I am first and foremost using this posting to announce the founding of Soluna, a salon intended to help people as they follow their own Way.  This means I am also writing about what the Alexander Technique can contribute to our global and personal development, not only because Soluna will have an Alexander vibe, but also because helping people follow their own Way is the heart and soul of the Alexander Technique.  But this post is also about Alfred Stieglitz and the history of salon culture.  The life and work of Alfred Stieglitz help illuminate certain key characteristics of what good Alexander Technique "teachers” and good salons should be like.  His life is far too abundant for even the vaguest description to fit in a blog post of this size, but I want to touch on a few things that stand out for me in relation to what Soluna will be and to what Alexander Technique “teachers” in general should be.  On a personal and global level we need revolution.  The Alexander Technique can help best if those “teaching” “it” understand some of the dynamics that Stieglitz’s life and work make clear.  Soluna will actively appreciate and nurture these dynamics.  The goal of this salon is to inspire, invigorate, embolden, and empower people as they discover and do the things they know (or sense, or suspect) that they are meant to do.  If you are reading this, it may be because we have invited you to participate.  The discussion about Stieglitz and salon culture will give you a sense of the spirit Soluna seeks to embody.  At the end of the posting you’ll find a few details about Soluna and you can email your R.S.V.P.
    Let’s begin with some reflections on Alfred Stieglitz.  The first thing to recall about Stieglitz is that he started making photographs when photography was not yet accepted as art.  Indeed, many argued it was specifically NOT art.  Stieglitz fought hard to gain proper recognition for this fascinating medium, in the process becoming a technical, aesthetic, and cultural pioneer.  For instance, he made the first successful photographs of night, rain, and snow (thought of as technical impossibilities at the time); he helped to develop and evolve the aesthetic sensibilities of photography through, among other things, the founding of the Photo-Secession and the publication of Camera Work; and he helped get photographs exhibited on equal footing with other works of art.
    The next thing to recall is that art in general was going through some big changes (revolutions) as well.  Stieglitz not only championed, fostered, and contributed to the evolution of photography, but he also had a big influence on the spread of “modern” art to the U.S. and the development of very new modes of expression in the art of the U.S.  The gallery he helped to found, 291, was a truly magical place.  It was one of the very first galleries to introduce modern art to the U.S., through a series of rather scandalous shows.  Although Stieglitz may have always viewed his work with the Photo Secession, 291, and Camera Work as part of the growth of art in general, he made a decision to transcend any paradigm that restricted these outlets to photography alone.  As Shieb tells us, a young artist came to Stieglitz seeking advice.  As he looked at her work, he felt that it “illustrated exactly what [he] was feeling at the time,” and so he “decided then and there to show her work.”  Cherchez la femme.  In a good way.  In fact, in a very interesting way, because that artist was Pamela Colman Smith, the woman who went on to create the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck (Rider was the publisher, Waite was the esotericist who commissioned the work and presumably provided some sense of what he wanted––but the artist made all the images).  Starting with that synchronistic decision to exhibit Colman’s art, Stieglitz became decisively involved in the avant-garde, not only in photography, but in painting, writing, and other areas of the leading edge of culture.  
    For instance, Picasso’s very first one-man show in the U.S. took place at 291.  The critical reaction was––reactive.  One critic wrote that, “Any sane criticism is entirely out of the question . . . the results suggest the most violent wards of an asylum for maniacs, the craziest emanations of a disordered mind, the gibberings of a lunatic!”  Reactions to two earlier shows, of works by Rodin and then Matisse, were pretty much the same.  The Picasso show had the artist’s drawings for sale at prices ranging from $20-40.  Only one drawing sold.  Picasso had done it when he was 12.  Stieglitz felt so bad he bought an additional drawing himself.  The entire collection could have been had for about $2000.  Would have been quite an investment, eh?  Stieglitz was vociferous in arguing for people’s support of living artists, but not as an “investment” of course.  He felt that people should buy the work of living artists as a way to nurture the growth and development of those artists and thus of art itself.  Dead artists don’t need support the way living artists do.  Thankfully, Picasso managed to get by.  Incidentally, an issue of Camera Work that came out several years later presented a comparative look at the development of the work of Picasso and Matisse.  Stieglitz wanted a special text as literary accompaniment for this retrospective, but couldn’t find just the right thing.  Then, with typical synchronistic timing, an unpublished author came to him with a manuscript she had submitted to every publisher in town without success.  Stieglitz read it and decided it was perfect for this special issue.  It was the first time anyone had published anything by that author.  The author was Gertrude Stein.
    Stieglitz also put together at 291 the first exhibition of African sculpture displayed as fine art rather than anthropological specimens.  That was 1914.  The following year he put together an exhibition that featured work by Picasso and Braque along with a wasp’s nest and a reliquary figure of the Kota, a Bantu ethnic group from Gabon.  This juxtaposition provoked consciousness about relationships like art and nature, Western and African, naive and academic.
    Importantly, Stieglitz let the power of 291 work on HIM.  In 1907, Stieglitz was in Paris and went to a gallery that was showing Cezanne watercolors.  In his words he saw, “what appeared to be pieces of blank paper with scattered blotches of color on them.”  On being told the pieces were 1000 francs, Stieglitz replied, “You must mean for a dozen.”  In 1911 Stieglitz welcomed many of these same watercolors to 291.  His response was new:

The box of framed Cezanne’s was opened, and, lo and behold, I found the first one no more nor less realistic than a photograph.  What had happened to me?  I realized then what the years at 291 had done for me.

