Tango, the South American Martial Art of Love Takes Us to the Godplane

 In my tango travels I met a woman who was an ardent believer in the Law of Attraction. Consequently, I spent a considerable amount of time reading about this theory of the universe and its origins. I came to the conclusion that proponents of this belief were underestimating the amount of participation necessary to yield measurable results. It could all be bullshit but I try to be open-minded. The examples I read about involved hundreds of people but I’m guessing, and it is just a frivolous shot in the dark, billions of participants are needed. Religions claim to be able to affect results but there is no proof of causality. 

Here is what the Internet says about this philosophy:

“The law of attraction is the belief that positive or negative thoughts can bring positive or negative experiences into a person's life. The core principle is "like attracts like," meaning your dominant thoughts and beliefs, whether conscious or subconscious, attract corresponding circumstances to you.”

It is basically the irresistible allure of every religion that requires adherents to pray for what they want and how they want this world to be. I believe there is some truth to this but it is not a force in the universe that you could hitch your wagon to. I think people who are drawn to the Law of Attraction are too hopeful or naive about their ability to harness its power. 

The secrets of the universe are usually profound but seemingly subtle until we discover their true nature. Each civilization reaches a level of understanding of these mysteries and then they are discarded as the wheel of time rolls forward. I believe our current civilization is at the point now of unlocking the key to many of those mysteries with leaps in computing power and our ability to gather information from beyond the confines of our own planet.

When we do things with other people in unison, e.g. clapping, singing, etc., we feel a certain amount of exhilaration equal in proportion to its complexity and the number of creatures participating. The fundamental building blocks of the universe are frequency and vibration. Both definitions of frequency apply here: repetition and radiation. I guess vibration and radiation are kinda the same thing but it is better to say too much than too little. Two people clapping sounds nice but two dancers connecting physically, mentally, spiritually to each other, to the music, to the crowd and even the very fabric of space, is cosmic.

A yogi may attain enlightenment after years of meditation but a couple dancing tango may do it in one night. That is why I say Tango is the South American Martial Art of Love. It is akin to tai chi in that each person must move with utmost intention but that is where the similarity ends. Learning how to move is only the precursor to getting two humans to connect to the Godplane, or whatever we are going to call that place touched by our souls that keeps us coming back for more.

The very fabric of space exists but it is unmeasurable, maybe that is a good example of another dimension. I find it impossible to imagine what another dimension beyond the space/time dimensions might be like. I kind of feel like this tango connection to the partner/crowd/universe might give us a clue as to what one is. I propose that it is possible for a group of people to experience another dimension by joining together in body, thought and motion to music. I’m going to call this perripoling.

Perripoling is what happens when the crowd of dancers at a milonga, the place where tango is danced, achieve synchronicity with the Universe. It doesn’t happen all the time and not all dancers experience it, but those that do are affected. I know, I have been affected. It is a feeling that doesn’t happen all at once, it unfolds in my memory of the event as I continue my life after the dance is over. A week later and I am still processing just what it is that I experienced. It is a feeling that I will never be able to describe other than one of satisfaction.

Quantum Theory’s bastard child, String Theory, postulates the existence of more than four dimensions. Just what they may be we do not know but I do not believe they are beyond our abilities to perceive, it is just very difficult. Just like the Law of Attraction, I think we underestimate how much effort is needed to achieve awareness. It is possible we experience other dimensions all the time but we just don’t realize it when it happens. When we dance tango, we sometimes achieve awareness of another dimension, having done that we should probably take some measurements or make others aware of what we have found.

In my latest book, Kokapelli in the Wiccans’ Kitchen, I endow my characters with awareness of other dimensions and have them interact with these dimensions in an entertaining manner. I guess I do this for my own personal enjoyment but I also aspire to higher ideals. I think people should be open to the possibilities that they can experience the universe in a myriad of ways and that this is not the sole property of the scientists and the intellectuals.

Thank you for indulging me in my efforts,

Peace, Love, Tango

The Kayak Hombre

Kokapelli in the Wiccans' Kitchen, My Latest Tango-Witch-Magic Fantasy Novel

Kokapelli in the Wiccans' Kitchen, My Latest Tango-Witch-Magic Fantasy is written under my pen name: Carmen Cray. Not so much tango but a lot more wiccan fun as well as an in-depth performance by my favorite Ancient Pueblan Demi-god: Kokapelli.

