Wednesday, September 25, 2013
You've Seen That Face Before ....
When my sister tried to teach Frank to tango, once in our living room, he'd brought over a record of tango music. (Astor Piazzzola?!!! I laughed!)
Orchestral!!!
We'd skip through the cuts ("Not THAT one! That's too fast for a beginner .... "Libertango" )
We wouldn't settle on Oblivion, but something in between that had a slow lead in and quickly built in rhythm.
But it all sounded like string laden movie theme music then.
We'd play "Hernando's Hide-away" instead!
"We're teaching modern tango!" I'd have to explain, that other stuff is classical movements and arcane dance study. Who knew how they danced then? Not me!
(Can't you just see them? Dancing in the living room?)
Frank could get the top part moving okay, but then he'd trip over his own feet even in a simple walking movement right about "silhouette" ... but he could get the quick head turn just perfect ... and the angle of holding his arms ... but he couldn't, you know, "float on a floor."
He knew it, too, and would be a little embarrassed, I could tell because his cheek would literally be slightly red and his mouth would be straight.
He knew how to sing, though, and always pulled himself up to perfect posture when he did, he'd throw his shoulders back, he made himself into a perfect "T" with square shoulders... so the air could fill his diaphragm ...
And he was smart enough not to move around too much when he played a musical instrument, as you get sloppy in your notes when you wiggle.
(And me .... I'd use words like "campestral" or "buccolic" to describe the scenery when we rode in cars through the pastures to the little markets to pick up food now and again. Though sometimes on a very long drive, I'd have to throw in a "pastoral" towards the end.)
We'd laugh about diacritics, the "Os-sent grah-hh-v" and glaces and tildes on the liner notes of foreign records. Frank was fond of umlauts probably because they reminded him of nostrils and his own moustache (Ummmmm..... der Umlaut! Those pretentious German ogg-zents were the funniest to both he and I. Und ve'd singenze Pop zongs eeen HIGH! TENor lak Fischer-Discau tremulous heh heh heh! All to practice der sprechenze.)
(I even showed Frank the mustache comb with a little handle made from ivory that my mother still owned, which belonged to one of her relatives ... and the ancient folding funeral fan belonging to one of her aunts that was jet black. And the huge family Bible from the South that her grandmother had started writing the baptismal records in and there was a geneaology page showing dates of birth and dates of death for family members).
He was FUN! He was so creative!
(Even now, he can be fun just remembering him. So you can pick out your favorite pop song of the sixties, the one you know all the words to, play it, and sing along in your best imitation of a German accent. Because that's the kind of stuff we did., even the ones coming out of the radio on the car. This could be
"A Happening".)
¶ 9/25/2013 10:53:00 AM
Orchestral!!!
We'd skip through the cuts ("Not THAT one! That's too fast for a beginner .... "Libertango" )
We wouldn't settle on Oblivion, but something in between that had a slow lead in and quickly built in rhythm.
But it all sounded like string laden movie theme music then.
We'd play "Hernando's Hide-away" instead!
"We're teaching modern tango!" I'd have to explain, that other stuff is classical movements and arcane dance study. Who knew how they danced then? Not me!
(Can't you just see them? Dancing in the living room?)
Frank could get the top part moving okay, but then he'd trip over his own feet even in a simple walking movement right about "silhouette" ... but he could get the quick head turn just perfect ... and the angle of holding his arms ... but he couldn't, you know, "float on a floor."
He knew it, too, and would be a little embarrassed, I could tell because his cheek would literally be slightly red and his mouth would be straight.
He knew how to sing, though, and always pulled himself up to perfect posture when he did, he'd throw his shoulders back, he made himself into a perfect "T" with square shoulders... so the air could fill his diaphragm ...
And he was smart enough not to move around too much when he played a musical instrument, as you get sloppy in your notes when you wiggle.
(And me .... I'd use words like "campestral" or "buccolic" to describe the scenery when we rode in cars through the pastures to the little markets to pick up food now and again. Though sometimes on a very long drive, I'd have to throw in a "pastoral" towards the end.)
We'd laugh about diacritics, the "Os-sent grah-hh-v" and glaces and tildes on the liner notes of foreign records. Frank was fond of umlauts probably because they reminded him of nostrils and his own moustache (Ummmmm..... der Umlaut! Those pretentious German ogg-zents were the funniest to both he and I. Und ve'd singenze Pop zongs eeen HIGH! TENor lak Fischer-Discau tremulous heh heh heh! All to practice der sprechenze.)
(I even showed Frank the mustache comb with a little handle made from ivory that my mother still owned, which belonged to one of her relatives ... and the ancient folding funeral fan belonging to one of her aunts that was jet black. And the huge family Bible from the South that her grandmother had started writing the baptismal records in and there was a geneaology page showing dates of birth and dates of death for family members).
He was FUN! He was so creative!
(Even now, he can be fun just remembering him. So you can pick out your favorite pop song of the sixties, the one you know all the words to, play it, and sing along in your best imitation of a German accent. Because that's the kind of stuff we did., even the ones coming out of the radio on the car. This could be
"A Happening".)
¶ 9/25/2013 10:53:00 AM
