All the things Ive not had time to write over the weeks are coming back.

Fernando a student at Zaizi asks how do you say ẗorero" in english. Bullfigher, I say. BullFIGHTER?! says Fernando and laughs close to uproariously.

Last night Marcelino cancelled his class and after wandering down town to the fnac - a large department store for electronics - Sachiko texted and told me Paco fernandez was at the teatro central. I went straight to her house and after a beer she lent me leggings to put under my skirt and an old helmet and we got on her scooter and went. We saw Curro and Pepa Fernandez going in and said hi. We ended up seated almost directly behind them. Pacoś style and show were defintely modern, fusion including a saxophone a magic artist and very pretty guitar playing. Not totally puro like his Dad or his aunt (Concha). Anyhow, the biggest OLEs and ANDAs and Alles and Tomas came from those two seats. At one point his mother even said, Sevilla is lucky to have such a son as you! or something to that effect, loudly as one does when one yells out encouragement in a Flamenco show. I didnt think anything of it as I am used to very bold statements in flamenco shows of anything between words to a whole sentence shouted out. Sachiko thought it would have been terribly embarassing.

Anyways, it was interesting.

Instead of blogging I should be putting out a new ad or otherwise figuring out more work, looking for a sewing machine, an apartment, or writing to friends at home who I havent communicated with for ages. Instead, since I have a spare moment in a not so hectic day, i am here again. Pardon the lack of proper punctuation ' I am borrowing a computer from the shop until i can manage to get there during his opening hours. It has a Spanish keyboard and several broken keys. So here goes...

Geoffrey came here instead of flying to Jerez so we took the bus to Jerez friday night. He had left essential items behind to fill his small knapsack with squares of reflective building material and a plastic plumbing pipe filled with a vacuum tube. Anyways, I dont think there was much interesting that happened on friday night but Saturday we went to Los Tres Reyes, after quickly stopping by the market. Ive heard about the place and passed by it many times. Geoffrey has however, managed to become buddies with the bartender/owner. We went there in search of caracoles. it is snail season and most bars that have any traditional bent and many others besides cook up huge pots of caracoles in special broth. They are served to you in a glass tumbler - a small one the same kind that they put coffee with milk in at breakfast. you lift them out with a spoon and then either suck out the snail or impale him on a toothpick and carefully pull him out. the good ones have head and antenae sticking out and the funny flat mushy part they slide along the ground with, also partly sticking out.

Anyways, much more important than that was that a guy and a kid started marking compas on the bar with their knuckles practically the moment we walked in, another guy was singing and yet another immediately did a little dancing. The man behind the bar was attempting to talk to Geoffrey who seems to have gotten by for a long time without a lot of Spanish and i tried to ask another guy about any shows at peñas. i mentioned I studied bulerias and wanted to talk about the subject and how I found it difficult to switch between jerez and bulerias from other places. he wasnt really listening to me. But then a few minutes later several guys formed a little bit of a circle and someone started to sing and they did palmas and the guy said, "she dances... dance!" So I did.

Then came Antonio. Thin as a rail, with skin that looks extra browned by a lot of time in the sun, aside from his likely natural darker colour, Antonio has sweet eyes, but clouded by a bit of mucus. He must be about 80. They introduced him as a member of the Agujetas family, and I forget how it got that way but he sang and i was to dance. so i did. He went outside and after a bit, invited me to come and sit with him. I dragged Geoffrey over and partly ignored him while Antonio sang to me.

they had said as he came in that ¨here is a good singer' . you had to stop and listen when he sang. There is something different about him from the others. It must be partly his age... that he is from a different age, a different era. Time perhaps slows down when he sings and everything becomes quiet, even if it is not physically so around you. I suppose it has the same quality as much of the good singing ive heard - you are not in your own head, you are focussed completely on something outside of yourself, riveted by it, by his singing.

They asked me what palo I dance, or have danced most, and where I study. I told them most recently I have studied solea with Concha Vargas (the other stuff Ive studied since then doesnt count as it was like dipping my finger into a cake and licking some icing rather than making a soup myself and labouring over a boiling pot for hours. Also, it is plainer than the day what these men would respect and what they wouldnt). Upon hearing the name Concha and solea, he broke into a solea. Later he sang a bit more por bulerias and I danced a third time and was happy with this time.

