a better ibiza october 2011

Like paella needs rice, a musician needs an audience. Sunshine is good too. No surprise then when, with the prospect of British autumn already glowering below the horizon, I accepted a last minute 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.

Things had moved so fast that it wasn't till I was actually airborne that I managed to hit the background reading. Ibiza has big history - it said. 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 the goddess Tanit 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 on the island when polite young Brits had tried to hook hostess and I into grimly vacant bars, we ate at San Antonio’s Contra Vent restaurant. After dinner Pedro el Chacho’s burnished flamenco got me off my seat and onto my feet where I aped the local dancers’ gypsy moves. Embarrassment was minimised when, after presumably sharing a chuckle at this turista’s skill-free pirouetting, the spirit of dance used his magic patterns to guide me back to my chair.

The dining was generally excellent. We ate in Ibiza town next day. Here the enthusiastic presence of a middle-aged, middle-class French couple told me more about the food in the ‘for the locals’ Bon Profit restaurant than any Michelin star. After lunch as we moved on though it seemed that consumerism of all kinds was well entrenched here. In contrast to the the open hearted pulse of the previous night, in daylight a myriad glittering shops and restaurants hustled for our money. I’m not sure I didn’t catch the occasional ugly drug deal going down.

Is anything though ever what it seems? As we relaxed over our café con leche the island’s history began to muscle out the facade of glitzy dross like sun through a morning mist. Once it had caught my eye Dalt Villa, the fortress heart of the town revealed an older dignity beneath the cynical tourist machine.

I was getting a sense of place. 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 and I had connected. I felt sure he 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 the 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 used to each other by now so I told her a little about my adventure. Then I realised I didn't really know who she was. ‘By the way,' I asked, '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.

© Patrick Ellis