The mermaid´s dance

"I know what you want," said the sea witch; "it is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess (..)Your tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what mankind calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw. You will still have the same floating gracefulness of movement, and no dancer will ever tread so lightly; but at every step you take it will feel as if you were treading upon sharp knives, and that the blood must flow. If you will bear all this, I will help you.(…)”

She had never danced so elegantly before. Her tender feet felt as if cut with sharp knives, but she cared not for it; a sharper pang had pierced through her heart.(…)


Hans Christian Andersen


Today I went back to a dancing class, after a year of not being able to do any sports. The doctors said it is fine to go back to do whatever I want, and I just want to believe it. But it is not their back that hurts.

I joined a beginners contemporary dance class. After a year my body has changed, I have put weight on, my joints ache and my back keeps killing me, every day, every moment of the day.

I did contact for three years and contemporary dance for one. I was not particularly good or amazing. But now that I am back, every single little movement hurts. Even the simplest of the movements feels so much harder and difficult, more difficult than when I took a dancing lesson for the first time a few years ago. And I suddenly remember Andersen´s little mermaid, not the Disney version, but the real one. And I realise that the words he wrote a hundred years ago, that I read maybe 20 years ago, had remained somewhere in my brain, waiting to come alive.

I lie down and feel where my body gets in contact with the floor. And I feel the pain, radiating from the centre of my back, following my ribs, wrapping around my chest like a big long cuddle of a hurtful lover. We move around on the floor, moving in ways very different to normal life movements, and my joints start complaining, sending me silent messages through the nerves only I know about.

We stand up, we bent and allow our upper body to hang, and the spine breathes and the air comes in between the vertebrae in a painful kind of relieve. We keep bending and straightening up. I am familiar with this pain, when I bend to pick things up from the floor or I get up in the morning.

Then I lift my arms and we start moving them around. And different parts of my back muscles complains depending if they go up in circles, or straight, or around, or if they stay up on the side…

Working with the feet is such a relieve, and then we move on to a beginner choreography. And we have the music, and we dance a bit, mixing together all the elements with the different parts of the body, and we roll on the floor, and then stand up, and bend, and move our arms and bend our upper body and go down on the floor again and jump…And joint after joint complains, and all the muscles in my back find a moment to remind me of their existence.

Suddenly I can visualise the Little Mermaid dancing along this very same music, floating on cutting sharp knives. And I know exactly how she feels. I might not be the prettiest human being, or move as lightly as a dancer…but I know how it hurts and I am an expert at setting my heart on the wrong person. And something inside me moves with the music, and my dancing, and her dancing, and the sharp knives on her feet, and the huge axe across my waist, and the pang that pierces your heart and the blood that only you can see.

The class is over and I change. It is frustrating to have to start not from the beginning, but from a point before the beginning. I mix a couple of pain killers with some water and can’t find my little mermaid any more. She is probably back to being a daughter of the air. She still has two hundred years to go to find her soul. She still has hope, and so do I. After three fractures in my back, I might not float around like she did, but I am still dancing. And I smile, for her to count one year less of her three hundred.

Click here to read The Little Mermaid

Gay wedding/ Boday gay

Last weekend I went to a wedding in the middle of Spain, in Cáceres, where you can find one of the most beautiful historical towns.

I went there four days after comig back from New York, not knowing where I was or what for. I met some friends I had not seen for a year, and I danced and cried and ate and drank and flirt, in an outdoor night wedding next to a medieval castle, with flowers scattered all around, and a fountain, and lovely live music, and a great video that my brother made for the grooms, and beautiful speeches . The theme was The wizard of Oz and on every table there was the name of a movie to identify yours. Even when I still hate weddings in general, framing myself in the usual affected wedding mood, it was a great wedding. Despite the fact of it being a very expensive posh one. ( I told you, I don't like weddings)

I asked my friends if it was going to happen what usually happens to me in the gay weddings of my male gay friends: all guys are gay, all girls are straight...In the end it was a mixture of people, and I was more interested in sharing time with my friends, who I left here last August,than in anything else. However, when my brother was booking a room for me in the very posh hotel I told him to put somebody in the room with me to share the cost, and his answer was "Sorry, we all come in couples". And I said " Excue ME"

So there I was, for two nights... no, for one night and a half, in the big room of a posh hotel, on my own. I never go to posh hotels, unless I am with the band, and then there is two or three of us in each room. I told my brother I wanted to change the hotel for the youth hostel in town: it was 50 euros difference and, at least, you can go to the main hall and there is always somebody wanting to chat, but he persuaded me to stay there with the rest of the group. The group that shared a room with their partners in their expensive rooms next to my lonely bed.

