a better ibiza october 2011

"life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans" John Lennon.

Like paella needs rice, a musician needs an audience. Sunshine is good too. No surprise then when I immediately accepted the invitation to explore the gig potential of Pleasure Island.

Within a week the librarian was releasing my print job. Showing her the boarding passes I explained my plan. Her eyes lit up. ‘I’m sure you’ll have fun,’ she said.

In-flight reading told me that Ibiza has big history. It has been won and lost, rich and poor and, like much of the Mediterranean, both Christian and Muslim. It has worshipped earlier deities besides. Bes god of dance and Tanit goddess of  love - and associated activities - feature strongly in the story of the island’s party habit.

Call me crazy if you will but I’m not sure I didn’t meet Bes myself one evening. In a huge improvement on my first October night when polite young Brits tried to hook us into vacant bars, we ate at San Antonio’s Contra Vent restaurant. After dinner Pedro el Chacho’s burnished flamenco rhythm got me off my seat and onto my feet where I aped the dancers’ gitano moves. Embarrassment was avoided when, after presumably sharing a chuckle at this tourista’s skill-free pirouetting, the spirit of dance persuaded his musician to guide me back to my chair.

We ate in Ibiza town next day. Here the enthusiastic presence of a middle-aged, middle-class French couple telling me more about the food in the ‘for the locals’ Bon Profit than any Michelin star. As we moved on though it seemed that consumerism of all kinds was well entrenched here. A myriad glittering shops and restaurants hustled for our money. I’m not sure I didn’t catch the occasional ugly deal going down.

Is anything though ever what it first seems? During our café con leche the island’s mask began to slip. Once it had caught my eye Dalt Villa, the fortress heart of the town revealed an older dignity beneath first glance’s cynical tourist machine.

I was getting a sense of place. It was layered, and it was engaging. Although no bookings had been offered the public’s response to my casual tango harmonica flurries had been warm enough to consider a return visit early next season. My feeling was growing that Bes wouldn’t turn me away.

Tanit was a different matter. As we drove round the island, through delicate pine woods and unaccountably emotive farmscapes to restaurants by sparkling coves, she kept her distance. Even as the sun plunging between Ibiza and mainland Spain created my final night’s light show she kept to the shadows.

‘Gods?’ I thought, pulling myself back into the material world on my flight home. ‘Goddesses? I must be mad’.

‘How did it go?’ said the librarian a few days later.

‘Pretty good,’ I said. We were getting to know each other. ‘By the way, what’s your name?’

I know this is daft but I’m sure I felt a jolt as her eyes shone again,

‘Tanith,’ she answered brightly.