What was almost as interesting as the singing and the dancing were the other not so incidental things I picked up from them. I already know that one should not do palmas and especially not loudly if one does not know how and is not very sure they can stay on the beat. Despite this being Jerez and the Tres Reyes, and despite Antonio being polite, they said that some people dont know and they put their foot in anyways. Antonio looked over at the younger dancer/singer guy and another random whacky older gentleman who danced a physically clumsy but still in compas bulerias, and crossed himself, shaking his head, numerous times. The whacky guy had on a polkadot shirt and vest with black pants, and appeared either drunk or several bricks short. whatever the case he still danced bulerias better than most foreign dance students... despite all their pretty footwork, cause he had something none of us have - Jerez blood. They told me he will dance till he falls on the floor and will keep dancing there. they said this several times so the second time i realised they meant it. Besides, you could tell. Antonio gave me high five a bunch of times. The first one for living in Triana. When I said Seville, he asked, ẗriana?¨
Geoffrey ordered some food specifically so we could share it with him as he looked like he never ate and just drunk beer. He would only accept one tiny bit of huevas (salad of cooked sack of fish eggs), and even spat out what remained after chewing it for a while. In the end he asked me for some money for the bus. How could i refuse. A 5, if you have it. He saw a 10 that stuck up and said or a 10, so i gave it to him. in that kind of situation you cant really talk about affording it or any kind of stuff like this. who he is and what he does it outside the realm of normalcy. Next time that question might come up, but for now... he had completely opened my heart. Perhaps he meant to as my students said when i told him the story ... but the real flamencos supposedly werent like that. anyways, it doesnt matter.

There are stories about various flamenco singers who did not accept money for their singing or playing. Or about other ones who when they were paid, immediately spent it all on a huge party for all their friends and had to beg for a taxi ride home, and for help with their next meal too, probably.

You shake your head in a consternating way. 99% of the time Id do that too, but in this specific lifestyle of flamenco in times past, and the gypsy culture it came from is outside your understanding and if you knew more about it, you would admire this, rather than look down on it. Anyways, all that is changing or has already changed. It has to do with a completely different way of looking at human beings sharing life on this earth.

Well I didnt mean to get that far away from the original details of what happened in Jerez on a lazy saturday afternoon. I wish I could somehow relate the first few pages of a book by an american flamenco expert Don Pohren, on what they gitanos used to believe about how to live.

Back to an Irishmanś flat... I dont remember if we got anything done on the solar oven that day or on sunday. Anyhow, geoffrey had set up a frame made of salvaged palets, into which he placed the reflecting squares. We made more of them by sticking a special reflecting foil made for power stations onto the other squares hed gathered from some de-building site in london. When he had the frame full of squares he positioned them to reflect into his oven which hed made the previous time out of a kind of insulation. it has a glass top at an angle and the inside was lined with a poster saying semana santa jerez 2012 and had a balcony of people standing. There was a spare tambor (spanish word for the inner thing of a washing machine, for which I dont' know the english word) which he picked up also off the street. Later on this would be used when the real oven was built, and used to make the frame track the sun. I suggested a telescope motor. Possibly difficult to get ahold of cheaply like his usual deals. i forget what the vacuum tube was for. he has other ones in various parts of the house. The problem in the future will be the size of the oven as it requires a large baseline... word borrowed from other astronomical setups. It needs a space between the large frame full of mirrors and the oven. A question is whether to make it light so it will turn well or heavy so it can withstand fairly heavy winds in this area, and whether to take up a good section of the rooftop with it or somehow stick it off the edge or something. Anyways, there are other ideas about various ways of using low-tech to solve fairly pressing problems here and there.

Since Geoffrey had indicated some sort of envy of my ability to dance I got him to sit in on a whole bulerias class with Ana Maria monday morning. Paco had cancelled the class that morning. It was good there was one other man there, and an older one too: a German dude with a pony tail and a black heavy metal t-shirt who had made up his own flamenco starting-up-your-Harley-Davidson- footwork. It was quite impressive and realistic. It did not, however, impress Ani or Carmen, who were brought to near total frustration getting him to stay in compass and slow down his frantic footwork that was too complicated for his level. On the whole it was good. Then I returned here and thatś the end of my story.

Last week Marcelino told me something about Nokia-Siemens, whom he works for. While explaining the name, I could not suppress a giggle. It doesn´t matter that much because we are friends and joke around a lot anyways. If I had to be professional I would have. So I told him about Mr. Siemens and my grandmother´s church. I showed him how the church elders prayed and Mr. Siemens rocked back and forth saying ¨Hallelujah¨ and my sister and I thought he would fall over. Hallelujah needs no translation, of course, it being Latin or something - common to all Western Europe, I suppose.

He shook his head in wonder. I knew that North American Christianity was a little off, but that was more than I expected, he said. He prefers only to go to church for weddings, and once the bride has walked in, which is a nice moment, that´s enough.

