Does she yearn to discover the secret to Julio Iglesias, Japan, or Jesus?
Here is a link to an intimate hotel in Punta del Este, Uruguay. La Posta del Cangrejo (http://www.lapostadelcangrejo.com/en/galeria.php) is where Julio Iglesias and I both stayed—separately, of course...the staff gave me a tour of the suite where he stays when he's in town.
It's fascinating what the universe sends your way when the time is right...I can honestly say that some of the touchstones in my life were never planned.
Well into my twenties, I was conditioned to uphold traditional standards in comportment. But in my newly adult life, I allowed myself to become receptive to the unknown and emotionally invested in new experiences. I seized and followed to its furthermost limitations whatever the universe threw my way...and yes, my willingness to venture into uncharted territory changed my life. I had long hair down to my hips and my dress size was 0. Dangling earrings and dark red lips were part of my signature dramatic style. There was a certain power I could wield given this ability to infatuate.
In a way, Strange Tango is my commemorative tribute to a fleeting time of youthful exuberance and physical beauty. In my meditative state of writing, I transposed, transferred—magnified—my reality into a heightened form of hyperreality and poured my passion into my work to create art. That is why I say Strange Tango is a literary work of art. By its very process, I could have been creating a piece of sculpture, or a painting...but instead it was a book.
As part of my experimental makeover, I began to indulge in activities that were fairly common for most people, yet for me out of character—such as waiting in line for Julio Iglesias' autograph. Was I obsessed? Yes, never before had I felt such passion welling within me, as though the powerful kundalini were rising (http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/k/kundalini.html).
I was determined to go with the universal flow, to challenge fate...to meet Julio face to face. He was tall, had dark hair, and was very handsome. He was also gentlemanly, suave, and intelligent. I freely admit I became a paying member of the Julio Iglesias East Coast fan club and attended his concerts in Foxborough and Las Vegas. I acquired 15 of Julio's cd recordings and two videos of his concerts, En Espana and Starry Night. I bought one cd at the opening of Coconuts, a music store on Boylston Street, now closed. Julio’s limo arrived late, and I must have stood in line for more than an hour with a long queue of fans that snaked onto the sidewalk. When my turn came, I went to the raised table for Julio’s autograph (photos were not permitted). I remember he took a long look at me and asked where I was from—his first wife is a fellow Filipina...his son, singer Enrique Iglesias, is part-Filipino. The women around me said Julio thought I was very cute with my long flowing hair and white linen dress of Italian design.
Julio insinuated himself into my existence in unexpected ways: the Chanel national make-up artist who did my cosmetic makeovers for several years lived in Miami, where Julio then resided. He would tell me of his Julio sightings at various parties in town.
Another time, Julio was performing at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, so my entire family came along for the trip. They decided to indulge me when I told them I wanted to hear Julio in concert. I was actually in the hotel pool when his entire entourage made a grand entrance. Here I was in my bikini, when Julio entered the water no more than 40 feet away from me and simply stood there facing me. A photographer was taking photos, and I know he would have agreed to my request to have my photo taken with Julio had I gotten out of the pool and asked him with a smile...but I didn't. This was meant to be private time, and my sense of restraint—and abbreviated clothing—kept me from being intrusive. So there went my photo opportunity with my idol...the primary inspiration for the Libra male in Strange Tango.
Yes, Julio is a Libra, born in September. One of his cd's is even titled, Libra. In an interview, Julio once said he didn't like Libra...he had recorded it at a time in his life when he said he felt emotionally exposed and vulnerable. To me, Libra is his best work overall. The best artists are able to connect with their audience, to resonate in their souls. I felt Julio was trying to make a connection with me...and I followed him across the country and to another continent. The songs in Libra are among his most heart achingly poignant.