    Clearly 291 was, as I said, a magical place.  As such, it attracted a wide variety of artists from all fields, including such luminous figures as William Carlos Williams, Marcel Duchamp, Waldo Frank, Carl Sandburg, Isadora Duncan, and Theodore Dreiser.  Some of these people merely passed through now and then, others were regular visitors, and a social circle developed around the place.  Something about Stieglitz himself, his love of art, his desire to see art grow and to nurture in any way he could the art and the artists.  One of those artists, John Marin, tried to explain Stieglitz and 291 this way:

The Man and the Place

Quite a few years ago . . .
there got to be—a place . . .

The place grew—the place shifted––for
when the door was closed the place was where this man was.
This statement will have to be altered––juggled––or built upon––
for the man is quite apt to say
“You don’t get it.”

Let’s see––This place shifted.
Shift is quite a word––a here––there––everywhere sort of word.      

—Shift—is something that cannot be tied—cannot be pigeonholed.
It jumps—it bounds—it glides
—it SHIFTS—
it must have freedom.

 . . . you have here an intangible word––a spirit word . . . .

It seems those who do that worth the doing
are possessed of good eyes—alive eyes—warm eyes—
it seems they radiate a fire within outward.

The places they inhabit have a light burning—
a light seen from near and far by those who need this light—
and this light sometimes dim—sometimes brilliant—never out—….

A place that is never locked for those who can produce a key.
A place that is never locked to anyone––
anyone can enter and walk about––
but if one got nothing then the Inner remained closed––
they hadn’t the key.   

To realize such a place—
a very tangible place was and is this man’s dream.

 

I appreciate the poetic quality of Marin’s attempt to capture the spirit of Stieglitz’s work.  I also like the way Georgia O’Keeffe put it:

“There wasn’t any other place where people were not doing just academic things, and the things that you saw at his place moved you off into the world, just like his conversation did.”
    
“It was the place, when you thought of something that would help you to take your own road, that was the only place you could go to find it.”


The bit by Marin and these two quotes from O’Keeffe fundamentally embody both what a good salon and what a good Alexander Technique “teacher” should be.  This is why you go to an Alexander Technique “teacher”: to be in a place that will help you take your own road.  Here, then, is one reason why “teacher” is best put in quotes.  No one can really teach you to be you.  A “teacher” of the Alexander Technique helps you to discover yourself, helps you awaken your eyes, helps you to move off into the world, helps you to answer your highest calling and follow your own way, and helps you release in your way of being a state of inspiration, a state of empowered receptivity, a beginner’s mind, a light touch, a fiery passion, a deep Love, and an abiding fearlessness.  The “teacher” simply creates a space in which you can do this, and, hopefully, has these qualities in her hands, in her body-mind, as much as possible.  This place you go to get help for following your own Way, it shifts, it has freedom, it IS freedom, never locked away from you, never completely dark.  The Alexander Technique “teacher” must be this place.  Soluna will be this place.  YOU are this place.
    I want to take a few moments to consider the power of the salon, which to me also indicates the power of the Alexander Work.  One way to define the Work is to call it “the Art of being together.”  We can look at it as an embodiment of Buber’s I-Thou relationship.  There are many ties here to art, and I am thinking specifically of photography.  Recall the opening quotes by Stieglitz.  Or this one from him: “When I photograph, I make love.”  Or consider John Daido Loori Roshi’s book of photographs, Making Love with Light.  Or one of his photographic koans: Show me Love.  Or Minor White’s commandment:

        Be still with yourself
        Until the object of your attention
        Affirms your presence

In all of these gestures we can sense the I-Thou spirit, the spirit of being-with, the spirit of reverence and Relationship and Love.  I am even thinking of sohbet.  Soluna will embody this I-Thou sensibility.  But all I am pointing out here is that the aesthetic and the mystical share a sense of intimacy and interbeing which might make it natural for someone like Stieglitz to find within himself the savoir faire for creating a salon.  It also suggests why salon culture helps human beings get in touch with Life and with their deep connection to Life’s mystery.  Salons can nurture remarkable things.
    We might not see it that way at first.  As Malcolm Gladwell points out, “We are inclined to think that genuine innovators are loners, that they do not need the social reinforcement the rest of us crave. But that's not how it works, whether it's television comedy or, for that matter, the more exalted realms of art and politics and ideas.”  He cites the work of Randall Collins, author of The Sociology of Philosophies.  Collins claims that the number of major thinkers in all of history who were true and genuine loners can be counted on one hand.  As Gladwell puts it, “Everyone else who mattered was part of a movement, a school, a band of followers and disciples and mentors and rivals and friends who saw each other all the time and had long arguments over coffee and slept with one another's spouses.”  Even in the case of someone who founded a movement, say Freud or Aristotle, the movement really begins to grow when the group dynamic starts to nourish it.  Gladwell emphasizes that, “Collins's point is not that innovation attracts groups but that innovation is found in groups: that it tends to arise out of social interaction--conversation, validation, the intimacy of proximity, and the look in your listener's eye that tells you you're onto something.”  
    Gladwell uses the original cast of Saturday Night Live as a prime example of Group Think.  But he also cites more intellectual and artistic examples.  He discusses, for instance, a book by Jenny Uglow called, The Lunar Men.  It details the original Lunar Society (to which Soluna gives a nod), a remarkable salon founded by Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles.  This network of friends included Mathew Boulton (big time industrialist), James Watt (of steam engine fame), Wedgwood (of pottery fame), and Joseph Priestley (of chemical fame).  They met at every full moon, and in between meetings they corresponded heavily, offering advice, encouragement, insight, and excitement.  “What were they doing?” asks Gladwell:

    Darwin, in a lovely phrase, called it "philosophical laughing," which was his way of saying that those who depart from cultural or intellectual consensus need people to walk beside them and laugh with them to give them confidence. But there's more to it than that. One of the peculiar features of group dynamics is that clusters of people will come to decisions that are far more extreme than any individual member would have come to on his own. People compete with each other and egg each other on, showboat and grandstand; and along the way they often lose sight of what they truly believed when the meeting began. Typically, this is considered a bad thing, because it means that groups formed explicitly to find middle ground often end up someplace far away. But at times this quality turns out to be tremendously productive, because, after all, losing sight of what you truly believed when the meeting began is one way of defining innovation.
    
