All We Have Is Twelve Beats

En el cristal de mi copa

Tu cara

 Se reflejó

Letra por tangos flamencos

I don’t like mirrors and avoid them if I can. They are, of course, a necessary evil. But I have never been friends with my face, body, or clothes. By the time I turned thirty-something I learnt how to live in them and with them, and sometimes even derive something like enjoyment from them. But looking in the mirror always makes me uncomfortable and nervous. It’s always like meeting a stranger, and knowing that you and she won’t like each other.

And yet I spend one evening a week in front of a mirror. I hide far, far behind, so that I can’t see myself very well, only a dark blur of movement. I should probably look at my reflection, but I don’t. I look only at my teacher. I have spent hundreds of hours by now staring at her, trying to absorb her every move. I’m very bad at imitation, but I feel the rhythm. The flamenco rhythm is the implacable clock, chopping off the moments left for me to live. Twelve, three, six, eight, nine, ten. Twelve, three, six, and eight nine ten. No matter what happens in between, no matter what chaos unleashes itself, no matter how deep we dive into the strangeness and confusion, and something like a defiance, and something like sorrow, we take a breath on the ten to re-emerge on the twelve. There is always a twelve, the beginning of the cycle, which illuminates everything.

I would have loved to smelt my body and mould it into a copy of my teacher’s, placing exactly in time and space every movement. I cannot. My reflection is always different, hasting, or lagging behind, my arm or my head or my foot at a different angle. But the twelve, the twelve is always the same. Synchronic. The beginning of a new cycle, where everything begins anew.

All we really have is time. Time is the only thing we can give. We pay with time for everything. There may be price tags, but there is little clarity on what is worth how much, measured in our time. This clarity comes with many repetitions, trial and error. It comes with age. The older I become, the firmer is the road under my feet, and the softer the wood under the metal toes and heels of my Spanish shoes.

I saw myself in the mirror once, when I was alone and there was no-one to hide behind. The guitarist was playing, and I was playing along, practicing the footwork. I saw myself clearly for the first time. A thin tall figure dressed in black. I looked into her eyes. Perhaps we can be friends one day, after all.

Written by Tatiana Sokolova

Week 41, October ’20

Tatiana Sokolova is a collector and classifier of ways of knowing and expression – the very things which often defy classification. She is a researcher, a little bit a photographer, a little bit a writer of short stories, and wholeheartedly  una aficionada - a lover of flamenco song, guitar, clapping and dance. She lives in Stockholm with her intercultural family.