I am learning that tango allows us to connect to much more than just the human in our embrace; it allows us to establish a connection to the other couples and even to the very fabric of the universe. This momentary bonding is an awesome feeling that most milongueros find addicting. 

That is why I chose connection as the one aspect of tango I hoped most readers of my new book could identify with.  It is always important to me to convey to the reader how special tango is in the grand scheme of things, that it is not just another dance. I don’t believe readers want a tango lesson, they want a good story and it has been my goal to offer a tall tale whilst illuminating what makes tango such a phenomenon. In my book I believe I have taken the most fundamental aspect of tango, the connection, and focused solely on that as a reader’s introduction to the dance. To do any more than that and I would lose my audience and probably not get any recommendations to other readers.

One thing I’ve learned recently is that I have to be careful when I’m talking after having danced tango. I am currently taking care of my parents and have had the good fortune to listen to my dad talk nonsense. He doesn’t mean to talk nonsense but his filter is broken due to old age and sometimes he can’t help himself. In order to make a good tango connection, I find that I need to drop all my walls in order for the simultaneous choreography to happen. Just this past weekend I realized I was talking nonsense just like my dad and had to think about why that was. I think it is because, when I drop my walls to let my partner in, I also turn off the filters between my brain and my tongue.

My new book is a repackaged version of my last two books, Wiccans, Zombies and the Mayan Blood God and The Tango Doctor. I thought, naively, that I could get artificial intelligence, AI, to help  and it did but only in the cover creation, the entire text is totally my creation. In my efforts to harness some value from AI, I found that I really liked what I had written about the witches and their battle with the zombie horde. At first, I mistakenly thought that AI had rewritten some of my scenes but it doesn’t do that; it’ll create new text but it won’t rework old text, which is great because I really liked the old text.

In combining the Wiccans’ tale with the Tango Doctor I got lucky. As I was rolling the character into the Wiccan story, I realized that he was a tool for these ladies as well as something else. That something else is that he has much too much insight into why people do things. In coming up with why that is I accidentally stumbled upon who he might really be. This is one of the wonderful phenomena of being a writer: becoming a creator. I thought I was writing about someone and what I wrote ended up being about someone else whom I hadn’t planned on creating. It's kind of like a tango encounter that goes so incredibly well even though you only meant to kill time until Lady X was available and now you have a new favorite dance partner.

Here is a link to my book, I hope you'll read it and I'm sure you will enjoy it, whoever you may be: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G1GZSHJQ?ref_=pe_93986420_774957520

That's all for now. 

Peace, Love, Tango

the Kayak Hombre

The Tango Connection at the Quantum Level: It's All You, Baby!

    4 years ago, I got a new car and a car loan. Unlike my other cars, it is a gas guzzler, and it is really cramping my style. Driving two hours to Tango, four hours roundtrip,  became unsustainable as I became more unemployable probably due to my age: 64. Consequently, I have not danced much tango in the last year and a half. I think I may be at the end of my tango journey. 

  Well, not quite at the end, there's still a lot to process about what I have experienced and that gives me great satisfaction. I know that may sound odd to those of you who are still on the road to Tango Nirvana, maybe one day you will come to understand. 

I guess I am not at the end, I am merely transitioning, exploring in-depth the finer aspects of tango, such as connection. Connection in the tango embrace is such a subtle skill but absolutely necessary to the dance.

In my research on physics and the structure of the universe at the quantum level, I have come to believe that the basis of all matter is energy and frequency: an atom is made up of protons, neutrons and electrons composed of things called quantum particles. Quantum particles are very strange and what exactly they are depends on something called the Observer Effect which takes us out of the realm of science and into another field of study as yet unnamed. This mystery field is a cross between science and religion. What we see at the quantum level changes with each observation and I suspect there is nothing there other than pure energy or maybe just vibrations or a frequency waiting for someone to experience it.

Some ancient religious beliefs propose that all reality is just an illusion and it is possible that each of us is the central character in our own illusion. Our illusion is like a video game and we are players in our own game. To play the game you must be conscious and consciousness is the true fundamental building block of the universe. 

All that we experience, all that everything is is consciousness and frequency. 