Listen to Tu Y Yo and more on this sample:
Ni Te Tengo, Ni Te Olvido
Dire
Ni Tu Gato Gris, Ni Tu Perro Fiel
Todo Y Nada
Abril En Portugal
Coracao Apaixonado
http://www.amazon.com/Libra-Julio-Iglesias/dp/B00000265B/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1214453169&sr=8-1 (scroll down)
Then listen to:
De Niña A Mujer
Moonlight Lady
Fragile
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QKDIPI/ref=dm_sp_adp?ie=UTF8&qid=1214453169&sr=8-1
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
It's Official! StrangeTango.com
Posted by
A. D. Tejada
We went through several iterations before coming up with the name for the website: Mermaid and Sun...Muse and Tango...Millennium Muse…among them. The act of naming a personal website is like choosing a baptismal name—signifying a new life—for yourself. So I sent out a Quick Poll to gauge the fleeting impressions left by prospective titles.
One response, by Alan Hoffman in San Diego, read my soul.
”I'm more partial to Strange Tango, because it speaks directly to the inter-relationship and inter-action between you and your subjects (the Tango); the adjective "Strange" serves to modify the noun not in the traditional sense of "strange" but rather to signify that it's not about the actual dance.”
So StrangeTango.com became the name of my personal website—now it’s official!
For me, anything sustainable has to originate organically. Here's my backstory:
When my Harvard Business School experience ended in May 2004, I kept myself busy by co-founding the Harvard Administrative Fellows alumni association a month later. Simultaneously, I started The Cool Community, the precursor to my popular e-mail communiques, which would morph into the book of essays, memoir and musings—Millennium Muse—and the cyberspace platform for my writings and experiential work—Mermaid and Sun—which was officially named StrangeTango.com. Then in April 2006, Joseph and I relocated to southwest Oklahoma to be closer to my family. Many in my wide friendship circle in Greater Boston and Cambridge were demonstrably distraught at my departure, so I began producing prodigious amounts of content that popped up regularly in their in-boxes, so much so that one of my confidants commented, "It's as though you never left town!" So, I've essentially been blogging for four years—enough time to hone my craft and my message of: literature, art, inspiration, and amplitude
This was the process of karmic causation: my departure from HBS meant there was no economic reason for me to remain in New England, which inspired me to relocate to Oklahoma and dive full-time into my personal life with my extended family, which led to a streamlined spa lifestyle...and thus the time and inclination to indulge my literary, artistic, conceptual, and entrepreneurial talents.
StrangeTango.com is a global platform.
Why?
Well, why not?!
Why move online now?
When a notable friend repeatedly encouraged me to set up my own website two years ago, her opinion spoke volumes to me. And imagine my surprise when my husband's former manager, from more than a decade ago at a blue chip high tech company, e-mailed me: "I like to see your name in my email. You are such a unique coin and I enjoy reading what you have written."!
What inspired me that I could touch a mass audience were sentiments expressed by my nephew in Hong Kong who wrote, "I like your writing," and a longtime assistant to one of my mentors who asked me to keep sending her e-mails, "...I have met a lot of people, you are one of the people I will always remember."
Two years ago the technology wasn't quite yet in place for how I wanted to brand myself. Even though schools started teaching interactive multimedia around 1994, only since 2006 have personal websites become notably sophisticated in design and technology. By 2007-2008, I was excited to see some of the most original personal websites I had ever discovered on the web.
I am reminded of a comment from a person in Great Britain left on a website design blog: "I’m always wondering what more can be done with a blog? It seems almost a shame that people ‘only’ go the journalistic route, or the photo-a-day route, or the rant route. There should be more we can do with blogs than simply post text and photos."
I agree: I believe the time is now to take the personal website to the next—experiential—level. My vision for StrangeTango.com is to create an interactive, literary work of art in cyberspace: I don't know that it's ever been done before. And instead of outsourcing this cyberspace branding project to an interactive marketing agency, my collaborators and I are doing this ourselves...how authentic can you get? We're building the site in our spare time because most of us have full-time jobs and various responsibilities.
There's nothing obvious in my writing that would suggest I'm a female Filipino-American author/artist/activist/intellectual born in the provinces and raised in southwest Oklahoma, with an Ivy League and blue chip pedigree. A citizen of the world who has traveled on five continents, a stay-at-home wife whose interests are protean. I've always been very Zen (noun, a Buddhist doctrine that enlightenment can be attained through direct intuitive insight) in my sensibilities. Given all of the above, I feel I can articulate a collective subconscious that transcends demographic barriers.