    Uglow tells us, for instance, that the Lunar men were active in the campaign against slavery. Wedgwood, Watt, and Darwin pushed for the building of canals, to improve transportation. Priestley came up with soda water and the rubber eraser, and James Keir was the man who figured out how to mass-produce soap, eventually building a twenty-acre soapworks in Tipton that produced a million pounds of soap a year. Here, surely, are all the hallmarks of group distortion. Somebody comes up with an ambitious plan for canals, and someone else tries to top that by building a really big soap factory, and in that feverish atmosphere someone else decides to top them all with the idea that what they should really be doing is fighting slavery.

    
We can safely put aside the notion of one-upmanship.  No need to think of people trying to outdo each other.  Rather, there is simply a synergy and an excitement, a wonderful energy that feeds every member of the circle, and an opening to the forces that guide us from the outside.  Human “thinking” is not exclusively accomplished from the inside of skulls.  Our intelligence is not only embedded in the whole of the body-mind, but in the whole of the environment––the whole of the cosmos even.  At any rate, this excerpt from Gladwell bears good news for Soluna, and not just about opening our minds to where our intelligence lies and what our potential is.  There are at least two other key notions, related notions, that are important for Soluna.  First, no one can be sure what it will actually be.  Second, it may turn into something quite astounding, as long as we keep a beginner’s mind.  In his essay, “The History and Meaning of Salons,” Benet Davetian echoes the same sentiments: “It does not take millions of people to change social reality.  Salons of previous eras have shown that it takes only a handful of creative and concerned individuals to trigger large scale positive change.”
    But I want to finish considering some of the historical dimension of salons.  Salon.com has a wonderful nutshell history of salons by Gary Kamiya on its site.  If we consider the spirit of the salon to be Gladwell’s Group Think, or, as Kamiya tries to capture it, “the search for knowledge through conversation with others,” then the roots of the salon are the roots of human culture.  Kamiya goes back to ancient Athens, noting that Socrates might very loosely be considered the founder of a salon circle.  Perhaps Plato would have written an ode to him similar to Marin’s ode to Stieglitz.  Kamiya reminds us that, at about the same time Socrates was flapping his jaws in the Acropolis and in those wine-soaked symposiums, there was a remarkable woman who seems to have created one of the first true salons in the West.  Cherchez la femme.  Again.  And in a really good way.  Again.  The woman in question was Aspasia, mistress to Pericles.  She was a member of a class of Greek women known as hetaerae.  Something like orians (predecessors of the geishas), these were usually ex-slaves or ex-pats set apart from ordinary women because they were educated, they were extremely talented, and they were not only allowed to voice their opinions at symposiums and elsewhere, but those opinions were respected.  Yes, by men.  Crazy as it may sound.  
    It turns out that feminine energy has consistently nurtured salon culture.  The first “official” salon was founded by an amazing feminine presence, and it became the archetype for salons that sprang up all over Europe in subsequent years.  Here’s how Kamiya tells it:

    In the early 17th century, the behavior of male aristocrats still reflected the idea that physical strength and military prowess were a man's most important virtues. Around 1610 a young noblewoman, fed up with the prevailing loutishness, did something unprecedented: she abandoned Louis XIII's court and set up her own "alternative space." The Marquise de Rambouillet remodelled a mansion near the Louvre, creating a suite of adjoining Salons, or large reception rooms, culminating in her sanctum sanctorum, the so-called chambre bleu. In this room (also known "the sanctuary of the Temple of Athene"), the marquise received her visitors from her bed.
    
    De Rambouillet's Salon was the first of what the historian Mary Beard calls the "feminine institutions of civility" that were, for two centuries, "the greatest single influence in developing civilized social behavior, promoting lucidity of written expression, and inciting talents to flower in arts and letters." Her Salon, and the famous ones led by the Marquise de Sé vigné , the daringly sensual Ninon de Lenclos, Madame de Staë l and others, were attended by the great writers and thinkers of their day.

