I wrote before about how dancing tango in Buenos Aires is about dancing in a place steeped in crisis, melancholy and sadness. But, jeezus, seriously - who or where isn't?...

But there's a perception, real or imagined, that serious Porteños believe that true tango can only be danced in Buenos Aires by people who know their pain – they say, “but you need to know what this song is about, and, invariably, it's about some sorry schmuck from the barrio who gets jilted and now he's feeling tortured and drinking to excess. Yeah, well, get in line pal. Been there. Done that. Or maybe the song is about a city or country in decline, and to that I say, don't get me started on Canada's own kind of crumbling as the country's reputation and values are unceremoniously dismantled by our current callous government...

So, on the subject of tango lyrics and Argentina's pain, that's cool, but those are common themes. Yeah, it is too bad we don't know the words, because, ultimately, they're easily metaphoric, and good poetry is universally true.

Some women have said to me that they really like it when the Argentines sing in their ear while dancing. It's true – knowing the lyrics of a song adds an extra layer, and it goes a long way toward motivating and animating you in a dance.

Which is why I, personally, love dancing tango to Tom Waits. That's some motherfuckin' pain right there. Know 'um sayin? And as much as I wish that Argentina had cornered the market on feelings unrequited, I fear that's not the case, and, once again, there's something that the rest of us...well, me anyway, can connect with. And that's tango. And it's also why I like dancing tango to non-tango music. A lot of it is just about understanding the lyrics. The language that you understand, describing the sadness, loss, loneliness or joy that you understand.

For some purists, if you say “I like dancing to alternative music” to them it feels like a betrayal of the true tango, or worse, it conjures images of repetitive electronica and people dancing with all the grace and aplomb of an epileptic Dervish, flailing around while petrified partners hang on for dear life. But I just mean music that isn't tango because it's great music that I understand, and dancing to it with the same dance vocabulary. And it's often more heartfelt because I understand the music and the lyrics. A personal favourite is Leonard Cohen's “Dance me to the end of Love”.

“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic til I'm safely gathered in”.

Bloody fucking hell, I'm already bawling over here.

I wrote the above passage, about liking Cohen to dance to, last Monday at a coffee shop near my apartment. I actually hadn't heard any song in English in a tanda at a milonga in what was at that point exactly 8 weeks here. That night at La Bicicleta there was a tanda (“three-song cycle” for the uninitiated) played live by a guy playing just a guitar, but excellently, with a beautiful voice and a head of hair that looked like at least three of the Jackson 5 standing together next to an electrical field.

He starts singing the first song, and I swear to freakin' gawd, it's “Dance me to the end of Love.” I just about fell off my chair. Well, actually, I did. But then I got up and danced.

Tango and the state of “estar”

When learning Spanish, one of the ways of explaining the difference between 'ser' and 'estar', two forms of the verb 'to be', is that 'ser' is for permanent states and 'estar' is for temporary states. In English, there's only one. “I'm a man” and “I'm happy”. One permanent, one temporary. But in Spanish, you say 'estoy feliz', and right there, before the words are even out of your mouth, the language is already reminding you “but don't get used to it.” Of course, the opposite is also true. “Estoy triste”, but that's okay. That, too, shall pass. I love this philosophical notion in the Spanish language: Whatever it is that you feel, its opposite is always lurking! Tango is that state of 'estar'. Shadows moving through; the fleeting and the flitting, as permanent as a plate of 'fiambres' after a night of dancing.

And so it goes. We come to another country and it's easy to feel superior and to naively want to 'get with the people and support them against their evil governments and meanwhile, my own country is being dismantled from the inside out while we passively allow it. Oh sure, people are signing shit, and there's a whole heap-a clicking and 'liking' going on, but where are the hundreds of thousands of people in the streets outraged as our country becomes a shadow of its former self?

I don't need to cry for Argentina. There's plenty to cry about at home...

The Toronto Zoo (The Lalo Blog).  In spite of having the gratitude and letters of support from high ranking officers in the Canadian military for heroic service in Afghanistan, the Harper government has denied visas to two interpreters, Sayed Shah Sharifi, and Esmatullah Meherzada, because it doesn't think the Taliban has any reason to want to kill them. Asked to comment, Minister of Immigration, Jason Kenney, said “So the interpreters sided with the Taliban's mortal enemies of the West. So what? I don't think the Taliban are the vindictive types...are they? I hear they're the pussycats of the Middle East.”

Getting Stephen Harper to comment publicly on the matter has been pretty well impossible, but he knocked down a couple of old ladies and a kid in a wheelchair to get to the podium to talk about his excitement over the Chinese Pandas who have just been allowed entry.