One response, by Alan Hoffman in San Diego, read my soul.
”I'm more partial to Strange Tango, because it speaks directly to the inter-relationship and inter-action between you and your subjects (the Tango); the adjective "Strange" serves to modify the noun not in the traditional sense of "strange" but rather to signify that it's not about the actual dance.”
So StrangeTango.com became the name of my personal website—now it’s official!
For me, anything sustainable has to originate organically. Here's my backstory:
When my Harvard Business School experience ended in May 2004, I kept myself busy by co-founding the Harvard Administrative Fellows alumni association a month later. Simultaneously, I started The Cool Community, the precursor to my popular e-mail communiques, which would morph into the book of essays, memoir and musings—Millennium Muse—and the cyberspace platform for my writings and experiential work—Mermaid and Sun—which was officially named StrangeTango.com. Then in April 2006, Joseph and I relocated to southwest Oklahoma to be closer to my family. Many in my wide friendship circle in Greater Boston and Cambridge were demonstrably distraught at my departure, so I began producing prodigious amounts of content that popped up regularly in their in-boxes, so much so that one of my confidants commented, "It's as though you never left town!" So, I've essentially been blogging for four years—enough time to hone my craft and my message of: literature, art, inspiration, and amplitude
This was the process of karmic causation: my departure from HBS meant there was no economic reason for me to remain in New England, which inspired me to relocate to Oklahoma and dive full-time into my personal life with my extended family, which led to a streamlined spa lifestyle...and thus the time and inclination to indulge my literary, artistic, conceptual, and entrepreneurial talents.
StrangeTango.com is a global platform.
Why?
Well, why not?!
Why move online now?
When a notable friend repeatedly encouraged me to set up my own website two years ago, her opinion spoke volumes to me. And imagine my surprise when my husband's former manager, from more than a decade ago at a blue chip high tech company, e-mailed me: "I like to see your name in my email. You are such a unique coin and I enjoy reading what you have written."!
What inspired me that I could touch a mass audience were sentiments expressed by my nephew in Hong Kong who wrote, "I like your writing," and a longtime assistant to one of my mentors who asked me to keep sending her e-mails, "...I have met a lot of people, you are one of the people I will always remember."
Two years ago the technology wasn't quite yet in place for how I wanted to brand myself. Even though schools started teaching interactive multimedia around 1994, only since 2006 have personal websites become notably sophisticated in design and technology. By 2007-2008, I was excited to see some of the most original personal websites I had ever discovered on the web.
I am reminded of a comment from a person in Great Britain left on a website design blog: "I’m always wondering what more can be done with a blog? It seems almost a shame that people ‘only’ go the journalistic route, or the photo-a-day route, or the rant route. There should be more we can do with blogs than simply post text and photos."
I agree: I believe the time is now to take the personal website to the next—experiential—level. My vision for StrangeTango.com is to create an interactive, literary work of art in cyberspace: I don't know that it's ever been done before. And instead of outsourcing this cyberspace branding project to an interactive marketing agency, my collaborators and I are doing this ourselves...how authentic can you get? We're building the site in our spare time because most of us have full-time jobs and various responsibilities.
There's nothing obvious in my writing that would suggest I'm a female Filipino-American author/artist/activist/intellectual born in the provinces and raised in southwest Oklahoma, with an Ivy League and blue chip pedigree. A citizen of the world who has traveled on five continents, a stay-at-home wife whose interests are protean. I've always been very Zen (noun, a Buddhist doctrine that enlightenment can be attained through direct intuitive insight) in my sensibilities. Given all of the above, I feel I can articulate a collective subconscious that transcends demographic barriers.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Intellectual Property
Posted by
A. D. Tejada
I copyrighted the title and manuscript of Strange Tango almost two decades ago, and the title has appeared in my published official biographies and blurbs since the 1980’s.
I have waited a very long time to publicly introduce my work.