Whew.  Feminine energy as “the greatest single influence” on society and culture . . . hmmm . . .  Instead of electing a President, maybe we should be electing a salon.  We all know that Presidents are only as good as the group they choose to surround and support them.  So why not let us elect a group, a salon, with a woman at the helm?  If we had set this country up the right way, the NORM would be the election of a woman to head the White House Salon, and we would now perhaps be entertaining the question of whether or not a man could handle the job.  We really botched things up.  Proves that you DO need to know some history.  And learn from it.
    The importance of feminine energy in the history of salons specifically (and human culture in general of course) is honored in the name Soluna, and we are fortunate to enjoy the presence of feminine energy in many ways.  Not only do we expect passionate women to attend, but we are blessed with a fabulous hostess, the lovely Nicola Skidmore, and we enjoy the Love and support, and hopefully the regular presence, of the marvelous Sera Beak.
    I would like to briefly give a sense of Soluna’s structure and values.  Well, the values have been made clear throughout this posting  These values and the structural principles of the salon are derived not only from the history of salon culture, but also from the principles of the Alexander Technique.  For one thing, Soluna will almost always involve Alexander Work.  Participants will get a little touch of Alexander Work at the start of each meeting, and possibly at the end and in the middle as well.  There are two major reasons for this.  The first was already made clear above in the comparison between Stieglitz, great salons, and the role of Alexander Technique “teachers” and the Alexander Technique.  Alexander Work helps us get in touch with an I-Thou orientation, it opens us to inspiration, it calms reactiveness, it helps us be free, it helps us be what we are.  The second reason connects to the understanding of the Work I share with Aldous Huxley.  I have often cited his 1941 article in The Saturday Review of Literature.  There Huxley pointed out that in the entire history of humanity only two reliable solutions had been developed for the problem of bridging the practical and the ideal: mysticism and the Alexander Technique.  Of Alexander’s principles, Huxley wrote that they made it,

possible to conceive of a totally new type of education affecting the entire range of human activity, from the physiological, through the intellectual, moral and practical, to the spiritual–an education which, by teaching them the proper use of the self, would preserve children and adults from most of the diseases and evil habits that now afflict them; an education whose training . . . would provide men and women with the psycho-physical means for behaving rationally and morally; an education which, in its upper reaches, would make possible the experience of ultimate reality . . .

This may sound rather effusive.  But I think it’s quite a reasonable assessment.  The crucial caveat lies in the current crop of “teachers” of the Alexander Technique.  I don’t think we will enjoy the full extent of these promising benefits until more teachers submit themselves completely to the deeper and wider demands of the Work.  I am not saying we have to be able to LIVE those demands just yet.  I would never claim to be able to do that myself.  But I would want to be able to say I have submitted to the demands, which I take to be an essential step on the pathless path to the fulfillment of the highest human ideals and the most intimate “experience of ultimate reality.”  
    I don’t mean that to sound as patriarchal as it might.  This “submission” is a joyful surrender, something empowering and opening and freeing and humorous, something completely natural and human.  It is not without risks and dangers and challenges, though.  This pathless path does not “culminate” in a no-person.  But for anyone to think they will be themselves plus wonderful strengths and insights and feelings of Love and Compassion is, I think, a bit misguided.  The You on the other shore is not the you with which you are familiar.  Some of the surrender ends up being a giving up, a letting go, a dropping away; other parts of the surrender end up being a flourishing, an awakening, a growing strong.  This holds for anyone, not just Alexander “teachers.”  In conjunction with whatever your Path is, if you take up the Alexander Work with a sincere willingness to let it help you as you follow YOUR Way, you will indeed find yourself venturing into the unknown.  
    There is another connection to Alexander Technique principles that may seem odd in light of this discussion of fulfilling our ideals.  Alexander felt that one of the main problems in trying to fulfill our ideals is the attempt to fulfill our ideals.  In other words, we try to DO it.  The doing way of being is the central problem.  Even if we seem to have “good ideas,” these are as nothing compared to a simple and direct connection to our lives, an intimacy with Life from moment to moment.  Alexander had a word for doing our ideas.  He called it end-gaining.  End-gaining is his term for the critical human problem discussed by Krishna in the Gita, Buddha in his sermons, and Rumi in his poetry.  It appears again and again in countless religious and mythological images, stories, and parables.  It is Buber’s I-It orientation.  It is what Lao-tzu would call acting in ignorance of Tao.  Soluna eschews end-gaining.  It is conversation for the sake of conversation.  The lead question in Davetian’s essay on salons is, "Why Bother Talking With One Another?"  Why bother starting a salon?  Why bother coming?  Davetian ponders the issue and offers some insights:
    

    We are perhaps one of the most informed civilizations in history. It is a wonder that our minds and nervous systems have managed to handle all the information coming at us from a myriad of sources. The invention of trains, airplanes, radios, telephones, televisions, computers, and the internet have literally transformed the meaning of being 'in tune with the times.'
    
    Yet, this feast of 'facts' and 'data' has exacted its toll. While it has increased our mobility, personal autonomy and privacy, it has greatly diminished our sense of community and the means available to us for 'making sense' of our world with the help of similarly-interested individuals. More importantly, it has tarnished our ability to appreciate inspiring conversation for its own sake. Pressured by a scarcity of time, the need to continually update skills, and a life very often overpopulated by hundreds of 'convenience' and 'entertainment' products, we find ourselves evaluating human relations based on 'bottom-line' goals. Will this meeting with so-and-so be 'useful'? Will we arrive at a 'conclusion' if we talk things over...If not, then why bother? What are the 'opportunity costs' of conversing just for the sake of it?
    
    Winning back our ability to talk with one another (as opposed to talking 'at' one another) is the ultimate and most precious goal of a salon.
    
    It is in such environments that great ideas are born . . . and where people find the energy to have a positive influence on the world.

Any salon can foster good ideas.  But we have had enough good ideas.  Good ideas won’t save us.  We have all the ideas we need it seems.  What Life demands now is our ability to LIVE our ideals, to embody them, to body them forth moment to moment in our way of being.  This is the real Work of Soluna.  “Winning back our ability to talk with one another” means “practicing the Art of being together.”  It means “cultivating a state of inspiration.”  It means “following our own Way.”  It means, to quote Trungpa Rinpoche, “the essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery,” which in turn means:

refusing to give up on anyone or anything.  We can never say that we are simply falling to pieces or that anyone else is, and we can never say that about the world either.  Within our lifetime there will be great problems in the world, but let us make sure that within our lifetime no disasters happen.  We can prevent them.  It is up to us.  We can save the world from destruction, to begin with.

