Skip to main content

El duende, redux


El duende has settled around my shoulders again, and it won't be shrugged off it seems.

Almost a year ago I tried to explain to a friend what all this "duende" talk is about. A year later no easier to articulate. It's not a something, but the space between somethings. It's the emptiness that makes the non-emptiness so cherished.

I wrote then how it was something I no longer sought out in tango. In the beginning of my tango journey, even before I was dancing, the duende in the music felt like some kind of romantic lure. It doesn't feel that way anymore.

I don't really try to avoid it, because that's just not how it works. It comes when it comes,
in the music,
in a dance,
in a breath.

When I try to ignore it, it just loiters around until I notice it - or can't help noticing it. It's in the places, in slivers of space, where dark meets light. In contrasts and sharp edges.

In that place you know suddenly quite clearly,
that both exist for want of the other.

The duende is the sad beauty of something we know we will lose. So in that sense, duende is the beauty of everything.

Comments

TomK said…
sneaky little devil.....

'smoke-like' almost....
David Jordan said…
This was a very evocative post, which unfortunately seemed to explain almost nothing of what duende actually was. So I looked it up. And then I realized that the post itself was duende.
Mari said…
@Tom - sneaky is right.
@David - El Duende is one of those things that the harder you try to describe it, the further from reality you tend to get. Another dancer, and musician, told me that "the duende is in everything that ends. And everything ends."

Lorca wrote of duende:
“.... it’s in the veins; .... it’s of the most ancient culture of immediate creation.....’

“ Seeking the duende, there is neither map nor discipline. we only know it burns the blood like powdered glass, that it exhausts, rejects all sweet geometry... that it shatters style...”

“... the duende delights in struggling freely with the creator on the edge of the pit.... the duende wounds, and in trying to heal the wound that never heals, lies the strangeness, the inventiveness of a man’s work”

Which, to a far more eloquent degree than my post, says everything and yet nothing.
Dieudonne Dang said…
El Duende, the state of being when there is nothing left to look for (we look, try, think and do ad nauseam, and when we realize that there was never anything to look for, IT graces us). We can't find it when we are busy looking for it, just like we miss who we are when we go looking outside of ourselves. El Duende is inherent to our human nature, and when we let go and surrender, IT takes over, a jealous lover who will not share and is always close by, waiting for us to be "real" (our true selves), and then, and only then will it offer itself.
Marika said…
Dieudonne - yes, that's it. Like it says in the Zero Hour Liner Notes - This music always had us in mind. . .
Anonymous said…
I thought you meant dandruff in Spanish ... lol ... it was landing on your shoulders ... it seemd logical ; )

Popular posts from this blog

Tim Ferriss and the Myth of Tango Mastery

Dear tanguero, I feel I should explain my reaction to your comments about Tim Ferriss. It touched a nerve and I didn't really explain my apparent hostility. It was certainly not meant for you. Several people have brought Tim Ferriss to my attention over this past year. I can usually make it a month before his name pops up again. For readers who are unfamiliar with him, he's the author of "The 4 Hour Work Week". He set a Guinness record for the most consecutive tango turns and has competed with his partner, Alicia Monti, at the Tango World Championship . As a social dancer the idea of a tango competition seems absurd. I don't think I will ever understand how something like tango could be judged - or why anyone would want it to be. But I digress. I think the most crucial detail of Ferriss's history, as I relate it to tango, is his winning Wired magazine's "Greatest Self-Promoter of All Time" . If there is any concept more out of synch with social

"Proper" Tango Shoes

Periodically someone, usually a man, will be bring up the topic of "proper tango shoes." If he's referring to the problem (and dangers) of trying to dance in flip-flops, or mules, or platform shoes etc., those are definitely valid, and very helpful points to be made. The likelihood of damaging your feet is very high without the proper support of high quality shoes. My problem comes with the idea that the *only* proper tango shoes have 4" stiletto heels on them and fetish-worthy embellishments. (Okay, I'm pretty keen on the embellishments myself.) "goofy ballroomy shoes are a turnoff... get rid of them..." - Alex Tango Fuego (granted this is from 2007), http://alextangofuego.blogspot.com/2007/10/to-dance-or-not-to-dancebrutally.html And, in the comments on a blog post, Anonymous said... " This is a controversial one. If a follower isn't wearing tango shoes then it's usually a good sign she's not particularly good." From Ms. Hedgeh

Tango solidarity when it counts . . .

Some fellow tanguera-bloggers and I have been having a wonderful online "conversation" via blogs, Twitter, Facebook and email - about the importance of sisterhood and solidarity. You can find Stephanie's post, here and her follow up here , and then Tangocorazon's here . I was so bouyed by the idea of women bonding, helping and supporting each other that I took some things for granted. I took for granted that it would always be easy, enlightened as I am /*cough*/ to be the sort of consistently nurturing and helpful tanguera that I am (in my head) . The truth? Where the rubber met the road (or rather when the discomfort hit the milonga), I wasn't. Here's a little background that gave me a better perspective on the events at the New Year's Eve milonga. These guidelines appear under the heading " Behavior at the Milonga " on Vancouver Island Tango: " . . . The smaller the tango population, the more 'effort' required from each one of th