A part of it was that the book's complexity is deceptive—there are multiple layers of interpretation and only 103 pages—I did not feel it would be understood in a world that was stratified, viewed largely in black and white. So basically, I had to wait for the world to become more complicated, disaffected, progressive, and multicultural—as well as to develop my own audience, cyberspace platform, and cosmology.
Also, I am difficult to categorize…I was one of the first to adopt the concept of hybridization in my work. I am not an academic, so I was not forced to publish or perish. Nor am I a pundit for whom talk is cheap.
No, the time was not right for me, so all these years I deliberately did not publish or debut any other writings, articles, essays, and various other works: mine is a clean slate for branding. Moreover, I am decidedly absolutist when it comes to controlling my original work, image, and intellectual property because I am such an intensely private individual.
The strength of my body of work is that it is so authentically unique that it really can't be duplicated: this is by deliberate design. I'm happy to incubate, exchange, and promulgate ideas—but my belief is that within each of us is the capacity to create and to mold—a child, a definitive statement, a mantra, a product—to reveal and to document, that which singularly represents one's time on this earth.
And Strange Tango is mine…
I have waited a very long time to publicly introduce my work.
A part of it was that the book's complexity is deceptive—there are multiple layers of interpretation and only 103 pages—I did not feel it would be understood in a world that was stratified, viewed largely in black and white. So basically, I had to wait for the world to become more complicated, disaffected, progressive, and multicultural—as well as to develop my own audience, cyberspace platform, and cosmology.
Also, I am difficult to categorize…I was one of the first to adopt the concept of hybridization in my work. I am not an academic, so I was not forced to publish or perish. Nor am I a pundit for whom talk is cheap.
No, the time was not right for me, so all these years I deliberately did not publish or debut any other writings, articles, essays, and various other works: mine is a clean slate for branding. Moreover, I am decidedly absolutist when it comes to controlling my original work, image, and intellectual property because I am such an intensely private individual.
The strength of my body of work is that it is so authentically unique that it really can't be duplicated: this is by deliberate design. I'm happy to incubate, exchange, and promulgate ideas—but my belief is that within each of us is the capacity to create and to mold—a child, a definitive statement, a mantra, a product—to reveal and to document, that which singularly represents one's time on this earth.
And Strange Tango is mine…
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Elegant, Eclectic, Minimalist, Surprising
Posted by
A. D. Tejada
Strange Tango is the name of my personal website—as well the literary novella that inspired the site. The website is a showcase for emerging talent and a platform for my writings, photography, and experimental work. Thus, the website and my novella are inextricably linked—each enhancing the experience of the other.
In the novella, the mantra “This is my manifesto: elegant, eclectic, minimalist, surprising” refers to two things: the items packed for trips/the objects the artist collects on her travels, as well as the clarity that allows her to see past noise and clutter directly to the heart of a matter.
Actually, the travel gear is something of an infinite jest: the artist claims she travels light yet elaborately lists dozens of items she packs. (Basically, she brings her home with her wherever she may be.) However, the quantities are so minimal and the fabrics and textures so lightweight that everything fits neatly inside a carry-on suitcase. It’s sort of a metaphor for how something large and encompassing can be condensed to its stripped-down components.
On the website, we have a display of artifacts in the first scene of the video. I wanted clutter in the background and two portraits and a blue stone in the foreground. Like the interpretation of art work, the composition is meant to express the following:
- the two portraits—one a Polaroid snapshot, the other in a filigree frame—are intended to show the dual face of the artist as being entirely modern/global and baroque/internal. Her ethnicity is indeterminate...in the photos, you can't tell if she's Asian, Hispanic, Arabic, or multiracial in some proportion. Also, from the photo effects, she seems ageless...her actual age an unknown.
- the panoply (n. a complete and impressive array) of jewel tones, highlights, and artifacts in the composition is meant to convey a casual busyness and internal richness to the artist's life, objects in the shadows evoke mystery, curiosity; however, the center positioning and highlighting of the portraits and blue stone direct your eyes toward them as something symbolic.
