“You can’t walk straight when the road bends” — Romani Proverb
It all started in New York City.
A friend of mine from Brazil, a Tarot reader, reminded me while chatting on Skype that soon it would be the Gypsy festival. I searched nervously through the busy pages of the weekend section of the New York Times. Immediately, I found what I wanted, bought tickets on line, and rushed to the Lincoln Center where I watched the Albert Maysles music documentary in the style of Buena Vista Social Club, A Gypsy Caravan.
I was with a girlfriend from Brazil, a drama actress, and we both cried our hearts out watching the saga and the touching life stories of all the musicians of the joyful troupe during their world tour. They started in a small Romanian village, passing through Berlin and other European cities, India’s Rajasthan and desert, and finally ended in California and New York.
The next week, after spending two incredible hours in the West Village in the charming atmosphere of the vintage 1980’s theater, I went absolutely wild! Flamenco icon and world-renowned dancer Soledad Barrio drove me mad when she danced at my feet during her New York performance of Noche Flamenca. As I was sitting right in front of the stage at the same eye level as hers, and crossing glances with her more than once, my heart could not stop pounding from such emotion, rage, seductive power and dangerously intense charisma. Tobi Tobias, journalist and critic from the Village Voice later said, “Impelled by will and imagination, Soledad turned herself into an engine of arousal and destruction.”
On my way back home I decide that I should book my flight to Seville before it’s too late. Do not ask me what it is too late for. Just book. After all, I must visit my family and it’s my mother’s birthday.
I am at the airport on my way to Malaga from Brussels. My mother secretly stashed two bottles of water in my Luis Vuitton backpack; she’s sure I will dehydrate after she saw on the news that the temperature in Andalusia is 120 degrees Fahrenheit. While I notice that the water made its way through my Spanish Passport, iPod with Paco De Lucia downloads, E-tickets, BlackBerry phone and hotel confirmations, I also notice two kids with caps almost coming out of the brilliant Mexican film-maker Alfonso Cuaron movie Y Tu Mama Tambien looking at my high heel sandals, or my knees, or maybe my short cargo skirt while I try to save the rest of the belongings in my overly hydrated bag. I know what they are thinking and my desire is to tell them that I watched the movie too, but fortunately their father arrived and yelled something in Spanish like a secret code, (as if for some reason he also watched the movie) and made them go furtively do something for their impatient mother, theoretically forgetting about my presence.
I am about to land. The view from the airplane window shows my mother was right. Looks like it’s really hot. I probably do not care. Taxi, please take me to where my origins await me.
“Senhor, are you sure your air conditioning works?”