I left immediately for the train station after playing with Ernesto. Apparently Jill and Geoffrey were going to be making me dinner, to be eaten the moment I arrived. I managed to drop off my suitcase at the hotel before arriving at Geoffrey's place. We eventually got a tiny barbeque going out on the rooftop and Geoffrey opened up a bottle of mosto - some stage of the winemaking before it gets very far, so it is still alive, and yeasty or something. It is also way cheaper than normal wine, if that is even possible here. Jill had bought some swordfish and though the rooftop was gorgeous under the stars with Geoffrey's recently potted broom or gorse that he brought down from Extremadura, we brought the barbeque indoors on to the kitchen table, under a window. Geoffrey did the fish rare, and I don't remember the last time I had fish that incredible. We had rice and grated carrots with oil thrown over them, and then opened another bottle of wine I'd picked up at "Flores" the high end ham and wine store on the main drag in Sevilla. I got something close to their lowest end, the same price as I might pay in a grocery store but unbelievably good for that price.

Well, forget about food and all that kind of useless junk. What I went there for was what we did next. I can't believe my good luck to have seen Dolores Agujetas Friday night and then El Torta the next. As far as Dolores, the Agujetas family is in a class all their own, and El Torta, well, he is a big idol of mine. I've been wanting to see him for more than a year and have kept missing all opportunities.

We were late for Dolores concert. It was standing room only, around the side of the room outside the chairs. Most of the dance students, guitarists I know in Jerez were there. She was awesome, of course. The rawest singing possible. Like chanelling something, like a demoness. Which is what happens because you access the most hidden recesses of yourself, which I suppose are not so hidden for people in Jerez, like they are for most of the rest of the world.

Saturday we helped Geoffrey clean up his house and saw him off, back to London. I ate at least one mollete con tomate y aceite and had two coffees after that. Oh, right, we saw Juana la del Pipa sitting outside on the patio of her bar, with her waiter beside her playing the guitar. She was about to sing, when she saw us. She greeted us with a huge smile and like we were old friends, just because Jill asked directions at her bar the day before. Unfortunately, which makes one feel kind of bad, we changed the atmosphere by telling her how much we admired her singing, and she went inside. Even though these people do huge concerts, when they are relaxed and among those they are close to, their art is different for them, and outsiders change that.

Oops, had to come back and add this later: at 5:30 we saw a packed show in Damajuana, a beautiful bar in a courtyard house with plants hanging down the walls and natural light coming straight in the roof. It was a bunch of young Jerezanos, but traditional style. About 10 singers all sharing the stage, trading off doing mostly bulerias, each one doing a little bit of dancing, like solo bulerias singers usually do. I met the guys I'd seen the world cup with a few years ago, and the odd other dancer.

After having a late siesta, Jill and I went for a second dinner at 10:00 at the mesa del asador, one of the best restaurants in Jerez. The menu includes meat. Lamb stew, various kinds of steaks (the Spanish do not do steak like North Americans), beef stew. Jill got the one thing on the entire menu that was vegetables - lettuce hearts covered in a mayonaissey roquefort sauce with anchovies. I had to order a second lamb stew and a second glass of excellent red wine.
Thus fortified, we arrived at Tio Zappa early (a club in the middle of nowhere down some narrow streets, with black walls full of cut out polkadots, through which clubbing type coloured light shine). We staked out a place to stand, right near the front and some Jerezanos made friends with us. Salome came at 11:30. The whole place was full and waiting more than 3/4 of an hour after that, when they finally found El Torta wherever he was, and he came beating a path through the audience and brushed right past us with his entourage onto the stage and through the door backstage.
They've told me recently that he was walking with a cane (though he didn't have it Saturday), and that he hasn't been well. Someone commented that his face was bad - drugs. Finally he came on stage in a black suit with a hot peach coloured shirt and a bright green polkadot tie, with his two palmeros and guitarist.

