Dog Story

Meet Flaco (pictured). I saw Victor Medina's photo of his dog in a coffee shop and immediately fell in love with Flaco. I contacted Victor and he gave me permission to use his picture as a mascot for our shows. And, with his permission, here is how he tells the story of his dog, Flaco:

“This is a picture of my dog, named "Flaco" (Spanish for ‘skinny’). In Mexico, where I grew up playing soccer in the streets, it was friendly to call someone ‘Flaco’ or ‘Gordo’ (fat). Seriously, it is okay and friendly to call your friend ‘Flaco’ or ‘Gordo.’ I’m an equine veterinarian working with my wife Dr. Nicole Eller-Medina in a practice and on our horse farm. Flaco is a Standard Poodle/Wired Hair German Pointer mix. I work part time in a small animal hospital, where we do some surgeries for the Tri-county Humane Society (spays and neuters). It happened that one day I got there and there he was. I asked who was the owner of such a cool dog and I was told that he was from the Humane Society and was available for adoption. That day he came back home with me. He is an absolutely wonderful dog who makes me laugh a lot. When I think about it, it was some kind of love at first sight. I took this picture a month after he came home and was playing with our other dogs. He was looking so funny that I had to get the camera and shoot some pictures.”

Children seem to know all about this, but, by the time we're adults many of us have had it shamed out of us. I'm saying I'm falling and have fallen for Flaco, and find joy in his unambiguous, playful and stout heart. Some athletes have this. Don't heroes in the folk tales have this?

And, I admire Victor and the tenderness of heart he has for Flaco. I figure that anything I can do to keep this heart alive in myself and others, I hope to do. Probably, those who have these hearts and wish to keep them must have fierce protection strategies. I think we have to look out for that nasty Lord Byron and his admirers. Some women fall for Mr. Byron and his ilk, and usually suffer for having done so. I think we must have our shield of virtue clearly in place, and, if anyone reaches to diminish or eat our hearts, we can do a quick Aikido move.

I can't attribute it (help me if you know where this comes from), but I think it is true that there are at least three times when it is important to be gullible. (1) When I am with my art, (2) when I am with my lover, and (3) when I am with my God. Artists, lovers and the pious I trust seem to know that nothing happens without this vulnerability. I think this is true.

I don't want to be Lord Byron. I don't want to be "cool" in the way he was cool. I don't want to be cynical, world weary or ironic. I want to be just like Flaco, and do just about everything with that feeling that Victor has for Flaco.

Dogs figure prominently in world folk traditions. I stumbled upon this Welsh folk reference to Gelert, and this story about Saint Guinefort, the dog revered as a saint by a never officially recognized "cult" of the Catholic Church, until it was suppressed in the 1930's.

See more of Victor's work on his web site.

Grandfather's Throne

It was probably six years ago when I was in a busy copy shop in Uptown Minneapolis one morning and chanced upon my dear friend "David," with a little girl at his side, as they were on their way out after making some copies.

He gave me permission to tell this story.

That day, he gave me a warm smile and introduced me to his granddaughter, “Charlotte,” who gave me brief acknowledgement with a quick glance of her eyes. David was in his customary sweater and slacks. Charlotte, probably five years old, kept an imperious air. She had dark hair and eyes, and wore a crisp cotton dress with a belt, white socks and dress shoes. She clutched a doll in one arm. Her other arm was poised, lifted up from the elbow with her wrist tilted back slightly, and her fingers half open and pointing vaguely upward in kind of a regal wave. As I was introduced, she continued to maintain a private space between herself and her grandfather, giving me an impatient but gracious nod, but keeping her head tilted toward her grandfather as if they were being interrupted and were just about to resume their tender private conversation.

I felt a little left out. I usually got much more attention from David, but he, too, seemed to be waiting in suspension for the next sweet moment between himself and his granddaughter, and didn’t talk with me like he usually did. He explained to me while keeping his eyes on his granddaughter, “We’re having a day together…we have places to go…”

We chatted very briefly a bit longer. Then, I wished them well and bade them goodbye. Watching them leave, I vaguely wished I was going along with them, perhaps as a footman who would hold a hand as they alighted from a carriage or dash ahead to open a door.

At a small dinner party this past weekend, I told this story to our other dear friends, our hosts, whose son is expecting his first child, soon. This will make our friends first time grandparents. “I think there is something marvelous about to happen to you,” I said to our friends.

Then, last night, I saw my friend David again. Talking together, I reminded him about what happened in the copy shop long ago, and how his granddaughter was a grand princess sitting on her grandfather’s throne. David got a big heartfelt grin on his face as he remembered that day. Then he said of his granddaughter, who is now two months shy of twelve, “She doesn’t need her grandfather’s throne anymore. She has her own. She’s an amazing young woman!”

Do I need to say more? I pay attention to stories like this and carefully tuck them away for moments when they’re needed. I didn’t receive what Charlotte got, and yet I’m asked to give it. Many of us didn’t get what David gave his granddaughter and yet we are asked to give it. I have two grown daughters. No grandchildren yet. No hurry, I tell my daughters. But, when and if they come, I think I know what to do.

© 2011 Cristopher Anderson

All Rights Reserved

Heartbreak and Reassurance

Driving in the car to a Dancing Heart gig a few weeks ago, I asked my car mates if they wanted to hear some new music. Yes, I hear them say. I warn that it is folk music and that it can be intense. I hear, What – are we not intense?

Then I start the title cut from the Hungarian folk group Muzsikas of their 1982 LP/CD Nem ugy van most mint volt regen…(It Is Not Like It Used To Be). The snarling double bass breaks the silence and lays down a defiant, rhythmic line, going on like this for some moments. Then, over the bass, a tight, insistent, ornate fiddle twirls and tumbles like a bird startling and vaulting from the trees. After these two have established their flight together, on top of this, the moment is seized by the flat unadorned earthy plaints of traditional singer Marta Sebestyen. The three go on together in this way, unambiguously, for all to hear.

Then, car mate Peter reacts, “Oh my – heartbreak and reassurance at the same time…” The music is startling, bald, bold as a hero, sensual and knowing. The New York Times called it, "Ebullient...raucous."

Muzsikas is an extraordinary group with a performing, touring and recording career that started in 1972. They are responsible for carrying forward folk music traditions that otherwise would have been lost. I first came upon them when I bought their remarkable CD Maramaros: Lost Jewish Music of Transylvania at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

I think I’m saying the obvious when I say many folk music players, singers, dancers and listeners go to the folk literature of stories, music and dance for a kind of soul food. We go for something that connects and nourishes us, through participation, to memory, emotion, beauty, and a sense of belonging. The music of Muzsikas can help engender this for me.

The folk corpus, taken as a whole, I believe, is about integrity – how to get it back after you’ve lost it, at a personal, interpersonal, village and larger level. I think it’s about how to make things whole. The Jungians and mythologists have written much about the dense psychological material embedded in the folk tales and sagas, and they show how they might be teaching stories, relevant to personal and community life. Intact indigenous peoples take care of their cultural stories as alive, precious and usually private, and involve themselves with them as a central part of community life.

I hunger for the feeling of integrity and wholeness, and I get glimpses of it now and then, and some of my deepest experiences of it can happen when I’m playing, singing, dancing or participating in a story. And that is why I keep coming back to the music, songs, dance and stories. And I keep hoping that I stay vulnerable to those flashes of beauty that might split my heart open to moments of communion with who and what is around me. Maybe the rich life is that lived with others inside a participatory folk opera of good heart?