen Colbert show, won album of the year for “We Are.” I saw that one of the songs on the album is called Freedom. And then I saw the video. And that was that. I can’t stop watching it.
Freedom
〰️
Freedom 〰️
The first line goes:
When I move my body just like this, I don’t know why, but I feel like freedom.
The way he sings, he elongates the word freedom so it takes up S P A C E
The way he sings it, he brings the whole world into its natural heritage, dance, song, music, root, community. He brings out the human of humanity. We are.
At lunch, a butterfly came and perched for a good ten minutes on the painted yellow nail of a friend. We had a table in the sun. It just sat there with us. It lingered. We marveled that it was staying. We wondered why. We marveled some more. Then it flew away.
Later, I saw Jon Batiste talk about what it was like to win a Grammy for this album. He was born and raised in New Orleans. His whole family including his parents and grandfather were at the event. Winning was surreal, he said. He looked at his family and saw all that had made music possible in his life. All those music classes, he said, all those civil rights marches. He stopped. His voice trailed away. His whole story was in that trailing away, in that silence.
I am in Spain deepening this encounter with song and dance and voice and movement. In one class, we are dancing a flamenco style called guajira. A style connected to Cuba and the Indias as people here say, the Indias meaning all those places colonized by folks who were searching for India.
We dance with abanicos, fans. Our fans open, close, soft, sharp, our hips sway and swish, the music is dulce, the cante caresses.
Contigo me caso indiana
si se entera tu papa
y se lo dice a tu mama
hermosísima cubana
In another cante class, I am learning to sing,
Si tu vas de Jerez pa Utrera, que te canté la Fernanda, la Bernanda y Juan Tallega. If you go from Jerez to Utrera, may these wonderful singers sing for you.
Last week, I performed an excerpt of my Good Manners play in an English speaking class at the Unversity of Cádiz. Mera Nam Kya Hai. Mei Kahan se ayee hoon. Such a story in a name. How it felt to dance my complicated story song, how it was received, the conversations that followed about colonization, oppression liberation with students from Europe and Africa who wanted to talk about it all, who were living their own story of it all. The sharing was just beautiful - it brought me into harmony with my purpose.
All this keeps me going. It is what feeds the dance, the song, the body living its mysterious search for melody and movement. This much I know - without knowing the whole story.
And I think of Jon Batiste dancing his freedom in the streets of New Orleans and all that it took to make his song possible and the catch in his voice when he thinks of his whole story of song, how he has lived it all his life since he was a kid, how he was born into a family of musicians. There are years and years of music in his feet, in his voice. Part of me envies that long history. Perhaps that is what I am living now. A long un-lived and overdue history of song and dance and expression. expresión corporal. embodying the story. Really, I feel so young in this journey. Everyday, I feel younger. vulnerable. joyful. lost. found. again and again, found.
from The Good Manners of Colonized Subjects
This way I am going, however mysterious, is necessary. Learn a movement so it flowers. Learn a paso so it resonates. Learn how to enter the cante in contra. How to bring intention to the arms. How to bring everything into the body spirit so it can make its story felt, shared. To connect in metaphor and movement. This is what matters.
Why, someone may ask.
Because, I reply.
Because.
In the deepening of the dance song story is the full expression of arte, what is necessary, what must be shared. This much I know. What I don’t know is how to fully afford it, how to keep at it for a year, how to make it possible, how it will all turn out. And also, I surrender, I surrender because my dear love, cariño, cielo, hija, this is what it means to embrace your true nature and share it, to connect with human animals, to embrace the whole complicated story - music, dance, war, uncertainty, the butterfly in the sun, the body living its song.
When I move my body just like this, I don’t know why, but I feel like freedom.
