El Duende, tango, and the spaces between

These days it's the quiet of tango that's been on my mind. Transitions, the bridge between one moment and the next moment. The expanse of everything and nothing stretched out between one beat and the next.

I've been reading a lot about Lorca's phrase El Duende lately - and el duende found in tango, the music, the dance, the life.






El duende,
the dark notes,
the meloncholy spaces
in between...

The evocation,
found in the pause,
in the "wait"

In the silence, a beat,
a breath
our pulses race
between our fingertips.

A moment more,
and the bridge is crossed.


And from Lorca himself:

PAUSE OF THE CLOCK

I sat down
in a space of time.
It was a backwater
of silence,
a white silence,
a formidable ring
wherein the stars collided
with the twelve floating
black numerals.

from The selected poems of Federico García Lorca