Duende

So I'm sitting in a Costa at a table in the corner - furthest table away from the door - thinking about writing this blog post about art and performance and magic - and a tortoiseshell butterfly suddenly lands on the table beside my toffee muffin. It is the day that Boris Johnson has been made Actual Prime Minister and I could give in to a different kind of amazement, but I'm choosing to be happy about this lovely visitation. I want to write about this kind of thing - beauty that makes life worth living and which is free, so that everyone can have it, and which reminds us that we came from the earth and we will return to it. This is a mystery which belongs to itself. No politicians can get a hold of it and monetise it, and that makes it very valuable, even though it's a widely available thing. I have never subscribed to the idea that our impermanence or smallness or lack of individual power makes us insignificant. To me it is the opposite, and it's there for everyone. 

So I thought about trying to explain 'Duende' but I won't say much, because it's Googleable, and Lorca explained it properly. You can read his thoughts about it here.  

Lorca in a cave with a gypsy flamenco family.

Instead I'm going to share a video that represents what I'm trying to say. My son is a young musician and he works so hard at his music and he gets so annoyed when it makes a mistake. I tell him about Patti Smith performing at Bob Dylan's Nobel Prize ceremony. She messes the song and stops, apologises, and starts again. When it happened some fans of Bob were really annoyed with her for causing an awkward moment on Bob's big day. Leonard Cohen famously sang 'There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.' I don't know if Patti's mistake was some part of the wonderfulness of this performance. I can only say that to me she embodied the spirit of Hard Rain completely. Something a bit magical happens in the struggle- and in the reaching out and in our receiving.