On An Old Partnership: 11/6/22
“Missed the Saturday dance/
Heard they crowded the floor/
Couldn’t bear it without you/
Don’t get around much any more”
“Wow, you really knew that song!”
“Oh, it’s a favorite. Who can complain about dancing to Ella?”
Truth is: I’ve listened to versions of that song during every breakup of the last decade.
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“Don’t Get Around Much Any More” is a song about disinterest in life following the end of a love affair. How do we acknowledge that?
We can barely agree on dancing “fast or slow” before the contest begins. Can we tacitly ask consent to take the tone and lyrical content of a song seriously in its first moments?
Instead we trade on the connotations of jazz standards as classy and elegant, pretending there are no words.
I’m working on being more particular with who I dance these kinds of songs with socially, to show the same level of intention with respect to music as I did in tango.
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“Thought I’d visit the club/
Got as far as the door/
They’d have asked me about you/
Don’t get around much any more.”
The bartender at our favorite tango venue never remembered my name. He’d always greet me as my drink order, and the same old question: “Whiskey Ginger! How’s Carolina?”
And in every conversation I joined at the milonga: “Have you heard from Carolina recently?”
Carolina and I shared nearly eight years as dance partners, outlasting several romantic relationships. We spent multiple nights a week racing back and forth from milongas in Santa Cruz and San Francisco (which maybe explains why those relationships didn’t work out).
There are songs, books, places, that will always be tied to this person in my mind, the same way I probably always will be tied to her in the minds of our community.
How can you explain the importance of someone who saw you become the person you are today, from age nineteen to twenty six?
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“Been invited on dates/
Might have gone, but what for?/
Awfully different without you/
Don’t get around much any more”
One of my tango teachers would say that tango is enjoyable, but it’s not fun.
A fellow dancer put it another way:
“You can come to tango broken with no expectation that you should be made whole.”