“Unlike Afghan interpreters, Pandas can generate revenue and are worth their weight in leaves when it comes to public relations,” Harper said.

Pressed to comment on the issue of the interpreters, Harper said, “We'd let them in, but then we'd have to cage them, and the upkeep of the Panda's is cheaper.”

Besides, said Kenney, we're training the Panda's in Middle Eastern politics and languages and we hope to have them ready to deploy to Syria or Iran, whichever we invade first. Frankly, it will be nice to bring the Pandas back after that. I promise I'll be fully available to the media for questions about the immigration of the Farsi-speaking Pandas....”

You've been hearing a lot about Idle No More, no doubt, since it's taken on the complexion of an Occupy Wall Street from the olden days, at least in social media years - which is somewhere between dog years and the gestation period for mice - and it can be tough to figure out what's going on, because once you've run a complex issue through the political pundit mill, the information can take on the consistency of those sausages you're loathe to see getting made.

And so you might be wondering through it all, did Chief Spence lose weight on this hunger strike, or didn't she? Well, she'll never tell, but discrediting minds want to know. And it never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to derail a serious discussion in this country. All it takes is suspicion that your liquid diet was prepared for you by Lance Armstrong for the credibility of an entire issue to be tossed out.

So let me it recap it for you, as free from nuance as I can manage: Children in Canada are living in the kind of squalor that would lead a Martian to think that they've landed in the slums of Haiti, except that it's minus 30 and the water isn't as safe to drink. So Idle No More is a grass roots movement for  good reason. It's less concerned with assigning blame - because leadership on ALL sides have some serious responsibility to bear - and more concerned with the actual despair that's being suffered. They're Idle No More because enough is enough. If government leaders had to live in Attawapiskat, I think they'd be pretty motivated to find some solutions. Or at least a process that's actually processing something and not just existing because, you know, it would be a shame to let all that letterhead go to waste.

When the Idle No More movement started picking up steam, I was excited to see that SOMEone was standing up to Stephen Harper and his omnibus, let me stick whatever I can into this fat, unwieldy, I can hide whatever I want in this thing, bill. And while I'm deeply offended at the slow-erosion of a socially progressive Canada that used to be so much of the country's identity, I'm also not living in the aforementioned squalor, so my effrontery has been limited to a Woody Allen-esque brand of kvetching to whoever would put up with the nuisance, and I'm now banned from the number 10 bus in Vancouver, so thank you Stephen Harper. (I mean, y'know, it's just one more thing...)

So Idle No More starts as a response to Bill C-45, stuffed like a pinata with rotten candy, that affects environmental protection laws, which in turn affect waterways that pass through First Nation reserves, that ultimately affect the path of certain pipelines....Huuuh, ...are ya with me here?... It's just one more say in how First Nations govern their land that Harpersaurus wants to get rid of.

So when Idle No More started as a response to that, well, I was glad that something a little more forceful than idle rants on the bus was starting to unfold.

And it looks like a lot of non-natives felt the same way, because it didn't take long before support grew and other Canadians got on board with the protests. And while they're likely amenable to First Nations' concerns, I think what's giving it momentum is a lot of bunched-up anger that's been looking for an outlet. So I think it's perfectly appropriate to have an omnibus protest for an omnibus bill.

Feminist groups that find themselves fighting long dead issues that have risen again like they're part of the conservative zombie apocalypse; Social Justice groups, and environmentalists have all been slapped in the face. It's like Harper can smugly dare us to do anything because it's against our polite natures to fight back. Hey, “polite no more”. Hm. I kinda like it. Do you?

For the video version for the Vancouver Review, follow this link:
http://vimeo.com/59623918

NORTH VANCOUVER (The Lalo Blog) - In his desire to leave nothing to chance after expelling Iranian diplomats from Ottawa, Canadian Foreign minister John Baird is cutting ties with North Vancouver, which is known to be home of a sizeable community of Iranians. "it's guilt by association, plain and simple," said Baird. "I mean, surely you don't expect me to talk to these people." 

Also being investigated is the mayor of North Vancouver, who is being accused of providing safe haven for doctors, engineers and tango dancers, which are known proclivities of Iranian Canadians. As to why he is making this move now, Baird cited unrest in Iran from a year ago. "I didn't need the excuse at the time, but now I do, so I'm using it, so there. Next question."

When asked what would replace diplomatic relations in Iran, Baird replied, "We're going to bomb the shit out of them."