Tango has helped me see the truth of that statement. Social tango is an attempt by two people to choreograph movement to a melody spontaneously. To do this a person must learn how to connect to his/her partner on a level that is simultaneously physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Tango is kind of like tai chi for couples, to do this we must learn how to move but first, even though we are unaware of its need, we must learn how to connect, how to drop our walls and let others into our space and to enter the space of others. 

When I began my tango education, I thought I was learning how to move but I was really learning that I did not know how to connect. It was somewhat humiliating but humility is the beginning of all understanding. 

To acquire knowledge we must first become humble.

Somehow, in my endeavor to lead a partner in this dance, I became aware of the supreme importance of connection in achieving proficiency and I did that through careful examination of past tango encounters and many, many workshops attended all around the USA. 

While we may dance tango with no one other than a partner, the full tango experience is at the milonga, the place where tango music is played and many other couples are present. When we dance tango at the milonga, we make a connection not just with our partner but to the entire crowd as well. At the milonga, I am one person, one half of a couple connected to all the other couples present as we move around the room counter-clockwise, hopefully, in harmony.

Music is the key ingredient to a successful connection to the other couples in attendance. To move to the rhythm and melody of a song in syncopation with a myriad of other pairs of dancers takes a lot of thought, education and practice. This is what makes Tango one of the most difficult art forms to master. A proper Tango education requires constant inquiry into what is going on inside you as well as a rigid respect for the concept of balance in all its forms. It takes years to achieve competence and a willingness to start over from scratch in order to establish a proper foundation upon which to build a fruitful relationship with your partner as well as the crowd, and, though you might not realize it at first, to the universe.

I believe this connection to the partner/crowd/universe is only possible through the music. It is the music which helps us vibrate to the proper frequency that allows us all to join together as one. It is that feeling of oneness that is like tasting the fruit of the Garden of Eden that we find so addicting. It is that feeling of oneness that is the answer to all the questions we have but do not know how to ask. To be aware of the cosmic consciousness and to join it, if only for a few hours, is what keeps us coming back for more.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1976586577/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1506046303&sr=1-1&keywords=the+tango+doctor

The Dangers of Dancing with Jolene

  

Tango is an Argentine import, not native to my country, America. It is sometimes known as the dance where the man is the man and the woman is the woman, a saying so seemingly senseless and simple that we fail to realize its awesome connotations. American culture has become so dumbed-down that we can’t even define what it means to be a man or a woman.

Tango knows, and to all men I say, “You had better watch out!” 

Let me tell you why but first let me tell you about Jolene. She is a woman who tried to steal the husband of the singer Dolly Parton when she was just beginning her music career. Jolene is a hottie with long, curly, red hair and beauty beyond compare. She’s a man-eater, a home wrecker and a relationship atomic bomb all rolled into one gorgeous package of feminine flesh, with more bumps and curves than an Appalachian Mountain back road. Jolene worked at a bank in a small Tennessee town where Dolly’s husband cashed her checks while she was on tour making the bacon. 

The USA is a mostly uptight, Puritanical nation but there is one state where promiscuity abounds and that is Tennessee. You will not find a better smooth-talker trying to work his/her way into your pants or between your legs than a ‘player’ from the Volunteer State.

Once, while driving through the state on my way to New Mexico, I stopped at a minimart for coffee and gas. At the cashier station there was a young boy ahead of me, maybe 10 or 11 years old at most, leaning sideways against the counter, propped up on his elbow, his one leg hooked on the other like Tom Sawyer waiting for a riverboat, his free hand casually picking his teeth with a toothpick as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Oblivious to me, he chatted up the woman behind the counter, a grey-haired lady in her fifties or sixties, telling her how fine she was and maybe he’d come back to see her later. I started to laugh until I noticed that she was eating it up. He went on for a few moments before he recognized me and gave me permission to go ahead and pay for my coffee. I was definitely interrupting a pro at work and wondered what kind of life lay ahead of this young Casanova.

The scene didn’t surprise me much as I have known many people from Tennessee and was well aware of their propensity towards flirtatious conversation jam-packed with pickup lines.

What I’m trying to say is that Jolene was no rank amateur; she lived in a state full of expert adulterers so you can bet that Dolly was up against some stiff competition from the ginger seductress. The song, if you have not heard it, is a plea from Miss Parton to the bank teller beauty not to steal her man. Jolene is no lightweight so you better watch out when she is in the neighborhood.