I am used to go places on my own, particularly after NY. And I go places and I meet people. I am not obssesed about finding a partner, it somehting that happens, but I think about true love. My brother says I am just naive and stupidly innocent. Not so long ago, I developed a crash on a teacher, and it was great, because it was just a simple naive innocent honest thing with no intention of anything beyond, and it reminded me that sometimes, you meet somebody and something tickles inside you; it reminded me that there is always the chance that you might still meet that person that makes your eyes sparkle. It reminded me that love is something different from the guy that you pick up on a bar one night or the silly chats you have when you flirt with somebody that is ok and could be something, but who does not really matter.

I could not avoid feeling a bit odd. The odd number in between the even group of happy couples. An odd person in an odd place with odd clothes. I don´t have the type of clothes you wear in a posh wedding where people wore exclusive designer clothes. My concert clothes are winter clothes and are not so flashy and desginer like. I have a much better time in a burningman event, sleeping in a tent where my cajon and me don´t fit together, or at a BM party dressed like Isis wearing a couple of wings. I should have gone there with my Isis wings. But, instead a wore this old-fashioned top that my mum had made for me 15 years ago and fixed for me, and this nice skirt that is elegant but did not quite go with the top., and sandals because my nice concert shoes were coming from NY in a box...

So there I was, dressed a bit odd and not caring about it, which was also odd; feeling a bit odd; looking at places in an odd way like if I had just arrived from another planet...And then I realised that the oddity really came from inside, from something that was struggling not to die, like a big odd fat warm biting big chunks of something in my stomach.

And it´s all because, even when I am absolutely over the moon sharing time whith my friends and the people I love, NY hurts.

Back from New York / De vuelta de Nueva York

I feel so much older. Not just two years older...but much older.

Maybe I am just more mature.Maybe I just see thigs differently.
All the struggle, all the great things, all the struggle, all the challenges, all the struggle, all the dissapointments, all the struggle...
What an amazing place, what a lot of incredible things happening, what a lonely ride in the city.

Now I am back, and it seems I just slept for two years and I opened my eyes to my old life. But something is different.
And I could sit down and cry. I could cry for hours and hours, about all the things that happened in the last 15 years, about all the things that could have happened, but never did. But they are just old tired tears over an old story.

And I just look out of the window, when everybody is sleeping, and feel a tiny summer breeze breaking the heat coming from the tar in the street. And I remember, and I wish, and I hope...
I hope for the things that will happen, and for the things that will never happen. And I dream


Me siento mucho más mayor. No dos años más mayor... sino mucho más mayor.
Tal vez solo soy más madura. Tal vez solo vea las cosas de manera diferente
Toda la lucha, las cosas maravillosas, la lucha, los desafíos, la lucha, las decepciones, la lucha...
Que sitio tan increíble, cuántas cosas pasando, qué pedazo de viaje solitario por la ciudad.

Ahora he vuelto, y parece que he estado durmiendo durante dos años y acabase de abrir los ojos en mi antigua vida. Pero algo es distinto.

Y me podría sentar y llorar durante horas. Podría llorar durante horas y horas, por todas las cosas que han pasado en los últimos quince años, por todas las cosas que podrían haber pasado pero nunca pasaron. Pero son sólo lágrimas antiguas por una historia antigua.

Y simplemente miro por la ventana, cuando todo el mundo duerme, y siento la brisa de verano que rompe el calor que viene del asfalto de la calle. Y recuerdo, y deseo, y espero...
Y pienso con esperanza en las cosas que pasarán, y pienso con esperanza,en las cosas que nunca pasarán. Y sueño.