I have been listening to tangos, rather than dancing them. I’m not sure what’s going on here and it’s immensely frustrating as I long more than anything to be dancing, as I dance in my head, beautifully. Sometimes, the gap between the aspiration and the reality is just too great to ignore. Tango is great mood music, though. By a roundabout route yesterday I found myself trawling through different versions of ‘Mariposita’, ‘Little Butterfly’ until I found Goyeneche’s 1979 gravelly recording and from there a CD (yes I still have CDs) of recordings he made with Troilo’s orchestra in the 60s and 70s. They were a bit of a legend as a team, ‘the Polack’ and the band leader and bandoneonista El Pichuco, ‘Cry Baby’, famous for his emotional playing and his tendency to be moved to tears – but never ‘for trivial reasons’, he insisted. One of the tracks on the CD is ‘En Esta Tarde Gris’, a mournful piece which perfectly suits this grey day. ‘Mariposita’, though – many of you will already have shared my discovery of a charming version by De Los Dos Tango Dúo (accompanied by various birds and a barking dog!)
A long way from the Buenos Aires park where I imagine their version was recorded (although it could be anywhere), I’m deep in crowd-funding territory and it’s not a welcoming landscape, dominated as it is by figures and percentages – well, one percentage in particular, that critical proportion of the funding target already achieved. Even if I don’t check a dozen times a day, it’s squatting there like Larkin’s toad on my ‘author dashboard’ in an unopened tab at the top of the screen. Don’t get me wrong: I’m committed to the cause, optimistic of its outcome and enormously grateful, of course, to all supporters. But the travelling itself is such hard work! For a while I managed to keep it small: if I got up an hour or two early, I could have my five-a-day emails out of the way before breakfast. Soon, I was waking earlier and earlier and the email traffic had grown to fill the spaces between until they became the thing itself. If you’ve been here before me, you will recognise the signs. Digging deep into my reserves of resourcefulness, I type articles, letters, blogs, all with one end in view until I worry I’m becoming unable to write about anything else. It’s exhausting. I begin to lose sight of the benefits of recent surgery and my troublesome tum, always on the watch for a weakness, is quick to get in on the act. Nights are disturbed by my default anxiety dream: back at school as a teacher, I have made a complete hash of the whole thing. The details vary: lessons unprepared, classes running wild as I fail to find the classroom, staff cold-shouldering me. Always, though, the same headmaster is the one I must face. Last night he was sympathetic. He isn’t always. Jittery to say the least, I become careless, make rash decisions, upset at least one good friend. "I meant well," is really no excuse. I should have known better. "I like you, Kate," my friend Brigitte once said as she drove me home from a milonga. "I think you’re well-intentioned – " A chorus of "buts" hung in the air.
Like Troilo, I could so easily give in to those too-easy tears! Instead, this morning I brush off the dust of the road and give myself a break. Reverting to my resolution (one of the regular 13) to read hard stuff before breakfast, I polish off a couple of back numbers of the London Review of Books which have been piling up in accusatory fashion. It feels good: a poem about tree-planters, a sobering article about the destruction of the ancient city of Palmyra, an Emily Dickinson pastiche. I avoid my desk, sitting in a different chair with a different view. Sadly, I have finished my two recent reads, equally absorbing: Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life which literally plays out different outcomes possible – "What if we had the chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right?" – and Pete Langman’s Slender Threads, subtitled A Young Person’s Guide to Parkinson’s Disease. The slender threads of the title are those on which, according to Langman, we are "suspended,/restrained, or mended" and suggest, I suppose, the tenuous nature of our hold on reality. Much of what we are, what happens to us, is beyond our control, as arbitrary a spin of Fortune’s wheel as his narrow escape on the M25, an account of which ends the introduction – especially if you find yourself, as Pete did, diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s. It’s perhaps not surprising that I find this book utterly compelling. It’s raw and a tad uneven perhaps but has a cleanness and an honesty which make me wish my own Parkinson’s story was more like his.
Then I make the time to read an article which has landed in my inbox under the misleading subject line 'Hope' and which makes me look out instead of in. Written by Tommaso Sagantini, a volunteer with Care4Calais, 'Calais after the Jungle: a living nightmare' is a grim account of the realities of life for the hundreds who have washed up at the French border (which is actually the UK border, and one of the most supervised on earth according to Tommaso), and a scorching indictment of our governments' actions – deliberate actions – to make the problem go away. It's hard to read without feeling guilty and defeated, in that order, as the writer recognises: "Refugees’ presence is uncomfortable because it breaks the veil of hypocrisy about our sense of righteousness, and makes certainties about our moral superiority crumble. Refugees force us to question our privilege, breaching our comfort zone, instilling doubts in our minds, and troubling our conscience.
"This is why helping and welcoming refugees is more than asking for gradual reforms. It is a powerful political act. Fighting for refugees’ rights means repudiating the wars, the economic devastation, the climate disruption that caused them to leave their homeland; it means demanding European governments and citizens to be up to their historical and moral duty of giving refuge to those knocking on their doors; and it means making a statement of unconditional solidarity with every vulnerable and oppressed human being, calling for a more just and humane world.
"The global refugee crisis is a horror story of trauma, shattered lives, torn apart families, stolen childhoods, broken dreams. We, the privileged of the world, have the moral obligation to open our doors wide open, and try making this human tragedy stop."