For those who are not familiar with the tune, I include a link here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixrje2rXLMA

I have witnessed similar scenes play out in tango communities I have been a part of and most don’t have a happy ending, although there are stretches of incredible delight that will be paid for later. 

Argentines are well aware of what it is to be a man and that means he is susceptible to temptation by the opposite sex. Argentine women know that they are the temptation; they may assume the role with relish and a style unique to each individual female. When Americans, or anyone else for that matter, dances tango, they all become Argentines, and Argentines have a penchant for l’amore like no other culture. 

I’ve met ‘Jolene’ many times on dance floors all across this country and she is a potent cocktail that only makes you thirst for more. In tango, each tanguera’s embellishments are distinctly her own and may take years to perfect so don’t be disappointed when you find yourself falling head over heels in lust. For men, it takes three years just to learn how to hold a woman and many more years to learn how to do it well. It seems like such a simple thing and yet it is not. In comparison, mastering embellishments that can grab the wheel of a man's sex drive is ten times harder.

I think, but do not know, since I am a man, that a woman can find sex whenever she wants but not always with whom she wants. As she becomes older and wiser, I think she realizes that she has special qualities, vague and difficult to discern at first, that she can harness and, in time, refine to a great skill that she can use to gain influence over a man. To do this requires the dedication of student working on a PhD in the science of seduction in tango. The dance floor becomes her laboratory and her partners are merely lab rats who can’t help but think that the bed will be coming later while it is the furthest thing from her mind. All she is interested in is results and they have nothing to do with orgasms. If you find yourself saying stupid things, begging for relief or maybe even writing bad checks, then you can be sure that she has succeeded. Your anxiety/confusion/desperation is merely good data to be recorded and used later for the ‘product launch’.

‘Product launch’ is the beginning of the end for you, so consider yourself lucky if you get out of this with only blue balls and a boner that won’t go away. Sooner or later, Jolene comes upon a man she desires and ripe for the picking, preferably a man with a girlfriend, spouse or some other part of his life worth destroying. She’s spent so much time refining her skill in the form of embellishments that he will do all the work for her. He doesn’t even know what is happening until it is too late. I know this because it happened to me.

Somewhere in America’s heartland I met a woman, a scientist conducting actual experiments on humans to measure satiation. I met her at the Friday night milonga about eight years into my tango education. She was new to the dance and was impressed with my leading abilities, or so she said. I had about eight years of tango experience behind me at that point and was flattered when she invited me to give her a private lesson at her place. She was so beautiful it was impossible for me to say no, even though I was in a long distance relationship at the time.

Nothing happened the first two lessons but the third time she invited me to spend the weekend. I won’t go into details but we danced until she could see I had reached my satiation point then led me to the bedroom; we repeated that sequence for the next thirty-six hours until I had to return to work. In hindsight, I guess I should be grateful that she allowed me to keep my job, such was the strength of the spell she had cast upon me. I felt so guilty that I told my girlfriend right away the next time I saw her. That was a big mistake. We didn’t break up right away but it eventually became a relationship killer.

In the battle of the sexes, victory is defined differently by each side. Unbeknownst to me, I wasn’t finished paying for my tryst with Jolene. She happened to be attending the same tango festival as my belle and I. Somehow, she managed to ‘accidentally’ bump into my girlfriend on an elevator and made a point of apologizing for my unfaithfulness. She took all the blame but I’m pretty sure she relished the moment as the final jewel in her seductress crown for this is what Jolenes are all about: the exercise of the power of her allure and the work is not really finished until she has humiliated the competition.

I have seen Jolene’s performance many times over the course of the fifteen years I’ve been dancing tango. Sometimes she succeeds and sometimes she fails, or seems to fail since it’s all just a lab trial until a man succumbs.

I am writing this because I thought susceptibility to a woman’s allure destroying my life was behind me, that I was too old at sixty-three or had too much tango under my belt but I found that it’s not true. I fell just as hard as I did seven years ago but luckily I was merely the rat in the lab this time and not the subject of a ‘product launch’. Sometimes it pays to be single. Good for me, I guess, but let me tell you, I sure did enjoy the ride. I am, after all, just a man and no match for a woman when she’s being a woman.

