Dancing Dark

I love the story of the bees. I have been smack in the middle of an avalanche, but never heard the same sound from bees. Given the fact that I am deathly allergic (I have to always carry an epi pen) even the visual image gives me an adrenalin rush. I have also met “Breath”, though it went by a different name, and have contemplated the meaning of living antiquity held radiant against the most vital force of life.

The Duende is an ancient life force as well. A venerable thought and energy that we happen to be, at this moment, studying. Studying it. Tasting it. Breathing it. Experiencing it. We look at it through the eyes of Frederica Garcia Lorca, feel it though the beat of flamenco heals, gaze into a void of his understanding, seeking his meaning of this darkness. It is a way of knowing and we seek to know. We already know the darkness, we seek to understand it. Many minds have sought to understand it as well - they still do. My daughter has been working with the playwright Octavio Solis, whose new work ‘Gibraltar’ is in world premiere at OSF. Solis deals much in the search for Duende.

We have sought El Duende, “the wind that blows soul into the face of listeners,” beside Clarissa Pinkola Estés for years. Dr. Estés brings richness, value, and wisdom to the darkness. She brings acknowledgment and sanction; permission to experience and describe what is. Once more, I quote myself, since I seem to say best what I am trying to say. From my study “Dances With Archetypes” ~ “One of the most important things I have learned is this: An artist cannot create with selected pieces of their being. You cannot reach inside for the power that moves and say, ‘this I cannot touch’ or ‘here I will not go.’ I write of darkness, because I experience darkness. I do not find this self indulgent or particularly linked to ego. I find it an honest, sincere attempt at description of what is. Duende gives the darkness a name, an image. It may not always be the right name or image, but I am fascinated by names and images - as well as by the thoughts of other artists.

Of course, we aren’t always entertaining Duende . . . we have wandered over the mountains into Portugal seeking the spirit of Fado, which sings with the immeasurable beauty of saudade ~ a Portuguese word with no accurate equivalent in English; being a type of longing, conveying a complex mixture of sadness, pain, nostalgia, happiness and love. Dark, but much different from Duende.

We go off down different roads all the time ~ light, dark and twilit, straying into ancient Greece, seeking the exotic timelessness of Rumi, the otherwordly beauty of Yeats, I rave about Shakespeare, Heather tries to convert me to Milton. Just the other day she offered me Ralph Waldo Emerson's ferocious light. I wasn’t buying. I will go searching for light in e.e.cummings, Tennyson, Goethe, Mary Oliver, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, William Beautiful Butler Yeats who hasn’t heavens’ embroidered clothes, enwrought with golden and silver light, the blue and dim and dark cloths of night and light and half-light to spread under my feet . . . but I’ll take his dreams.

I think we are going off after Salvador Dali again as well, he’s certainly got a handle on light. I’m sure to come back from Scandinavia with more than Skadi up my sleeve. Land of the midnight sun. Duende will wander on to the back burner . . . until we find it calling again.