duende

definitions:

New Oxford English Dictionary

1. A ghost, an evil spirit 2. Inspiration, magic, fire.

Random House Dictionary

1. A goblin, demon, spirit 2. Charm, magnetism.

The Larousse Spanish-English Dictionary translates duende as Goblin, elf, imp/Magic. It gives the usages: los duendes del Flamenco, the Magic of Flamenco; tener duende, to have a certain magic.

Spanish poet Garcia Lorca gave a lecture on duende called La Teoria y Juego del Duende – The Theory and Function of Duende where he said:

“The duende, then, is a power and not a construct, is a struggle and not a concept. I have heard an old guitarist, a true virtuoso, remark, "The duende is not in the throat, the duende comes up from inside, up from the very soles of the feet." That is to say, it is not a question of aptitude, but of a true and viable style - of blood, in other words; of what is oldest in culture: of creation made act.”

Lorca quotes Manuel Torres as saying ‘"Whatever has black sounds has duende” and goes on to reflect that “These black sounds are the mystery, the roots that probe through the mire that we all know of, and do not understand, but which furnishes us with whatever is sustaining in art. Black sounds: so said the celebrated Spaniard, thereby concurring with Goethe, who, in effect, defined the duende when he said, speaking of Paganini: "A mysterious power that all may feel and no philosophy can explain."

My grandmother clucks with great satisfaction “What duende he/she has!” When she has especially enjoyed the passionate way a singer has sung a song or has seen someone dancing flamenco with a look of intensity almost bordering pain.

When we were discussing this keyword, my group partner Nese pointed out that duende is enacted through the performer, but received and perceived by the spectator which makes me wonder – if a performer performs with duende but has no-one to watch, does the duende still exist? Duende could be described as inhabiting a performance space, as being a relationship between performer, spectator and “dark spirit.”

Young Vic performance space

|I find duende on the dance floor, in the dark and sugary build ups and break downs of songs like this

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7jJyD9j4Gs

in the voice of singers like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2H8UoCBNcw

and even, recently in the forest near my house in Kaukajarvi in Tampere

which is also apparently where Finnish people experience god as existing when they spend time there.

Duende, then is an intimately specific expression from southern Spain. But it is also expansive in its applicability and relativity. And also integral to analysis of performance of all kinds. To again quote Nese “A performance is more than the sum of its parts.” You may pick apart theatre productions into the semiotics of lighting, costume, cadence of voice and smeary make-up. You can dissect music into bones of beats and pitch and volume and vibration. But you can’t account for the experience that is created when those elements are brought together. When there is a powerful experience, there is duende there.

cape town chill

It is a Cape Town night all chill I am next to a heater writing an article about barcelona this is what I just wrote to a friend still living there:

Dear Heike,
I am back in South Africa and there is a chill in the air and I have an assignment for mon...it feels uncomfortably like Real Life! Also happy to see some lovely old friends and tread old haunts here but I miss Barcelona tangibly I am remembering little pieces all the time they stick to my hair and dreams a soft tune behind my eyelids a new context for my life what a thoroughly wonderful time was had.


I am trying not to moon for what is past that is in bad taste when you are in a place like Cape Town and when you know the people I do

And Barcelona left a sweet sweet taste unmoonworthy more celebratory.

The experience has made me think of the (unbearable)transience of everything how something can happen that is so wonderful and the only thing possible is to enjoy it succulently while it is there and then enjoy the next thing when it is not

photos and gifts and pieces of souveneir are so hollow but sometimes comforting I have a t-shirt that says barcelona 2007 made for me by my friends it hangs from my cupboard.

I was happy to see my flat in cape town it is lovely

thank you for everyone for reading my blog and being part of my travel community

lots and lots of love.

It has been a looong time since my last blog-principally because there has been so much happening that I haven´t been able to translate it into words!

Today is my birthday thanks for all the greetings!

Last night as the clock struck 12 I happened to be ambling along the street by myself-a set of circumstances I thought very appropriate for the coming into being of my 24th year.

I went to a festival of urban dance in the centre of my courtyard which had just dissolved and people streamed out and the dregs sat in the warm air and watched clips of dances on a big screen. I bought a cold beer and I sat happily and snugly among the dregs wide eyed watching the many absurdities that does the dancing body specially when it wants to shock. Do you know how much "contemporary" art drama dance is judged successfull on its ability to estrange its public which lets be honest isn´t difficult except the estrangement is now so expected it is a known strange which maybe isn´t strange?