C'est La Tango

          I cannot advertise this in the usual way as it is a sensitive subject that only something like tango can confront. For the last five years I have been working on simple rock-step motion that is prevalent in Argentine Tango. I was not so sure why this movement fascinated me so but I am beginning to achieve a better understanding of its effects on the opposite sex. There is something about the roll of a woman’s hips that she finds pleasing and I have been working to lead it just right.

A few years ago I spent two weeks staying with a friend who is a tango instructor and she worked with me to get this ‘roll’ just right. Until then, my attempts had been too bouncy but now I see that getting the lead just right is something that must be learned with each individual lady but the results are akin to an asteroid hitting a lifeless planet with no atmosphere and transforming it into a vibrant biosphere complete with forests and fauna, oceans and rivers and angels.

I can’t say exactly what is going on inside of her but I have a strong feeling that whatever it is is primordial and extremely powerful. Lately, in my encounters with one such tanguera, I have been able to get the rhythm of the movement just right and she is responding with something I never expected, something that has always been an extreme disappointment in the past that has hit me as utter delight: words.

One of the nice things about tango is the memory that stays with a dancer long after the engagement has ended. Just before Covid, I had one such dance that stayed with me for over a year. Often, after a seriously sensual tanda, words will be spoken and our other selves are revealed and the euphoria is shattered. Not this time, in fact it is the complete opposite. I heard her speak the words, intimate and few, kind of asking for permission to convey what she was feeling or an insight into her persona, and I was touched in a way that was subtle at first but now I see it is long-lasting.

It’s five a.m. and I find myself thinking about what she said to me that I find so charming. For the life of me I cannot remember the exact words, only the impact they had upon my soul: soft yet engraved in stone. C’est la vie. C’est la tango.

The Tango Festival

  I have been to this tango festival many times before but I feared this would be different since it was the first time we all gathered after covid. A mask mandate was in effect for all public places in the entire state and it really sucked but tango dancers are tough and we all adhered to the rules. In the end it didn’t matter, I got what I came for: incredible encounters with strange women, the memories of which will stay with me for a long time, quite possibly forever.

When I say I am hoping for incredible encounters with strange women, I am not talking about sex. Tango dancers are true dancers, students in the art of movement. We are not here to hook up but it does happen. Tango enthusiasts are dedicated to the study of balance: our own and that of our partners. Balance is not just a word to us, it is a metaphor for everything we do. When we gather to dance, we do so with the knowledge that our goal is a shared goal, a communal goal. I dance with constant awareness that I am one person, half of one couple in a crowd of couples and what I do affects the experience of everyone dancing. If I am rude or angry or just a jerk in general, I will poison the stew. A gathering of tango dancers is an incredibly powerful force of nature. If we all strive for harmony, then harmony will be achieved and something more: healing.

Yes, healing.

It is my belief that many of us come to tango wounded in some way. I am not talking about physical injuries, I am talking about hurts of the heart and soul, the kinds of blows dealt by a world that beats us down if we are too proud, that pulls us below the surface if we refuse to swim. In order to live we must learn how to navigate the proverbial River of Life and, in completion of that lesson, we find our mind, body and soul did not make it through the schooling unscathed. By dancing tango we find healing and this is what draws us here to the festival.

Tango is not a simple dance like rumba or cha-cha; it is a South American martial art. It is tai-chi for couples. It is a refuge for the soul, a feast for the mind and therapy for the body. It is the pathway that leads to understanding the greatest mysteries of the universe and answers questions we never thought to ask.

At the festival there are many milongas, the place where tango, and only tango, is danced. At the festival there are many beautiful women but I know from experience that what I seek is not necessarily visible on the outside, it is the inner beauty that I hunger for, the salve for  what ails me. I do not know how to find her so I listen to the wind, I let The Universe guide me to Her. I found old friends and made new ones before I saw Her. She was packed in tight with a gaggle of girls seated in chairs just off the dance floor. Though she was actively searching the crowd to make eye contact and receive an unspoken invitation to dance in what is known in tango circles as a ‘cabeceo’, it took her a while to turn her gaze in my direction. 

Tilting my head slightly while lifting my eyebrows,  I made my intentions clear, she accepted in a likewise manner, nonplussed. Immediately, I walked over to her, reached for her hand and brought her to the corner of the dance floor. As the couples moved about the room in a counterclockwise direction, I waited for recognition from an approaching leader who indicated with a nod that he would allow us to enter the line of dance. This is called tango etiquette and it is one of the many ways in which total group harmony is acheived.

