Bye, Paco

By some crazy design of the universe, I fell in love with the song at a time when I stood quivering, shivering in the middle of two magnificent bottles of hypnotic tonic water. Entre Dos Aguas loosely translates to the same thing… between two rivers. I had heard the fading notes of the song at someplace insignificant and knew instantly that I wanted to make it mine.

The opening bass line of the song was an enchanted door that landed me in a sunny Mediterranean street. The beats that followed… they seated me on a comfortable stone by a broken fountain. Then the strums came. They unseated me expressly. I was transformed into a real woman of the earth- not the cold sculpture my soul calls home in reality. I was dressed in a vibrant, many-layered skirt. A voluptuous string of carnations lay serpentine in my hair. My face was suitably accessorised with pent-up emotion. I had my dancing shoes on- they would act as a leathern stylo through which I’d relate my story- and I was ready to present my case. Words have only ever failed me. But dance…

Is it possible to talk by dancing? And yet I dare swear that's how the gods and devils must talk to one another. The famous line by the manic, magnificent Zorba comes to mind.

So, I shut my eyes and let the tunes touch my skin. Like a balm, they slowly entered my blood stream, veneering my conscious with mystic myrrh. I cleared my throat and broke into a slow canter, covering all corners of the crowded plaza, appealing to anyone who would listen to my tale of confusion. Give me answers, I mumbled, ‘a solution!’ I flexed my fingers into symbols of deep grief, all the while executing simple pasos of pathos with my possessed limbs. My voluminous skirt flounced about as if trying to rid itself of an invisible resident evil.

And then came a point when I could no longer take the callousness of my audience. So, aided by the progressive aggression of the suddenly-rogue sonata, I became more vocal. I stamped my foot till my knees hurt, beat my chest till it turned red, reached for the Gods till my hands protested, twisted my hips till they impinged upon every surface of  indifference. Jumping, shuffling, slithering, shimmying, gyrating, waltzing with the twangs, the slides… My voice exploded in a moment of hoarse lucidity. This was ecstasy. I kept at it till the tune tapered off into nothingness. Exhaustion. Bliss. Lucidity. I would pick neither tonic, I decided. I would find my way forward in between the two rivers.

Some days ago, the wizard behind the song- Paco de Lucia- died. His heart stopped. Just like that. I remember watching a live concert video of the legendary flamenco institution, as he played alongside two other guitar greats- John Mc Laughlin and Ai Di Meola. The three of them, each equipped with a piece of wood and a few strings- were in the midst of building heavenly castles in the air. McLaughlin smiled, rapture oozing from every pore of his body. Di Meola nearly laughed with delight. But, de Lucia… he didn’t smile, he didn’t even move that much. He sat cross-legged on a stool- his trademark position- brewing distilled magic. As if it were the simplest of procedures. So, while his fingers struck great stories upon those strings, the master himself stoically refused to read his letters of rapture. He would not sip on his own magic brew, it seemed.

No wonder; his heart must’ve simply imploded with all the contained emotion.

Goodbye, Paco. Dethrone all those lyre-bearing angels in heaven and show them how it’s done.