To begin with.  To me that implies it must enter our way of being, from moment to moment.  If it’s in our way of being, it’s there to begin with, and we don’t have to try to DO the solutions.  We will BE the solutions.  This does NOT mean “doing nothing.”  This does NOT mean we have no style to our character.  It means touching Life with OUR hands, with OUR particular gestures, with OUR way of moving.  But, to begin with.  Not the added stuff.  Not the reactions.  Not our idea of what we are or what is right and wrong, no matter how well grounded it seems.  Experiences that become “knowledge” are just ideas we have awarded a pedigree.  Experience that IS, as knowing (not knowledge), as connection, as in-the-moment-activity without the traces, alive in the unknown, that is a beginner’s mind in an expert body.  Those are the bodies that will sit in Soluna’s loving circle.  Even if they don’t see it.  Nonetheless, that is how they are seen, by Life and by those open to clear vision.
    The best way to understand what Soluna will be is to participate in its emergence.  It will be what the members are.  It will accomplish the mysterious things that are most needed right now.  It will begin in conversation, juicy conversation, challenging yet compassionate conversation, conversation that touches Life, including the suffering we see in every direction.  From our being together, what needs to be done will get done.  We start with that article of faith, and doubt it with every fiber of our being so we can see if it’s true or not.  We invite you to come and see if Soluna can inspire, invigorate, embolden, and empower you as you discover and do the things you know (or sense, or suspect) that you are meant to do.  See if Soluna can help you on your way, and if it can help you to do the same for others.
    There will be two Soluna salons: the Red and the Gold.  Soluna Red will start with an evening dedicated to Rumi.  Soluna Red will usually be oriented toward poetry, literature, mythology, and religion.  Our favorite goddesses there include Sophia, Isis, Kali, Kwan Yin, Lakshmi, and Aphrodite (the list could go on).  It will be a bit like sohbet, but different.  Soluna Gold will always be performance and exhibition oriented.  Our favorite goddesses there include Sarasvati, Athena, Terpsichore, Erato,  Kwan Yin, and Benzaiten (the list could go on).  Soluna Gold is a place for artists, musicians, and dancers to take part in salon culture in a way that is anchored in performance and exhibition . . . a bit like 291, but different.  We'll invite a few gods to both salons too, like Hermes, Dionysus, and Shiva.  Apollo, if he promises to behave.  Eros, if he promises not to.

For more information or to R.S.V.P. email nickolasknightly at comcast.net

References for this posting:

Perry Miller Adato, Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye

Benet Davetian, “The History and Meaning of Salons”

Malcolm Gladwell, “Group Think”

Gary Kamiya, “A brief history of Salons”

Dorothy Norman (ed), The Selected Writings of John Marin

Brooke Schieb, “Alfred Stieglitz and Gallery 291: A Modern Art Revolution Before the Armory Show”

And, of course, Wikipedia.

    The knights of King Arthur’s court were seated at table and Arthur would not let the meal be served until an adventure had occurred. And, indeed, an adventure did occur. The Grail itself appeared, carried by angelic miracle, covered, however, by a cloth. Everyone was in rapture and then it withdrew. Arthur’s nephew Gawain stood up and said, ‘I propose a vow. I propose that we should all go in pursuit of this Grail to behold it unveiled.’
    
    And so it was that they agreed.  There comes a line that, when I read it, burned itself into my mind: ‘They thought it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group. Each entered the forest at that point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest, and there was no way or path.’
    
    No way or path! Because where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path. The romantic quality of the West derives from an unprecedented yearning, a yearning for something that has never been seen in this world. What can it be that has never yet been seen? What has never yet been seen is your own unprecedented life fulfilled. Your life is what has yet to be brought into being.                

                                                                                                
    Let’s first set the record straight.  Or at least argue for some kind of balance.  Maybe Campbell sketches out some accurate cultural impressions.  But we are getting the portraits in profile only.  The East is full of mavericks, and the wisdom traditions of the East are very specific about ways and paths.  To take one example, Lao-tzu tells us, “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.  The name that can be named is not the eternal name.”  This first line contains enough connotation in the original that translators have a hard time choosing how to bring it out: “The way that can be weighed is not the eternal Way,” or “A way that can be walked is not The Way.”  If you can walk it, it’s not the Way.  The path emerges in the walking.  The path is the HOW of the walking.  It is the answer to, WHO is walking?  None of this can be said.  The path is everywhere, just “go to the places that scare you.”
    This sets the tone for what we can consider if we consider Tango as Way.  No one has to be a “dancer” to consider Dance as metaphor, especially if we begin to see that we are all Dancers, even if we aren’t dancers.
    Considering Tango as pathway to Bliss, we can learn a thing or two from Campbell’s retelling of this critical moment in the Arthurian Romance.  One is that we must make sure we conscientiously and compassionately confront the dark places within.  Tango takes us there.  We can repress that stuff, and still learn how to dance.  You can have great technique, and even fairly decent expressiveness without becoming a Dancer.  There is a difference between dancer and Dancer.  To become a Dancer, you have to go to the places that scare you.  You have to confront the dark forests of your soul and of humanity.  There is a big difference between learning how to dance on the one hand, and taking up Tango as Way on the other.
    When we take up Tango as Way, we have to keep our eyes open to a big danger: instead of Pathway to Bliss, Tango can easily become Pathway to Spiritual Materialism.  We easily fall into wanting things from tango: intimacy, romance, sacred partnerships, deep friendships, confidence, calm, poise, grace, beauty, charisma, spiritual insight.  While all these things are possible, they are more likely to come if we aren’t attached to them.  On the other hand, becoming attached to them creates all sorts of trouble.
        This is part of what keeps Tango our own path.  Consider that dark forest to which Campbell refers.  If everyone is entering at the darkest place, how do they still end up entering on their own path?  Because each of us has our own set of dark places.  Our dark places share lots of commonalities, but our culture, genes, family life, and more make the forest appear different to each of us, and what is a terrifyingly dark place to one person is almost bright and sunny to another.  Tango becomes more and more OUR path as we confront the fears and desires specific to our ego, including its spiritually materialistic impulses.  As a result, we end up dancing more and more like ourselves.  Tango becomes our path of unique growth AND unique expression.  No one can Dance Tango like you.  The secret is to let your expression come through without DOING it.  To dance without any ideas of dancing.  To BE the Dance.  That is a totally unique phenomenon in the universe.  Just as we can all recognize the voice of Elvis Presley, so too can we all recognize your Tango Walk.  It contains the whole of you, including your intimate understanding of Life.  The more we confront those dark places, the more our unique Tango shines.

