The morning after: "normal" life

Last night Cuerdas y Clavos had a show at Agua Verde in the U District and I'm certainly proud of putting on a flamenco show that was rehearsed and prepared and fun.  We all made mistakes of course - rhythms got lost, tempos got rushed, voices cracked, turns failed, but overall Ben, the singers, and I put on a good show for our friends who made up most of the audience.  It felt good to sweat and put more than "rehearsal" energy in to the dance pieces.  There were also, of course, many moments that for us as a group lost their magic because of the noise and distraction of the restaurant.  Rehearsal can bring quite a bit of duende in the focus of the living room environment.  It all balances out I suppose.

I drank wine, we ate Mexican food at a table in the corner at the end of the night, and we all parted ways after standing with our equipment and costumes chatting on the sidewalk.  I was exhausted.  We went right home and relieved our babysitter who had put Hudson to bed about an hour earlier, and I could barely bring myself to put on pyjamas and wash all my makeup off. 

Sitting on the bedroom floor and watching my son sleep in bed was possibly the most moving moment of the evening.  His still, contented face and his gently rising chest were all I needed to calm down and come back to my other reality.  And this morning, even though I was exhausted, I was so excited when Hudson woke up and looked up at me, immediately ready to jump out of bed and run around.  I missed him last night.  So we got ourselves ready for the day, we treated ourselves to breakfast at the Kona Kitchen, and walked home in the rain.  Normal life resumes. 

And then, there was Rubina's cante class this afternoon, which was a great way to look at dance and cante structure with the eyes of "the morning after" and review things that I need to work on.  Flamenco is a bottomless process and bottomless source of insight.  So we keep going...