None of you who haven't already seen what flamenco is like over here could understand this. There is nothing like this across the ocean. The crowd was mixed but a lot of young "cool" people. There is nothing modern about his music. It is pure classic. The audience doesn't dress up. Neither do the palmeros, nor the guitarist. Torta is probably in his mid 50s.

I am extremely lucky to have seen him sing well. He was fantastic. Definitely under the influence of something, as well as the beer he kept drinking. But he wasn't drunk, and didn't have problems slurring his words nor with staying on the chair. Unfortunately he breathed heavily after each number, as if it had cost him dearly. Not at all suprising if you'd seen or heard him. If healthy people put half the amount of energy he does into singing a song they would be wasted after it. It was a little bit hard to see him in the state he was in. He is like a rock star, but not. Someone with true integrity and an obviously sensitive soul. No dork that wants to throw anger at the world or show off. He is in a very small category of flamenco singers that seem to have no self-consciousness whatsoever, while he is singing. It seems like there is nothing else that matters to someone like this. The other one who he can be compared to is Camaron; who died at about my age. Geniuses.

Better than seeing him in a large concert, I was really close to the stage, and he sang two sets of a reasonable length. During the second set he sang letras that I've watched many times on youtube. So had everyone else, apparently. I have never heard the audience sing along at any other flamenco concert - especially not a traditional, serious one. It was unclear after the second set whether there would be another. Nobody seemed to be going anywhere. There were a few chants of "Torta, Torta". I assume people would have felt the same way I did: I didn't want him to sing any more because I value him and don't want to see him damage himself for my sake.

I really have no idea how he does it. It is not the physical effort I am thinking of this time, but the fact that everyone in Jerez and all the foreigners too, know about his struggle with drugs and alcohol in the past. And things travel like wildfire - everyone is pretty much aware of the state he is in currently. He is up there on stage looking colocated (high). I do not know how a person can bare their soul the way he does at the same time as everyone being witness to his personal problems. For all that especially, I kept trying to send him love and good vibes.

Jill left the next morning. It was Sunday and I finally got my chance to relax. I had molletes again, in two different places, and then sat on a bench under some olive trees by the Lola Flores statue, surrounded by splattered and crushed olives. Eventually men in suits the same colour as the olives were spilling in and out of a bar a few feet away, with an unmarked door. It was the same one attached to the zambomba I saw at Christmas.
Eventually Salome met me and I went to stay at her place for one more night. Yesterday evening we went to meet a Jerezano friend of hers, who gave us a tour of Barrio Santiago. Barrio San Miguel is the more accessible of the two flamenco neighborhoods and as we found out, the better preserved. Rafa pulled us in to the courtyards of numerous traditional houses, and emphasised again and again how "authentic" this lifestyle would be. The Santiago houses are different from others I'm used to, for example in Sevilla. They are often one story and simpler. They would be home to numerous families that shared a toilet and a kitchen and a common living space outdoors (surrounded by the four walls which were the indoor rooms. The only other thing I've seen like this was in China. Rafa had grown up in this kind of house, and indeed we saw his. He said how much he loved it and what an excellent life it was, but that most people were abandoning it now, and the old houses were all being torn down to make apartment blocks. He insisted that even as extranjeras, it was perfectly fine to walk right into these people's courtyards. We did so, following him, and the people that were inside their rooms generally just looked out and said hello and didn't mind us being in their courtyard.
Rafa took us out for fried fish and then to a teteria (teahouse) run by a friend. Rafa is classic Jerez - full of beans. A 50 year old partly bald guy with the most mischevious possible look in his eyes. Continually joking, flirting and generally doing anything he can to keep from being serious.

This morning I went to dance class before coming home. There is nothing better than studying with Ana Maria. It is the only time I feel like I am actually doing flamenco, because there is a guitarist and singer who are the genuine articles and the whole atmosphere is as if you are just hanging out partying with them (between being taught stuff). I learned a good pataita today and she told me I dance well. Salome made me yet another meal and then I got on the train.