We entered the crowd and became one with it and with each other as we embraced. Her body felt good against mine as we began to move about the room to the music. 

It is said by some that tango is a three minute love affair but it is actually much longer than that. The length of a tango engagement is called a tanda and it can comprise three or four songs, each about three minutes long, so the love affair can last up to fourteen minutes if you are lucky. Actually, luck has less to do with success than chemistry. If you were meant to be together then sparks will fly no matter the odds or the skill level.

When a man dances tango with a woman, he must be aware that there is a storm within his arms; if he is not careful, it may rage out of control and become a hurricane. Though she may appear calm, that can be a deception, one of the many things she is doing in trying not to succumb to all the forces whirling around her and inside of her: she is being held by a stranger, music is playing, she is moving backwards...in high heels and through a crowd; she worries that something may go wrong, that I may crash her into another couple or the edge of a table or off the edge of the dance floor; she worries that I might disapprove of her in some way. With all her senses she searches for answers; she sees the other couples and wonders if they are aware of her and this man, are they indicating anything? Breathing me in she listens to the music and feels my body giving her clues in how I would like her to move, she answers with grace and charm, she moves on her own balance and embellishes my requests with a little flare, a swirl of her foot before moving backwards into the throng.

I am not a beginner, I have been at this dance for thirteen years and I do all that I can to allay her fears. We don’t just move to the music, we dance to each phrase. It doesn't take her long to realize that she is in good hands and slowly the storm subsides, replaced by a calm so gentle it is intoxicating. By the end of the first song we have become acquainted in ways that never could have happened through verbal conversation. I tell her my name and where I am from, she responds likewise as another song begins. We chat for a few seconds more, as is customary in tango, before I take her back into my arms. She comes into my embrace much closer than before and with greater ease: I am a safe harbor for her ship to sail: the spinnaker unfurls.

I can’t remember if it was the second or third song when she began to melt onto me like hot cheese on a sandwich, wrapping herself around me like a warm blanket; it felt so good. She felt safe, we had established a bond of trust and we were in love. I was no longer a lonely man alone in this world, I now had someone. Our hearts joined and our palms began to sweat as we both feared the tanda would end with the third song but we were delightfully mistaken.

It is in love that we find healing. It is in healing that we find our reward. To be the one that heals, to be the traiteur is to know why it is that we are put upon this Earth, to know the answer to the question that everyone asks of Life: Why? My good feeling rushes around my body and into her. As the fourth song plays, our souls share it together and it is a glorious achievement. She is the reason I am here. I came for Her.

We danced several more times before the festival ended. Monday came and I put myself on a plane back home thinking of a poem I had written a long time ago when I first started dancing tango:

Argentine Tango is a very sensual dance.

Sometimes,

 it is the contact between two souls.

The soul is the most difficult part of ourselves to reach

and the most sensitive part of ourselves.

When we dance tango,

 sometimes,

 not all the time,

 but often enough to repeat in hopes of it happening again,

sometimes,

 wisps of smoke

 from the ethereal fire of our souls

 intermingle

 with wisps of smoke

 from the ethereal fire of the soul of our dance partner,

then the song ends,

the dance stops

 and the smoke dissipates.

We walk away,

 affected deeply by the experience

no longer the same person,

trailing a few particles of smoke

from the soul  of our dance partner.

I am home now. I have returned with the memories I sought when I began this adventure to the tango festival.

P.S. Many thanks to DB, you are a star that shines above your beautiful city. Thank you for lighting the way:)

The Tango Connection: Maximum Pleasure With Minimum Effort

           Lately I’ve been helping out at a beginner tango class and find myself thinking a lot about what makes a good tango connection possible. I once wrote about this and likened it to being a trick a dancer uses to connect to their partner in a way that is both physical and mental and, eventually, much more than that. There was quite a bit of blowback on that assertion but I stand by my belief with conviction and would like to offer more of an explanation of why I believe this is so.

