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Barrio Tango: A piano, a fan, and records on the wallAbout once a week it will pour in Buenos Aires. It is a characteristic of the weather in this small part of Argentina which as a whole is experiencing its worst drought in fifty years. The sun is blocked out by a white sky which filters the light so that patches of the city may be more lit up than others but the light is flat and dull, though in a way that makes plants look better than buildings which seem more drab in the cool air. Last night it was raining as hard as I have seen it here and I went out at around this time (2 am) to San Telmo, the neighborhood that everyone says looks more European than most parts of the city. I had been to a market there before and can attest to the difference but at night I didn’t see it. All I saw were dark streets punctuated by yellow lamps diffusing their glow through the downpour. I pulled up to a very nondescript location and tried to find the address my friend had texted. It was a scratched up black door in what was the front of a building but what I remember as a brick wall.
Inside was a tango school—of course closed now but not very busy during the days either, I was told—where people were dancing and drinking. From the door I walked through a brick-walled hallway with no ceiling and saw practice rooms on my right. There was dancing and drinking going on in the furthest room and I mainly moved between there and the largest practice room the entrance of which was lit up with a pink spot light. Inside there were chairs, a few records on the wall, a mirror at ground level, and a piano. Whenever someone would enter the pink hue that the spotlight threw on the piano would disappear for a second and then return. As the rain continued to rinse the city my friends along with Argentine musicians and artists listened to tango, milonga, and more that I can’t place.
It was a great night and I hope I’ll remember it but certain things may grow fuzzy. The conversations, the look of the place, the smell, the sound. I didn’t bring a camera here so I can’t take pictures, but in the age of facebook the issue of the photographic experience is not so much the feeling one gets from having a picture as it is about the feeling they get from taking one. My friend brought his camera along and I’ve added one of his pictures here. I like the idea of posting pictures other people took because it shows how they wanted to remember a moment that we both experienced but in different ways. So that is it.