    Let’s consider Tango as Pathway to Bliss by receiving the insights Antonio Machado passes to us through his “Proverbs and Song-Verse.”  This piece comes in ten parts, numbered with Roman numerals and set in italics.  The commentary after each section can only be thought grossly inadequate.  Because it might hint or provoke, one hopes such commentary can be excused.  The main thing is to get out there and Dance.


I.

Why give the name of roads
to the furrows of chance? . . .
Anyone journeying walks
like Jesus on the sea.

Tango, the walking dance . . . how could we ever name its path?  Call it the most living dance, the most fertile dance, the dance of those who desire more than anything to bear witness to this life.  What impossible synchronicities brought you to Tango?  What are the odds of finding such a dance in the far-flung Cosmos?  You and Tango found each other.  Count your blessings.  Then walk the rich soil of an Earth graced by Tango, sow the seeds of rhythm, walk out onto the waters leaving behind the shore you know so well, the shore you thought you loved.  Cross over to Love unimagined, Mad Love, Mad Living, Mad Walking, Mad Dancing: “When Jesus’ family heard what he was doing, they thought he was crazy and went to get him under control;” “And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.”  Beside oneself, with no self besides.  Jesus was Dancing and they though him insane.  And you, Sweet Magdalen, I have seen that red dress on so many women at the milongas---you inspire their every step!   Ask any martyr, ask any true apostle: Tango is ecstasy!       


II.

Sing along with me: what we know is nothing;
we’ve come from an arcane sea, to an unknown sea we’re bound . . .
And these two mysteries hold a deep enigma between,
three chests locked with an unknown key.
Light illumines nothing, the wise have nothing to teach.
What has the word to say?  Or the water in the rocks?

Ikkyu, the Red Thread Dancer, says the same: “I’d love to give you something/but what would help?”  What has the word to say?  “What d’you expect a mouth to say?  What can it tell you?” cries Zorba the Tanguero, Zorba the Buddha, Zorba the wild dancing heart of the Cosmos.  I’ll just hold up this lotus and wait for someone to smile; I’ll just embrace this beautiful being and wait for the world to sigh in relief; I’ll just enter these waters and let the moon move my inner tides.  We were always wise.  We were always happy.  We were always in love.  We were always within Love, and it was always within.  Tango came to remind us.


III.

Teresa, fiery soul!
John of the Cross, flaming spirit!
It’s very cold hereabouts, good saints;
our sacred little hearts of Jesus need lighting.

How can we find our true Beloved?  We have to burn.  How can we burn?  We have to move in stillness.  The compass of the heart is a compass of fire.  It guides each step to fall in the right direction.  When each step falls in the right direction the Dance finds its way to the hidden kingdom and brings its treasures into the field of time for all to see.  I stood body to body with a woman glowing Red, and something inside me began to blaze.  The whole world glimmered in the light of our sacred little Tango, our sacred dancing hearts.


IV.

Last night I dreamed I saw
God, and was talking to God;
and I dreamed that God was listening . . .
And then I dreamed I was dreaming.

Last night . . . I cannot explain this, but I took God in my arms, and She Danced with me.  It was a moving conversation.  What do you say to God?  We spoke only of the most profound things.  I said, “Now I am breathing in, now I am breathing out; now I am falling here, now I am falling there; this step, this step; just this, just this.”  What does God say in return?  She says many things which I cannot put into human speech, so limited is my understanding of Her.  Many things She says are sublime, but She has two terrifying questions: “Where are you?” and “Who are you?”  When She asks these, you are no longer allowed to use words.  

You cannot imagine the feeling of Dancing with God, of asking Her to Dance, shyly admiring her black dress with its high slit and her red shoes with their high heels.  My arms reached out, but She was already within the reaching.  She was not inside the embrace, She was the embrace itself.  She was not led around in the dancing, but she was the Leading and Following.  She was everything revealed in the light of this two minute Tango.  But I WAS leading God.  I was.  And She followed.  Yet I received the Leading from Her.  She Lead THROUGH me.  I never found this in a church.  Then, out of nowhere, I wondered how She could be there in my arms.  And She went beyond what I thought I could ever understand: She showed me that She was inside my heart.  Inside my heart!  But I have always tried to Dance my heart’s wisdom.  I have always tried to dance the joy and pain it feels.  What AM I?  Am I a human being dreaming God lives in his heart, or am I God dreaming of living in a human heart?