Maybe ‘trick’ is the wrong word or maybe the use of that word triggers a negative reaction in adherents to the faith of tango. Use ‘stratagem’ or some other synonym if you must but it is what it is and ‘trick’ is my word of choice. Here is why:

When I was young, in my 20s, I worked as a whitewater riverguide on the Lehigh River. To be a guide on this river meant mastering the art of whitewater kayaking. The Lehigh River is a fairly easy river to navigate and its proximity to NYC and Philadelphia made it a very popular destination for those inspired by the movie ‘Deliverance’ to seek adventure in the great outdoors and ‘brave’ the rapids of this wild and scenic waterway.

There were so many people that we had to put them in rafts without a guide and herd them down the river with our kayaks like sheep dogs funneling woolybacks to the corral at destination’s end. 

Poetry is the use of words to convey maximum meaning with a minimum of words. It is, in a word, art. Art is merely the obvious evolution of a skill, refined to a point where the practitioner achieves the highest result with as little effort as possible. So it is with the art of guiding rafters down the Lehigh River: the best guides devised various schemes to get customers to paddle their rafts downstream from point A to point B in a manner which required very little physical exertion on the guide’s part whilst allowing their charges to have the most fun.

One of our biggest problems was getting the rafters to avoid rocks that their rafts would pin against and cause its occupants to become separated from their rubber boats and force them to continue their journey downstream with just their life jackets for comfort. To rectify this situation and return the customers back to their original configuration, i.e. butts on boats and feets inside rafts, required a maximum amount of effort and resulted in a minimum amount of pleasure for the guide and the rafting patrons, though there were many guides who did thoroughly enjoy the show and may have worked to achieve this particular outcome...but I digress.

Each guide developed his/her own toolbag of psychological machinations to the point where we had the rafters doing most of the work for us: from launching their boats into the river, maneuvering around obstacles, rescuing each other in the rapids, to carrying their boats up a steep set of stairs at river’s end, they did it all. Not to brag(which is what a person who means to brag always prefaces a braggadocio post with) but, for a while, I was one of the best. My customers had the most fun on the river while I had the most fun paddling my kayak down the Lehigh River with them.

I developed a persona, Omar the Blond Arabian, adopted a southern accent, which was not difficult for me since I lived in Georgia for four years as an adolescent, and used psychology to maximum effect: reverse, forward or sideways, it didn't matter. It didn’t hurt that I loved my job and I loved the river and the guests were just along for the ride. Happy workers make the best employees and I was the boss for the day when it came my turn to be lead guide.

One common mistake I learned to avoid was in getting rafters to steer around hazardous rocks in certain rapids. Most trip leaders positioned a kayaker behind obstructions to warn rafters away from it. I found that actually caused more collisions resulting in more rescues than was necessary. It seemed to me that customers tended to steer towards the kayakers; they were strangers in a strange land and headed for the person they assumed was there to keep them safe, e.g. the kayak guide. Eventually, I would place a guide on the side of the stream furthest from the hazard and found that was enough to get the rafts to avoid the obstacle and, consequently, made my day much easier.

Shiny happy people holding hands: that’s the key to the kingdom of pleasure and it is applicable to many of Life’s endeavors today, including tango. 

I love dancing tango and I love dancing with strange women. It is a no-brainer for me on how to make each encounter an enjoyable one. I simply let her know, let her feel, how pleased I am to be in this situation: accompanying her on a beautiful journey through the impending musical  pieces. To her, I am not Omar the Blond Arabian(although I will never not be Omar, she is just unaware of who I am at heart), I am just a guy with a nice shirt and clean pair of pants waiting to dance with her. On the river, I needed to keep away from obstacles to get my charges to have a good time, but, in tango, the opposite is true: I must be close to her in order for maximum amount of pleasure to be achieved.

The trick is to make my partner feel that I enjoy being with her and yet, I do enjoy it, so, maybe it is not a trick, or maybe it is a trick I play upon myself: such is the mystery of tango; who am I to question why I love it so much? For whatever reason why I feel good is not important, the only thing that matters is that my good feeling is conveyed to her, and, upon doing so, she relaxes and allows me to get closer to her. The obstacle here is not a rock in the river, it is the physical distance between us, which we have now eliminated, thus allowing us to have the most amount of pleasure with the least amount of effort.

What I am trying to say, and maybe not succeeding at, but I am not afraid to try, is that making a connection in tango is a skill that can be refined into an art, and that those who can do so, do so to the maximum benefit of their partners. May happiness ensue.