Before being a tanguera, I was an economist. I was interested in community-based economics, crafts and craftspeople. I’ve become one of the people I used to study. I work with my hands, my body, my creativity, my spirit. I integrate mind and body into my craft. It’s a beautiful and meaningful life. I do what I love and hope that eventually this will become a sustaining livelihood.
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I have an addiction. I live scrambling from high to high. As an addict I’ve made irrational decisions, devalued myself and everything around me, hurt people who loved me. I threw away a secure and promising career. I abandoned my home, my friends, my work. I slipped into the trade, with no reasonable hope of financial success. I called it “art”. Like any addiction there are highs and lows. I had fantasies, and made some of them real for a minute. Like many addicts, one day I woke up in a grungy apartment feeling like I’d been hit over the head. Fluttery images of the life I left behind taunted me and I couldn’t quite figure out what had happened. The lows are like waves with intense points and deeper ones. Like any addict, I’m searching for a better hit, a purer product. Sometimes I get it, a great dancer passes through town and I ride that wave in bliss. But the deeper story of the wave is that I’ve reached a point where there aren’t many people in the world who I want to dance with.
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Which of these stories is true? I don’t know.
