Tango began in the early 1900’s in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
Beginning in brothels, like American jazz, it was refined and adopted by middle and upper classes, cleaned up and turned into a respectable music and dance form.
Dance competitions usually contain the tango, a sensual dance with complicated movements and hypnotic music.
In front of one of the cafes near my studio, there is a demonstration of tango with a lady who is much older than her partner. She is dressed in black with net stockings and clipped black hair. The couple move over rough tiles as music plays loudly from a little black speaker.The traditional tango is played by an orchestra that has a piano, two accordions, two violins and a double bass. This recorded music is just violins.
For an entire song, we in the audience watch the pair move in ever widening, and then contracting, circles in front of the restaurant. She makes most of the movements, dipping her shoulder, lifting her knees, tossing back her head, letting the young man lead.
The themes of Tango are unrequited love, betrayal, the passage of time, and death.
A famous local poet, Enrique Discepolo, called tango “the sad thought that is danced.”
Tango came from poor neighborhoods in Buenos Aires and Montevideo where money runs short and emotions run high.
Cutting edge art flows from those who live closest to their emotions and have empty wallets.
There are plenty of dogs in this city, but thousands of cats too.
Cats don’t make a lot of noise, take up a lot of space, or make crazy demands. They live as they have for thousands of years – hunting, sleeping, making reproductions of themselves, adapting to human civilization for which they have no interest or care.
Walking the area around Independence Square, close to an area called The Centro, this gato catches my eye.
He is stretched out on a window ledge with bars on one side of him and closed windows on the other. It is certain he is asleep and his owner has closed windows before leaving the house. When this guy wakes and sees he is trapped he will just turn over and go back to sleep. For this moment he is in cat dreamland where cats have all the mice they want and are always successful in the hunt.
In the city, dogs and cats live with humans and have adapted. Now, dogs don’t do much hunting. But cats, when push comes to shove, can become fearsome predators. Whether they love the little tuna bits their owners spoon out of a can into a little dish for them is likely. Whether they like a fat mouse or a big bird is more than likely.
I don’t know where this big boy was all night, but this morning he isn’t going anywhere. When his owners return they will open the window. He will jump down and brush against their legs.
They will laugh and pet him and let him out into a little back yard in the middle of a big big city where he will wait in a corner for something flying, creeping, or crawling to come close enough, so he can appropriate it.
On my way to a lavenderia, electricians are installing a new electrical service to the front of a residential/commercial building on Main Street.
Like most of the homes in this neighborhood, there is a retail space on the bottom floor. Atop the retail space,accessible by a door and stairs, is an apartment.
In this refurbish, the retail space serves as a staging ground for conduit, PVC pipe, bags of mortar, tools and lunch boxes. In our modern times,all buildings have to have water, sewer and electrical capabilities meeting city codes. These building exteriors, protected by Historical Site designations, are brick or adobe plastered with a cement veneer and will stand for another hundred years if they are kept repaired.
Electric was provided, up to now, through the splicing of two large thick wires joined and carelessly wrapped with electricians tape dangling down the front of the building. After the new panel box is anchored and wire pulled through legal conduit, power will be reconnected.
Inside,new occupants will be able to power more gadgets from more places in each room, have power to run things that weren’t even imagined in the days this building was first built. When these buildings were built people were heating with fireplaces, lighting with candles. Horses and carriages were the rage.
It is a simple job, this installation of a new electrical service box.These guys have tools ,wear hard hats, and act like construction guys anywhere in the world.
Working construction for decades, it is hard for me to watch other people work without wanting to lend a hand.
Retirement is difficult if you are used to doing things.
The sun drops dramatically.
In America, kids would be throwing a football. Here, the big dream is to play professional soccer and let your papa sit in a bar with a cerveza and cheer as you make a goal that wins an important game. It is a Sunday and there is, at the moment, on television, a game with the National team of Uruguay playing an opponent from Columbia. Mortal enemies on the playing field, the hollers from the bar became more pronounced as a goal is threatened or a player is cut down to size with a totally illegal trip, block, or kick.
These two little kids are playing catch and kick.
One kicks the ball to the other and the receiver steps into his return kick and sends the soccer ball screaming back to his friend. Tourists have long ago gone back to their ships and are now enroute to other ports on their itinerary. The sun is disappearing and these two boys will be going inside soon to have dinner, maybe do homework – their sisters having already diligently finished their assignments.
The soccer ball takes off the instep of one of the boy’s foot like a rocket. It is an old beat up ball with threads coming undone from caroming over these rough paving blocks. It is dirty and knocked out of shape. You can hear it cry when it is kicked. Still, it is good practice for these two future players on the Uruguay National team who will one day be lining up for a foul kick and remember what they practiced when they were so little.
Whether it is a soccer ball or a football, the dreams of little boys are not different.
Competition is important, team play is important, winning is important, friends are important.
There isn’t anything new about pizza.You find it all around the world. What is refreshing about this pizza is that it is made outdoors, you watch the guys prepare it, the ingredients are natural, the taste is great, the price is a bargain.
“What would you like,” my personal chef asks?
I spot a toaster oven with a miniature tomato and cheese pizza on its top cooling. On a linen tablecloth, on the folding table in front of me, are bowls with fresh cut ingredients. There are chili’s, peppers, tomatoes, ham, onions. lettuce, cheese, and other typical choices.
“What are you making, ” I ask?
“We are making you a special pizza,” the young man dressed in black says, “you pick your toppings.”
“How much?”
“60 pesos.”
That is about three U.S. dollars which sounds pricey but yesterday a pollo sandwich with bacon cost six dollars U.S. at McDonald’s with no fries and no bebida.
