In Russian mathematics classes, from junior school through college, we would get exam sheets with five problems. The fifth was always marked with a star. It was always a problem with a twist. If you solve the fifth problem, you get an A.
For reasons inconceivable to me, all my mathematics teachers tried very hard for me to get an A. They all believed that, with a little bit of determination, I would solve the fifth problem. This went against any rationality – I diligently solved the first four, always. But not the fifth. Not the one with the twist.
Ok, I must have solved it ONCE or twice, but fundamentally, I am a B student of math. Give me an algorithm, and I’ll solve the hell out of a problem. But as soon as you introduce a tiny little twist – that’s the end of the game.
For my Master’s microeconomics exam, I learnt how to solve Pareto boxes. I solved a dozen an hour. I went to the exam confident and excited about my Pareto-box solving abilities. But at the exam, the Pareto-box problem was with a twist. I spent 90% of the exam time trying to solve it. I failed. I broke a pencil in frustration. The remaining 10% of the exam time I spent on writing some random hasty mediocre answers to some questions about monopolistic competition which did not require any mathematics. I passed that exam by the skin of my teeth.
In other words, I learned the algorithm and followed it, but I had no clue on how to even begin to improvise.
There is a tendency to romanticize mathematics. I think mathematics is JUST a language, like any other. Mathematics does not contain anything in and of itself, it only represents things which it describes.
And yet, the language of mathematics is truly remarkable, because it describes infinity.
It was during my first college math exam preparation when I experienced this. I was messing around with some equations, something to do with integration and differentiation, and suddenly a wave washed over me. The air in the room solidified. I was staring at the sheet with formulae, and God was staring back at me (although I don’t think I believed in God). I remember I said out loud: ‘Aha’. It was a moment of insight. Some kind of a twist of consciousness, an experience which we have when we perceive acutely the power of artistic expression, when something clicks somewhere in our brain, and we are at awe. An absolute, perfect moment of infinity.
But I didn’t become a mathematics convert. I just couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Mathematics is a powerful language, but not mine. Alas, I did not inherit my father’s math gene.
When learning flamenco, we learn about duende. It can be described with mathematical precision as that same experience of infinity, which happens when some elements of the art form click together. It comes from the precision of time measure and melody pitch. It comes when things happen in unison, and you are pierced with a lightning of insight into something you cannot describe in any other language than music and mathematics.
I first experienced it after about a year and a half of learning dance, when we performed a guajira as a group and did a very simple footwork. It went something like ‘ta-ra-ta-ta, tam, ta-ra-ta-ta, tam (redoble), ta-da-ta, ta-ta-ta!’ And then silence. And in that silence the statement we had just made, completely in unison, without looking at each other, was still hanging in the air, quite palpably, and someone said, ‘Eso’, which in flamenco Spanish means, ‘Aha’ (approximately).
In flamenco, too, I am a B-student. I never get the fifth problem, the one with the star. But my teachers love me – perhaps for the expression of utter pain and dedication on my face, perhaps for the (for them endearing) earnestness with which I attack the foreign art form. Perhaps for showing up again and again, no matter how frustrating it is.
I learn the technique, I hone the choreography, but I have not learnt to improvise. My teacher says I am not ready. I am light years away from any problems with a twist.
The difference with math is, flamenco IS my language, even though I have no connection to its roots. And I don’t mind being a B-student forever. Although my dance teacher currently classifies us as ‘intermediate’, I know I am a beginner and always will be in the world of flamenco. And I don’t mind spending the rest of my life on it. Even if it will take me some time get to the A (improvisation), I know enough of the flamenco language to experience duende, equivalent of the infinity experience in math.
Written by Tatiana Sokolova
Week 48, November ’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.