Paco is going to Saudi Arabia. He is a little worried about it. Well, more than a little worried. He said if he wants to bring his wife (which will probably not happen), he has to declare her as his property, and request for her to be sent to him.
He told me about living in Lanzarote, a beautiful Island, part of the Canaries. He also told stories about Cuba, and how there are lineups of people along the highways, sometimes around 200 in one spot. There are police, and if you are not a tourist, the police stop your car, check how many are in it, and fill up the remaining spots with people from the lineup.
Yesterday was a cultural moment. I told him about Michael´s post in Facebook - an article about cupcake-wurst, that some loony chef had invented. He told me about jamon and the varying qualities and how they have lost some of the tradition of only eating the best quality, in the North. He said it must be cut by a knife and not by a machine. He said it tastes different. When they export the jamon, they have to take the bone out, and the hoof off. It is not the same - it loses something. He mentioned the knife cutting and then put his hand up to his shoulder and bowed with the other one - it is like a violin, he said. Ham cutting and violin playing. Comparable arts. Wow.

I must run to his class now.

This weekend Geoffrey made a solar oven and cooked potatoes in it.I don't understand why Andalucians say every year as if it's a big surprise, Que calor!" (What heat!) It is high 30s. Pepa is cooking tortilla at 10:30 am, because she says she has to get everything done early - the ironing, the cooking. Otherwise you die. The right hand side of my computer screen is invisibel, as I broke it last night running. Nobody runs if they are late in Andalucia. I should not have been either. Marcelino arrives late for his class most days, as he has more cell phone towers out of order due to heat. Except yesterday I had promised Sachiko to help take money at the door for her show. Her and Ayumi, also my friend, were dancing, along with a Japanese guitar player. I went out with them afterwards and was the only one at the table who only knew "konichiwa" and "toshokan ikemas". The guitarist (20 years old - incredibly talented) and his younger brother (18 - a palmero), share an apartment with a French-born Persian boy (also a pammero) and a German dancer who is girlfriend of the guitarist. She speaks a little Japanese and the Persian guy speaks a suprirsing amount. Besides Sachiko and Ayumi, there was Megumi, an Italian of evidently half JJapanese heritage. Also a dancer. Thank God I could impress them at least with toshokan ikemas. OR make them laugh, rather. Anyways, it is not just because they are my friends, but these two girls dance far better than most foreigners I've seen in Seville. That is because they are genuine and people of emotional depth, who are there for more than showing off. Of course that is also why I have ended up being friends with them.  Well, it is off to take my computer to PAco, and see what he can do for it. It will be more difficult than last time - taking mold out of the inside. I can only barely see the button to pres for posting this, and am typing without being able to see half the words.

Very, very, very happy.

A quiet kind of subtle happy that is much better than some kind of hyper happy. Like everything in the universe it going right.

I went with some fear to the clase de Luis. The rumours I'd heard were not very good to be truthful. I was the first person there. Then Sachiko showed up.

Anyways, whatever may or may not be true, he "falls well" with me. Actually a gentle, kind seeming person, who definitely is a genuinely caring and patient teacher. Also a person who has a great passion for this art.

I went to this class because I knew it would be the real flamenco. The flamenco that foreign professional dancers who've learned a ton of choreographies and fast footwork in schools don't know and won't learn unless they slow down and step out of the flamenco rat race. That term should be an oxymoron...

First off, which made me unable to stop smiling stupidly for the whole time, we clapped and stamped. I already know how to do this. I have been dancing for 10 years. So has my friend in the class (who is a professional, and far beyond me in technique). But this isn't about technique and that's why I came. That's why I left classical piano. In art, there is more than technique. There are things that are subtle, and cannot be rammed down your throat. That is why I am here. To have someone slow me down and be patient and tell me to listen carefully to the tone of my foot stamping. To enjoy myself, to try to just feel, and clap accents when the singing moves me to do so. To have a spontaneous "Aahhh!" come out, when it all fits together right.

Equally fantastic is that pretty much the whole time, he sings. You feel something when he sings.

All I can say is that to do certain art, it needs to come/flow out of a certain lifestyle, a certain way of being actually - more fundamental than lifestyle. You cannot fake it, though many try. It takes a while to tell the difference. One of those requirements is not to always be rushed and stressed. "Poco a poco," he says.

Most classes assume you already know compass and ignore soniquete completely. Compass is rhythm but more than mere rhythm. I have excellent rhythm. My piano teacher told me so. I am like a metronome with my feet, compared to the other students in my intermediate classes. But I do not have good compass, although I have a necessary aspect of it. Soniquete is probably best described as groove. I know I could have this. Neither of these is beyond my reach. I don't have them because I don't spend time working on the simple, fundamentals like this, because of getting lots of steps thrown at me, and trying to "perform" them. To have good soniquete you need to relax. You have to enjoy it. Groove is not something you can put on - not when you are really doing an art that takes being in tune with everything going on.

We are in the class and I know I am tense. My life is a bit hectic. I have a lot to learn, to slow it down and take things as they come. But this is like a breath of fresh air.

A good quote: "Compas is like a child, you have to take care of it. Like a baby, you can't drop it."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgdul5cb_pA&feature=related