Elias, the brains behind this operation, scoops his starter pizza off the toaster top with a spatula and puts it on a piece of wax paper on the tablecloth in front of me, then loads on the toppings I tell him I want. It looks like a salad by the time I am through and he finishes by slicing the pizza into fours for me.
This pizza stands up to my taste test.
I get lunch plus entertainment for three dollars.
Small cheap surprises are some of the best.
It is Sunday. Taking the turista bus a second time, our first stop is the Tristan Street flea market. It is set up on a narrow street, tree lined, packed with vendors and customers on a sunny day in November.
As shoppers and browsers move through the flea market they scoop up books, tools, food, pets, cosmetics, clothes, spices, vegetables and fruits, meats and cheeses. There are Arabs selling nuts and dates and olives. There are Uruguayans selling produce and still other vendors talking, sitting in chairs,standing and moving in for the kill only when a sale seems imminent.
This market has purses, clothes, a table stacked with bras, tools and books, tourist stuff, laundry soap and toilet paper. It has antiques, homemade arts and crafts, women selling crocheted caps, original art, and even a table of hourglasses. At that table a young boy shows great interest in the ancient timepieces, a prescient knowledge that time moves from the top of the glass to the bottom and when sand isn’t left in the top your time is up.
Where time goes when it is used up would have been a warm up exercise for Albert Einstein.
I keep my hands in my pockets because I don’t want to buy and don’t want to carry purchases the rest of the day.
The Tristan Street market is a good weekend stocking stuffer but there are bigger gifts I still want to open on this tourist ride.
There is much more to see in Montevideo this Sunday than fleas.
It is mentioned in guide books that there is petty crime in Montevideo.
The young woman in a next door boutique, who speaks English and tells me about Montevideo when I have my expresso, is standing and talking to motorcycle cops as I come out my apartment door onto the street. There are three cops and two motorcycles and one of the officers is sitting on concrete steps leading into the boutique, writing his report.
I go around the corner and enter the back door of the shop, order a coffee in the cafe part of the business. When my friend comes back inside she tells me her whole story, from beginning to end.
“We had a shoplifter,” she begins, “the same one who did it before. We called the police and they took her away. She was putting things in her dress.”
“How do you say the past tense of steal,” she asks me?
“The past tense is stolen, someone has stolen our stuff,” I reply.
Petty crime sticks with us. This petty thief will spend a few nights in jail but won’t learn any lesson except not to get caught.
if there wasn’t crime these cops would be out of work.
The best thief is the one that steals from someone else.
When you travel you don’t take much with you. You have clothes, personal items, electronics, a book or two, some travel guides, a Passport and umbrella, and hope.
You hope you end up in safe, clean lodgings. You hope you see and do enough to justify the expense of the trip. You hope you don’t get sick. You hope you enjoy your time on the road in a different country where you don’t speak the language and move like a turtle trying to figure out when to safely stick out your head.
The studio apartment at Piedras 271, Apartment 104, Ciudad Vieja, Montevideo, Uruguay is feeling like home.
In a new place, I try unfamiliar appliances, find the linens, get hot water, operate latches, locks and switches. Then i move outdoors and learn the new neighborhood. There are sandwiches in the frig. I have extra bottled water. The candle on the dining room table hasn’t been lit, but will. The bed behind the couch is a new room addition, added for my stay. Street noises are tolerable but people talk as they walk below, and, in the middle of the night, cats fight. Buses, a block and a half away, can take me anywhere in Montevideo I wish to go.
My apartment and I don’t have a long term commitment but we are getting along well thus far, like a new couple not upset by sleepwalking, dirty dishes in the sink, toilet seats left up.
Home starts to become home when you start to call it so.
The keys to my studio apartment are old fashioned.
One key opens the front door to the building. One key opens a security gate after you enter the front door. One key opens the front door of my unit 104 at 271 Piedras Street. The last key opens a door I don’t know about and don’t want to know about.
The key issue is that four keys look the same, four fit into my apartment front door lock, but only one opens the door.
Looking for something to mark the key that works for my apartment door lock, a tie for a bread bag looks it will work. It is white, easy to bend, sturdy enough to hold up to use. With a few twists, the key I need,for entry to my front door, is now recognizable and I don’t need to stand at my door bumbling like a burglar.
These days, keys are becoming obsolete.
Now doors are opened with cell phones, plastic cards, lifting your palm to a screen, having your face screened by a camera. Some doors require passwords punched out on a keypad. Some doors take several people with different codes to open.
One thing is certain.
Thieves will always be able to get in your home if they want too bad enough.
Making entry harder only saves you from the lazy ones.
The Urban Heritage group are Old City real estate developers.
Jesper and his wife Olenka, partners in the Group,host an art exposition on the evening of November 7th, 2014 to promote their vision for the area to investors and business people and lovers of the arts.
At seven, art lovers, friends, associates, clients, friends of the band, hired help arrive to celebrate art, business,and throw a grand party. In addition to art by local artist Roberto Ybarra, there are posters of Urban Heritage properties prominently displayed that show what can be done to change abandoned industrial properties into good looking functional living and business spaces.
Roberto works with wood, string, metal, paper, leather, and found objects. He is an older man but does young art, Roberto’s show blurs differences between reality and art.
When does an object belong in a museum? When does art become just a bed you can’t sleep on? Is art more than materials that make it? Is art a way of looking, or a way of living? Is art what we see or what goes on in our own head when we look at it, or both?
” Violinista”, a small work I buy, is now hung on my dining room room wall at home and brings back memories. I swear sometimes that the violinists bow moves and makes a trill so soft it would make a conductor cry.
When I see my violinist and remember Montevideo, I start to hum a slow sultry tango.
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