V.

Every man has two
battles to wage:
in dreams he wrestles with God;
awake with the sea.

There is a scene in The Tango Lesson . . . the character Pablo and the character Sally stand in front of a painting of Jacob wrestling with an angel.  In the dreamworld of Tango, we wrestle with gods and goddesses, with angels and devils.  We embrace the other as a co-conspirator in the con-game of opposites, precious companion in the Work to unify them.  We become not only Jacob, but also Job.  We become not only Dancer, but also Acolyte.  Not only Acolyte, but also Alchemist.  Not only Alchemist, but Alchemy itself.  Dear Job, please don’t cry that you are a piece of lead!  I am too!  Our lives are the stuff of alchemy, our dance is the dance of alchemy.  The dance is the vessel, the Divine is the fire.  

The Tango Cambalache (The Bazaar) goes like this:


There always have been thieves,
traitors and victims of fraud,
happy and bitter people,
valuables and imitations . . .

 . . . Mixed with Stavinsky, you have Don Bosco . . .

 . . . Like in the disrespectful window
of the bazaars,
life is mixed up,
and wounded by a sword without rivets
you can see a Bible crying
next to a water heater . . .

Take an almost random counterpoint . . . listen to Trungpa Rinpoche, giant Tanguero of Tibet:

Samsara and Nirvana

A crow is black
Because the lotus is white.
Ants run fast
Because the elephant is slow.
Buddha was profound;
Sentient beings are confused.

Which is the dream?  Samsara or Nirvana?  Go on and ask, What is it?  Go on and ask, Do I dare?  Yes, you dare!  That is the thing to do in the dreamworld of the Tango, in its moonlight, in its utter darkness when that moon becomes New.  Waking from this dream, more daring than ever, we walk the ocean of our lives, embracing the storms, the hard rocks along the shore, the ebb and flow of tides.  The music puts courage in the blood: courage to leave the shore of the known; courage to stand at the masthead, undaunted when the Sirens sing; courage to sacrifice what we think is the best part of us so we can pass through the ordeal of Scylla and Charybdis; courage to LOOK, deeply into the wine-dark abyss, deeply into the nature of water and wave.  Oh, you beautiful waves, why do you wrestle with the sea?
   

VI.

Wayfarer, the only way
is your footsteps, there is no other.
Wayfarer, there is no way,
you make the way as you go.
As you go, you make the way
and stopping to look behind,
you see the path that your feet
will never travel again.
Wayfarer, there is no way––
only foam trails in the sea.

Stopping and looking . . . stopping and looking even in the midst of the fastest dancing to accept my life, to embrace my life in its endless motion.  Stopping and looking behind me, under me, right now, the footsteps reveal: Was I there?  THAT MOMENT.  Gone.  Was I there, or at some imagined end?  HERE I AM.  I AM THIS.  Stopping and looking behind, I can say, there I have been, without trying to say where or for how long . . . not to try to PLACE it in time, because it is nothing but foam trails in the sea.  Can we compare the structure of the world to a bubble?  What will I do if the world is a bubble, if my life is foam on an empty sea?  I will go directly to the ballroom floor of enlightenment and dance there for the benefit of all beings, all shapes of sentience, every hovering butterfly: how delicate, how ephemeral, drinking from flowers, feeding off of the sun, crossing oceans like kings, migrating through every state of being to the state of inspiration.  The fear states that make us miserable vanish into the melodies, the grasping states that make us suffer get rubbed away by rhythm.  There is no way to the Way!  Just dances coming and going.  


VII.

Oh, faith born of meditation!
Oh, faith succeeding thought!
If one heart comes into the world,
man’s glass brims over and swells the sea.

I sit every morning under the cool leaves of the bodhi tree to prepare myself for the onslaught from Tango’s loving bow: flaming arrows aimed at the heart and the mind . . . or will they be lotuses?  I stand for an hour on a terrifying pair of wooden planks to ready myself for Tango’s strict judgement . . . or will it be forgiveness?  I hang upside down from a thick branch to steady myself for Tango’s blinding light . . . or will I be given new vision?  What happens when the thoughts stop for a minute, for a measure, for a single beat?  Oh, that fabulous being in my arms . . . she didn’t think, just for a moment she didn’t think, and that silence pried open my chest, gently yet unstoppably, and suddenly my heart entered the world, fully, for that moment.  I am still drunk from it.  The ocean keeps rising.  Socrates, you hard drinker and wild lover!  You only wanted to learn Tango!  Why all those foolish concepts?  Why those abstract questions?  Rhythmic contractions of the Mother give birth to every virgin soul; every loving heart enters the world on waves of music.


VIII

Two forms consciousness takes:
one is light, the other is patience.
One means shining a beam
a certain way down in the sea;
the other is holding out
with a pole or a line in the hope
of a fish, as fishermen do.
Tell me now: which one is better?
The consciousness of the seer,
watching in the aquarian deep
live fish flashing by,
fish he can never haul out,
or this accursed chore
of throwing up on the sand,
dead, the fish of the sea?


