Quantum Entangoment

 There is a dimensional plane that tango takes us to sometimes that we may or may not appreciate for what it is: a place where verbal and physical communication is not necessary, a place where we convey our meaning without the need for words or body language. In my continuing attempt to understand how tango reveals mysterious facets of the universe, I have become enamoured with a concept called quantum entanglement.

Here is what the internet says about quantum entanglement,”it is a bizarre quantum physics phenomenon where two or more particles become linked, sharing the same fate so that measuring a property of one instantly influences the state of the other(s), regardless of the vast distance separating them.This interconnectedness, described by a single quantum state, allows these particles to behave as one system.” 

My interpretation of quantum entanglement is that sometimes things seem connected even though there is no discernible medium between the two objects and the distance between them is irrelevant. They could be next door or the next galaxy but the result is the same and instantaneous.

I imagine that the mental connection between twins or a couple that has been married for a long time would be good examples of this. They sometimes seem to know what the other is experiencing, even at a distance. I believe this happens at some milongas. All it takes is some good vibes among the crowd and a killer DJ and we have us a multi-personal, multi-dimensional experience of the quantum-kind that would devastate a novice and intoxicate experienced tango dancers.

Yes, you could say it is a case of similar nurturing resulting in similar thinking and you may be right but I wish to believe it is something else, that I am experiencing a connection with my partner that allows me to communicate my intentions, to my partner and to the crowd, telepathically, or maybe we achieve a quantum entangoment of some sort that is impossible to describe.

Quantum entangoment flows from the couples to the attendees and is proven by the use of cabeceos after the tanda ends. At this moment you can feel the eyes upon you and the intentions of others in the room. There is a cacophony of desires being expressed and appreciated all at once when the music stops.The ears only hear the shuffling of feet but the hearts hear everything else.

Peace, Love, Tango

Kayak Hombre

p.s. Don't forget to check out my latest book, Kokapelli in the Wiccans' Kitchen.

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