Not coincidentally, in Strange Tango the novella, the silver frame and a pebble are deeply meaningful and symbolic personal artifacts...the pebble is the portal that transports the artist back in forth in time through her dreams and visions; the pebble is transmuted into a blue stone on the website. The blue stone—a turquoise—is the artist's birthstone, which anticipates two chapters in the book, one on the connection between archetypes/psychology of dreams/popular astrology and the other on Native American lore.
In the book, the artist is attuned to the symbolism of colors: "I wear a Japanese silk party dress patterned after the cool denseness of green mountain fog, the cold currents beneath a dark, blue ocean. My elements are fire and the sea."
The color blue—in the stone and the dress—has these psychological connotations: the sea, skies, peace, unity, harmony, tranquility, calmness, coolness, water, ice, loyalty, dependability, cleanliness, technology, idealism, air, wisdom, Earth (planet), strength, steadfastness, light, friendliness, truthfulness, love, sadness, aloofness, the Virgin Mary. In many diverse cultures blue is significant in religious beliefs, believed to keep the bad spirits away.
For the recurring image throughout the website—I wanted the face of a modern-day Mona Lisa. (I showed the image to a graphic artist who studied the art in museums in Florence, Italy...she agreed the portrait fit the imagery.)
As far as I know, no one has tried to create a website that is—essentially and metaphorically—a work of literary art in cyberspace, so this was a challenge that intrigued me.
In the novella, the mantra “This is my manifesto: elegant, eclectic, minimalist, surprising” refers to two things: the items packed for trips/the objects the artist collects on her travels, as well as the clarity that allows her to see past noise and clutter directly to the heart of a matter.
Actually, the travel gear is something of an infinite jest: the artist claims she travels light yet elaborately lists dozens of items she packs. (Basically, she brings her home with her wherever she may be.) However, the quantities are so minimal and the fabrics and textures so lightweight that everything fits neatly inside a carry-on suitcase. It’s sort of a metaphor for how something large and encompassing can be condensed to its stripped-down components.
On the website, we have a display of artifacts in the first scene of the video. I wanted clutter in the background and two portraits and a blue stone in the foreground. Like the interpretation of art work, the composition is meant to express the following:
- the two portraits—one a Polaroid snapshot, the other in a filigree frame—are intended to show the dual face of the artist as being entirely modern/global and baroque/internal. Her ethnicity is indeterminate...in the photos, you can't tell if she's Asian, Hispanic, Arabic, or multiracial in some proportion. Also, from the photo effects, she seems ageless...her actual age an unknown.
- the panoply (n. a complete and impressive array) of jewel tones, highlights, and artifacts in the composition is meant to convey a casual busyness and internal richness to the artist's life, objects in the shadows evoke mystery, curiosity; however, the center positioning and highlighting of the portraits and blue stone direct your eyes toward them as something symbolic.
Not coincidentally, in Strange Tango the novella, the silver frame and a pebble are deeply meaningful and symbolic personal artifacts...the pebble is the portal that transports the artist back in forth in time through her dreams and visions; the pebble is transmuted into a blue stone on the website. The blue stone—a turquoise—is the artist's birthstone, which anticipates two chapters in the book, one on the connection between archetypes/psychology of dreams/popular astrology and the other on Native American lore.
In the book, the artist is attuned to the symbolism of colors: "I wear a Japanese silk party dress patterned after the cool denseness of green mountain fog, the cold currents beneath a dark, blue ocean. My elements are fire and the sea."
The color blue—in the stone and the dress—has these psychological connotations: the sea, skies, peace, unity, harmony, tranquility, calmness, coolness, water, ice, loyalty, dependability, cleanliness, technology, idealism, air, wisdom, Earth (planet), strength, steadfastness, light, friendliness, truthfulness, love, sadness, aloofness, the Virgin Mary. In many diverse cultures blue is significant in religious beliefs, believed to keep the bad spirits away.
For the recurring image throughout the website—I wanted the face of a modern-day Mona Lisa. (I showed the image to a graphic artist who studied the art in museums in Florence, Italy...she agreed the portrait fit the imagery.)
As far as I know, no one has tried to create a website that is—essentially and metaphorically—a work of literary art in cyberspace, so this was a challenge that intrigued me.