You offer to make me a fisher of men?  I know what you really want: to make me a Dancer of Men––and Women.  I accept.  I will become a Dancer of Life.  What shall we choose: to have or to be?  What shall we have: what we want or what we have?  Do we want to be right, or do we want to be present?  Do we really need to live in the known?  When you throw the fish onto the shore, you can cut it open and analyze all you want.  But where has the wild swimming gone?  How’s the analysis?  Do you smell the rot?  I’m asking because I’m not paying attention to that.  I just saw a dolphin leap into the sunlight, spinning like a galaxy, shimmering with life, wet with freedom and destiny.  My gaze followed him forty feet down, and there he let me look through his oceanic eyes.  Go ahead, play with your corpse.  I only want to know who drags mine around the dance floor.  I only want to die HERE, on my feet with music playing, long before I die, long before some great fisherman throws me onto the final shore.



IX

All passes and all remains;
but our lot is to pass,
to pass making roads,
making roads in the sea.

We can dance an ever shifting nostalgia, or we can dance the endless rivers of joy and pain.  What passes?  Nothing was ever here.  The dance never moves.  The floor moves under our stillness.  A mandala of sound and motion, shifting sand ground from the laughtears of a goddess dancing in her slinky dress, her secrets and memories crystalized to refract every perfect color.  Rolling time-wheels make stirring wind, and the Tango blows away.  More fleeting than any blossom, we become fragrant in its blooming.  Deities come to pick these flowers, to gaze at the colored sands.  Five on every side of the dance floor, one above, one below, and seven hundred more roaming among the dancers.  They listen to heartbeats speeding and slowing.  They listen to neurons firing inside the bodies and brains of the dancers.  They listen to breathing passing in and out, passing from the follower to her leader and back again, and then to another couple, and eventually to a shy man in a far away café who looks into the steam of his coffee and unconsciously dreams of dancing.  They listen to the sounds of the planets spinning and orbiting.  They listen to the sounds of birth and death.  They listen to the footsteps of my sadness.  

Sengai, who danced the Tango with a brush and ink, painted a rice cake, three generations before that dreamy dancer Magritte ever set eyes on a pipe, and beside the rice cake he painted the words: “Eat this and have a cup of tea.”  How many Buddha’s have nourished themselves on that beautiful rice cake?  Even as I tell you about it, somewhere in your heart you want to dance.  A Tango?  Will someone see you and say, Look at that!  Embrace that!  What passes?  What remains?  

A beautiful being leaned her body into mine one night, and it opened me in a way that still reverberates.  Not an echo I try to grasp.  No, it lives in me.  It lives in the whole universe.  She made roads in the cosmic ocean, and the ripples went out in every direction, as if she were a divine butterfly innocently making storms in far away planes of existence.  That leaning . . . it was not an act of romance or sensuality.  Or maybe it was.  That is irrelevant.  First and foremost it was an act of Love.  Mad Love.  Divine Love.  Ah, that leaning . . . it did not make my body buoyant, it made every body buoyant . . . it gave buoyancy to the whole of the cosmos.  

Today a sadness that has tracked my scent for days struck me like dark black jaguar.  Dazed, I stood frozen as it licked away my soul through the wound.  Suddenly I felt the mysterious body of a woman still leaning into me, and once again it reminded me of what I am.  My legs became more free.  I could move through my life again.  Still sad, but now dancing the sadness, even noticing its beauty: not a dark body, but an iridescent one, deeply glimmering with tones of red and blue.  I know this tanda will soon come to an end.  Another partner already awaits me.  Thank you for leaning into me that night, dancing martyr, dancing bodhisattva, dancing dervish who danced me into a barrel of wine so I could stay just a little drunk for the rest of my life.  Again!  Again!  I am nowhere near drunk enough!
 

X.

Think of it: a Spaniard
wanting to live, starting in
with a Spain on one side of him dying
and a Spain all yawns on the other.
Young Spaniard entering the world,
may God preserve you.
One of these two Spains
will make your blood run cold.


Imagine: a dancer wanting to dance, a lover wanting to love.  On one side, a Life dying every moment; on the other side, a life asleep.  Young lover, young dancer taking your first steps . . . may the gods and goddesses bless you, may the dakinis kiss your forehead and keep it floating in the sky, may angels and devils take your shoulders and keep them wide, may the earth Mother bear witness to your every step.  One of these two lives will make your blood run cold.  Ikkyu, our Red Thread Dancer, tells you which one: “self other right wrong wasting your life arguing/you’re happy really you are happy.”  Does that make your blood run cold: to imagine that you really are happy?  Not the happiness of the life asleep, but happiness in the midst of the Life that burns itself away, Life that dances joy and pain in full transcendence of every concept.  Let’s take Ikkyu in our arms . . . we can dance his own words back to him, improvising on his wisdom: no more philosophies dance one beautiful step/like a needle piercing a sore spot in your heart.  We don’t become fully ourselves until our heart lays itself bare.  It can happen any time, even during a two minute Tango:

Muchacho
que no sabes el encanto
de haber derramado llanto
sobre un pecho de mujer . . .

(Boy
that you do not know the enchantment
of having spilled tears
on a woman’s chest . . .)

Cry your tears on a man’s or a woman’s chest, let an arm wrap around your waist like a serpent that asks: Do you want to KNOW? WHAT do you want to know?  Does the thought of asking, really asking, make your blood run cold?  Nothing sets your heart ablaze like Tango, but only if you know why you dance.  Every tango dancer can leave the floor with blood that tingles.  Only a few will have hearts of fire.  We dance to save all sentient beings.  We dance as the mirror the Beloved holds up to gaze at Herself.  We dance so that spring will come.  We dance so that roses will remain red and clouds white.  We dance to do nothing else but dance.  We stand body to body with the present moment, and the universe becomes an intimate love affair.

Forget the books and speeches truth’s a razor
each moment dancing here you and I being here

Bliss.