October 31, 2009 Saturday
Again, I must apologize for the infrequent entries. I did add some ideas to the other blog - Essays from the Heart (see link at right), but basically we have gotten used to life here and things that once seemed marvelous now seem sort of normal. We divide our time between living quietly on the boat to intense social life and lots of fiestas. I continue to be the "house guitarist" at the local peña and in fact will be going there very soon for the regular saturday afternoon session. There have been some awesome fiestas lately - one of the high points being a fiesta in Utrera with about 30 singers, most of them pretty good. They sang buleria until daybreak with Steve Kahn, Isidro de Morón, and I sharing guitar duties.
The number 1 singer still living, Manuel Agujetas, came over to our boat the other day and left the spaniards on the dock with their mouths hanging open. He showed up on a motor scooter, bored because his wife was out of town, and looking for some socialization. Wow!
We went and picked olives yesterday with Miguel and are now curing them. Can't ever seem to get enough olives. I get it from my mom, I think.
Andrea and I are having sort of different experiences. My spanish is now to the point where I can participate socially pretty much all the time. She is where I used to be a few years ago (and can clearly remember) where after a while your brain gets exhausted trying to translate and you just space out and let it all go over your head. This of course separates you from the action and pretty soon you are bored. There is no quick fix for this, but she is studying hard and has found a fabulous tool, at least for her learning style. Friends gave us the program Rosetta Stone with spanish I, II, and III. This program doesn't ask you to conjugate verbs or memorize rules of grammar. It teaches language the way we learn it as children - by showing pictures and asking questions - everything in spanish. She is doing really well with this and is now starting conversations with me in spanish, just to practice. Yay!
The other thing that is hard for her is that there are lots and lots of foreign dance students over here (although not in Rota). The locals have no real interest is dazzling choreography, no matter how good. They welcome a very brief dance exhibition once or twice in a fiesta, placing value on personality and self-expression rather than on technique. In the fiesta in Utrera, there were about 7 spanish ladies who got up and did a few steps (over the course of 5 hours)and it was welcome. When Andrea got up, she kicked butt and got a warm response. But, here singing is what is prized and dance is just an occasional extra. That is the opposite of the situation in the USA and so she gets to sit around a lot listening to old farts singing and talking andalucian spanish - which is about as bad as Yorkshire english.
I on the other hand continue to get fussed over - an amazing number of people have seen us on television. When we applied for our Residencia at the Consulate in LA, the lady behind the counter recognized us because she had come back to Spain for the holidays and saw us on TV! So I try to compromise and when I see her eyes glazed over, we get up and leave. I'm now pretty blase and I don't worry that I will miss something since most of the really great singers are now dead and the younger generation isn't nearly as good. We can always see more flamenco.
What I really love is being with the people, and amazingly fitting in. Our email is the same - write and give us the news....
Saturday, October 31, 2009
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