A poet may say that tango came about out of the necessity to express nostalgia and solitude. To reminisce maternal love, to rejoice in the passion of a love affair, and to endure in the pain of rejection. To weep and sob for the departure of a loved one.
People’s lives are buffeted by feelings the way gales of wind relentlessly thrust the ocean waters against a serene beach. All because of the mystification that men seem to experience in their quest for an intimate relationship with a woman. Without women, there is no tango.
Tango is a ritual we reenact where men and women role play for control and submission, but above all it is a dress rehearsal for growing up. It is about not being afraid of darkness anymore for in the shadows of the night men and women renew their incessant search for passion and love. When the dark shawl of the night covers the cold shoulders of the city, thousands of metallic blue points of light, unsuspecting witnesses of intimate encounters, flow out from the distant stars. It is nighttime in the city.
A complex sound carries in its core the existential quest for closeness and seduction and pierces the eerie silence of the night. It is the sentimental moan of a wrinkled heart, a nervous bellow that exhales pain, sorrow, and sadness. It is the bandoneon, the instrument adopted by the tango meisters of yesterday. It had the power to mesmerize the rough men who had sailed across the ocean and sat silently at the seedy cantinas by the port. The mist in their eyes fogged familiar memory scenes from far away.
The lonely man of tango found a way to mitigate his loneliness in the lazy, moaning sound of the bandoneon, and in an ethereal wedding it became him and he become it. The night was their companion, in the soggy darkness the corporeal shape of a woman was ever present. The yearning of caresses, the longing of embraces, the craving for connection. As if in a hypnotic trance, men were born from the bowel of those playful bandoneons, slick hair, slender figures, arms reaching into space seeking the reward of a woman’s hand. Intertwined long legs began to draw firuletes and arabesques, carving on the ground the invisible marks of some unique creations. In the eyes of the women, the men of tango found their version of heaven.
But for that it was imperative to accept the challenges of growth. A challenge everyone faces the day they are found by the tango . We come to tango as infants and everybody celebrates our baby talk, our falls and trips. In tango as in life, there is time to grow, when the outside world no longer sees us as cute infants, and we must begin to assume responsibilities and become self-reliant, able to accept the challenge of new steps, new figures, improved communications, but above all the sense that we no longer can make excuses and can truly acept tango as a metaphor for life. Our life.