A secret about me: I curl up in glee when watching bad art that takes itself seriously it is my favourite past-time. Or even if it doesn´t. Like there was a video I saw of a tongue curving a pattern in salt. Repetitively it looped,over and over this tongue and the watcing crowd stood cold and dignified quiet watching and a guide deliverd 100 unsubtle complex metaphors in explanation of this poor pink tongue(immigration displacement...) and I shrieked with laughter inside it was wonderful. Or there was a line of a fresh-writ play that said "I want your maggot infested hands to carress my supile body"(she was talking to a ghost), and it was delivered without a glimmer of mirth! For me this is artistic expression, freedom of speech total

so anyway watching some prime off-cuts of this estranging contemporary dance was a perfect place to start this 24th year.

Now my mom is chatting to my cousin and my father and brother are snoozing peacefully the siesta on adjacent couches after a long family meal ...it is so nice to have my fam-damily with me for these 3 days I will write more details tommorow of our exploits

Storm cloud

I was perched on a sofa last night gingerly eating a salad and talking to an intense Alicantian girl dressed in black. OUr conversation took a few quick bounds from where do you live and what is your name to land on a Spanish version of a kind of Dr Phi crossl existential reality conversation. I don´t know if you´re familiar with those but they seem to happen to me quite often. We were talking about the weightlessness of travel and moving places and leaving history and circumstance behind. Aha she said knowingly but you bring your problems with you - aqui dentro - and she tapped her heart emphatically- because they´re inside you. And she was right.

I had brought the aforementioned salad to the dinner party of a boy student from Valencia called Raúl who is studying environmental science and who had carefully explained to me how close Muizenberg is to submergence under the sea water if global warming continues.

He is a lovely boy and I had been thrilled to be invited to this a genuine student Barcelona gathering but that day I was feeling awful. All day a bit queasy and a bit sad and a bit like the boy frolicking with the baguette vibe of little barcelona streets was not as charming as usual and these were not my friends so I couldn´t really say so. They were the lovely people who had magically adopted me and I started feeling with riduculous doom that my expulsion was surely emminent. This is something I think often.

It comes from a foggy place probably lodged in Std 3 but it is so strong. It has no interest in logic or reason and clouds out everything. It makes my throat hurt and my stomach quease and all other symptoms of the like. Probably being here so baldly just me, context-free with only my talk and my looks and my laugh and my warmth to encourage people into my company instead of any bounds of loyalty making it extra strong.

So I did what I do when I abandon myself so wantonly. I phone a parent or a friend who never abandon me, who like me with consistency. And they give me back the pieces of me in little bits of warm words until I am nearly whole again still soft like the inside of a pigs ear

ginger

Hello dears

I am seated in the internet café of my school with the scratchy throat and eyeballs that comes from drinking too much chardonnay! Lat night an old friend of mine Adrian Devant took me out to a champagne bar called Ginger which was very warm looking with leather chairs and wood pannelling and a big fluffy sheep dog on the floor. We drank a delicious wine called clot om and generally caught up...many years ago when I was 17 my parents took me and Gabi out of school for a few months and we embarked on a European tour following where my dad was working. We went to ireland and stayed in a a small country cottage for 2 weeks, then went to barcelona. In my 17 year old state I was melodramatically perishing for lack of friend and then popped up as if like a present Adrian and Sarah, a brother and sister living in Barcelona. They spent 10 days taking me to restaurants and discos and breakfasts and generally making me so happy I could squeal! The instant comfort we had then is still here after these gaps of years...

Oh the left over party evidence last night was actually from bullfight and the winner got three bull ears as symbols of his prowess in the fight - so primal somehow like the indian scalp idea. And there were 3000 protesters, I read in the paper, against the bullfight. I didn´t know so many people cared so much. I heard there is a festival where a bull or a goat is thrown off a building or a churchtop. Maybe I am wrong but it is a very vivid image. I can see a trembling goat all fluffy edging to the ledge and looking down like on a diving board. And then the jubilant brown spanish villagers give him a shove, all gathered on the roof, and he falls among cheers and trills of the tambourine