On a practical level, Cambridge does offer various opportunities to work towards change. Last weekend saw 'A Tale of Two Cities', a sponsored sleep-out to support refugees in Calais and the homeless at home, raise an incredible £10,000. One cute initiative enabled me to spend £17.50 on a warm and rather stylish hand-made poncho in the knowledge that this would fund 3 of the same to be delivered to those battling the cold in Calais.
"This is why helping and welcoming refugees is more than asking for gradual reforms. It is a powerful political act. Fighting for refugees’ rights means repudiating the wars, the economic devastation, the climate disruption that caused them to leave their homeland; it means demanding European governments and citizens to be up to their historical and moral duty of giving refuge to those knocking on their doors; and it means making a statement of unconditional solidarity with every vulnerable and oppressed human being, calling for a more just and humane world.
"The global refugee crisis is a horror story of trauma, shattered lives, torn apart families, stolen childhoods, broken dreams. We, the privileged of the world, have the moral obligation to open our doors wide open, and try making this human tragedy stop."
On a practical level, Cambridge does offer various opportunities to work towards change. Last weekend saw 'A Tale of Two Cities', a sponsored sleep-out to support refugees in Calais and the homeless at home, raise an incredible £10,000. One cute initiative enabled me to spend £17.50 on a warm and rather stylish hand-made poncho in the knowledge that this would fund 3 of the same to be delivered to those battling the cold in Calais.
Yesterday afternoon to a talk – actually quite a wide-ranging series of talks, hosted by Ordered Universe as part of the e-Luminate Festival (only in Cambridge!), a ‘celebration of the infinite possibilities created by light at the intersection of art and science’, about mediaeval scholar, philosopher, scientist & theologian Robert Grosseteste. It’s fascinating, particularly his work on light, called by Augustine the ‘queen of colours’. Grosseteste, if I’ve understood this right, saw light as the building blocks of the universe and divided it into two, lux and lumen – ah, at that point brain and memory give out. It seems he was pretty revolutionary, though, reaching understanding through observation rather than experimentation. And it leaves me better equipped for a second reading of Joanna Kavenna’s A FIeld Guide to Reality The afternoon ends with the energetic Seb Falk, mediaeval science historian, talking about starlight and astral navigation and demonstrating the use of an astrolabe from models he has made. Annoyingly, I can’t get out of my head the picture of him running the London marathon some years ago in aid of the Cure Parkinson’s Trust, in an 8-foot-tall home-made bright green gherkin suit.
This morning my projected tango practice doesn’t happen and I’m left feeling bereft. It’s a sobering reminder, oddly, of the days when Parkinson’s & the Tango Effect was little more than an embryo (at 13 weeks, an unborn baby is about the size of a kiwi fruit, my friend Aileen tells me). Then I was prone to feeling every disappointment as a disaster, every slight as a rejection and I’m aware that I have to guard against the slide into darker waters. Fortunately I do have rather more in my armoury these days. Pete Langman’s book, though, ends with a reference to the Switzerland conversation – I imagine most of us with a long-term degenerative condition have one at some point. Mine was some years ago now and ended with a cautious agreement that, if it came to it, I wouldn’t have to go alone. I’m wondering (not in a morbid way, I hope) if that still holds good. On a more general note, Pete reminds his readers of the counter to the debilitating feelings of isolation that come with Parkinson’s: "All that time I’d spent feeling alone when all I needed to do was talk. All I needed to do was to let people in." Not as straightforward as it sounds. Or is it? A visit to the doctor’s earlier in the week with what feels like a problem I can’t share is followed by coffee with a friend who, it turns out, has endured something similar for years.
The day ends on an up, with a late tango practice after all and the promise of more to come. There’s a walk in prospect for tomorrow, an out-of-town walk which I suspect might take us along the banks of the Mel, and a forecast of fine weather. Even in town, though – full of green spaces, Cambridge also offers a different kind of solace in its lovely botanic garden, especially lovely at this time of year.
'Don’t let me be misunderstood’ was recorded both by Nina Simone and the Animals (with an impossibly young-looking Eric Burden on vocals) in 1964.
Back in the Jug Agane by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle, Nigel Molesworth’s own version of being back at ‘skool’, was published by Max Parrish in 1959.
A recording of the author reading ‘Toads’, first published by The Marvell Press in his collection The Less Deceived in 1955, is available here
Life after Life by Kate Atkinson was published in the UK by Doubleday in 2013 and A Field Guide to Reality by Joanna Kavenna by riverrun in 2016.
Pete Langman’s Slender Threads (Pete Langman, 2013) is available from Amazon.
All the photos were taken on a January visit to the Botanics when the Daphne Bholua was at its fragrant best.
And of course Parkinson’s & the Tango Effect is currently funding with Unbound.
'Don’t let me be misunderstood’ was recorded both by Nina Simone and the Animals (with an impossibly young-looking Eric Burden on vocals) in 1964.
Back in the Jug Agane by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle, Nigel Molesworth’s own version of being back at ‘skool’, was published by Max Parrish in 1959.
A recording of the author reading ‘Toads’, first published by The Marvell Press in his collection The Less Deceived in 1955, is available here
Life after Life by Kate Atkinson was published in the UK by Doubleday in 2013 and A Field Guide to Reality by Joanna Kavenna by riverrun in 2016.
Pete Langman’s Slender Threads (Pete Langman, 2013) is available from Amazon.
All the photos were taken on a January visit to the Botanics when the Daphne Bholua was at its fragrant best.
And of course Parkinson’s & the Tango Effect is currently funding with Unbound.
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