Why should we take it easy?

I love Emiliana Torrini. For those of you who have never heard of her - read on.
She is a beautiful, gifted woman who possesses the extraordinary ability to nail things down with just few simple words.
Some time ago I met up with one of my non-tango friends. These occasions being ever so rare, I did my best to avoid even mentioning tango, but then he asked. I admit I can get pretty emotional at times and I might have gotten carried away a bit. But after a while he made me stop dead in my tracks by just saying in an amused way, "Come on,you are not serious, are you? Take it easy. It's just a hobby".
There it was, as fluffy as clichés generally go.
How often in our lives do we hear those magical three words? Take this easy
and take that easy.
You know what?
I wish I could, but on the second thought – I'm afraid, I don't want to.
Neither tango, nor anything else in my life.

There may be trouble ahead

Right at the moment there is more on my plate then I can eat: family, work, not knowing where to, numerous ifs.
All life and no game.
But sometimes it's just about facing the music, isn't it?




I can't believe it's been ten years already.

A home at the end of the world

I’m a big city girl by birth and at heart.
But if I weren’t, I'd spend my life living in this house.
And which one would be yours?

"And Oh, how happy shall that future be!..."

Last night I didn't get much sleep, as my old neighbour tried to torch his flat.
Officially he was busy microwaving some rolls, but as it happened to occur around midnight, he must have forgotten all about his hunger and fell asleep. The rolls were reduced to cinder, the fire alarm went off and we spent half the night airing his kitchen and scratching what left from his dinner-not-to-be into the waste bin.
He is a sweet old man, who keeps forgetting my name but never misses a beat when it comes to flirting with me.
Each time we would meet in the staircase, he'd straighten his back (I can almost hear his fragile vertebrae uncurling) and flash his false teeth. I would slow down to let him cram out his old, carefully polished chat-up lines. Sometimes he gives me a toffee and watches me unpeel the sweated-in wrap from the sticky surface of a candy.
In his youth he must have been quite a ladies man.
In the morning the air on our floor was still thick with fumes. My hair is reeking of smoke because I was way too done in to wash it.
That's not what I intended to write about. You see, my thoughts are all over the place. I must be really tired.
Anyway.
I'm an avid IGoogle -user. Lazy as I am, I couldn't find a better way to organize my favourites.
My igoogle- page is packed with your blogs, but also lots of neat&nifty gadgets.
It tells me about the weather in BA, supplies youtube news, it countdowns hours left till the clock-out and sometimes I calligraph little mean things about my boss onto the little yellow notes one can magically make disappear.
However, on IGoogle one can now get so-called "artist themes".
I tried a couple of motives before tripping over the pig of happiness and now have a confession to make.
I love Edward Monkton and his interesting thoughts.
The person behind these designs is a well-known poet. He is also a courageous man, who happened to have successfully fought cancer while doing his finals in Oxford.
Besides he knows everything about women's profound relationships with chocolate and shoes - and isn't afraid to tell you so.
Now I'm sitting at my desk, and the sheep of destiny is grinning at me, promising me a happy future.
And for once I do believe it.

...The world is a stage

My relationship with opera music has been somewhat ambiguous. The reasons were plenty, the most important of them being that I've been an opera singer for a major part of my life. I grew up listening to this kind of music. Later I had studied it, loved it, lived it.
Yet, I have never regretted my decision not to pursue this career.
"Don't look back!" was a motto I lived by.
Although I hadn't stopped singing altogether, I rigorously cut back on it. For a long time I did my best to avoid music theatres. Apparently it was way too close to home and I was at home.
Now I'm cautiously groping my way back to the path I once explored with such fervour, it nearly destroyed me.
I took it easy at the beginning: went to some recitals, took a couple of lessons again, and worked on technically tricky things– just for myself, without any pressure from outside.
Last year in September I ventured out to Metropolitan's Lucia di Lammermoor". It was great, yet I left feeling uneasy: my throat felt tight as if I had spent tree hours competing with Natalie Dessay. In my mind I stood on the stage again, carefully forming tones and phrases, reliving something I always aspired, but never came really close enough to. I was taken back with surprise and also annoyance.
I guess I wasn't ready then.
But Sunday afternoon I went to small theatre in the neighbour town to hear Giulio Cesare in Egitto.
It was a nice performance with a superb young singer, from whom I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more in the future.
And for the very first time in ages I thoroughly enjoyed it.
At last I was just a spectator.
I guess I've moved on.




Here is an (unfortunately) curtailed vesion of " V'adoro, pupille", sung by the one and the only Tatiana Troyanos.

The inner side of a birch tree leaf

This one is for you, tangobaby

The world has turned green over night.
One had seen the signs: the hesitant silvery haze that draped the tree silhouettes, air thickened to the point of curdling and the spidery bones of transmitter masts cutting into the pale blue mass of an evening sky.
Spring looked coyly from behind the curtain of rain, teased small yellow flowers out of the ground. But still, it seemed to be postponing its big arrival.
Until now.
Yesterday I was running late for my train so I took a shortcut through the small park nearby. It had looked transparent for so many months:being at its outer end, one could already see the outline of the railway station, old lopsided benches scantily seeded along the way.
But yesterday for the first time in months everything was flooded by the tide of green fuzz.
Finally all the buds broke out, bursting into life. I held my face into the damp mass of leaves, their skin wrinkled and tender like the one of a new-born.
As I did so, a distant memory worked its way from the pit of my stomach into my brain.
I must have been four years old and visiting my grandparents. In the backyard of their house there was an old birch with branches hanging low. In the morning I used to snick out the house and hide there. I talked to my plush dog. I scribbled into my colouring book.
But mostly I just sat there holding my face up high, letting the old scruffy tree caress me.
And then my grandma called my name and I emerged from beneath it, bedrizzled with morning dew, with stray leaves stuck in my hair.
This time of a year I'm always haunted by childhood memories.
As if all the smells, feelings and recollections that laid brittle and lifeless during winter, thawed out at once and now hang suspended in the air.
Before long they all will evaporate in the musky heat of summer. But for now, I wander around surrounded by them.
My memory is pretty good, yet selective about how vividly to display bits and pieces of my past.
Some of them look sepia-coloured and washed-up along the edges: from a safer distance I observe faces and places long disappeared.
But some of them are so vibrant they leave me gasping with happiness. Sometimes this joy is so intense it hurts me.
But nonetheless these two or three days of a year are worth waiting for. Worth living for, for that matter.