April 6

Maybe I'll make some coffee. Will return.

Now I'm going to read Lorca's essay Play and Theory of the Duende. Will return.

I'm glad I read that. Thanks, R., for the recommendation.

Essentially, Lorca divides the impetus of the artist into three catagories: (muse) intellect, (angel) grace and (duende) spirit; or mind, body and heart. You create art in sync with muse and angel. To them you yeild, you obey. But the duende, the heart (Lorca prefers 'blood') is a demon you battle, something that wounds you. The benefits you reap are sown from that wound which never heals.
Death is a necessary component of duende. It haunts man; supplies the fabric for his song / performance. Duende allows the artist to get behind the conventional trappings we prescribe death, which only serve to distance us from the poignancy of loss and mystery. The artist mourns, not with odes, but with ones own proximity to death. The artist dances with sorrow. Lorca says that spoken word, dance and song are the best forms of the duende, because they demand the body move with it. Spirit requires immediacy and the human form. It demands honesty and courage of the artist. A performance cannot be learned or duplicated; it is drawn from within, from the blood.
The bullfighter, in his dance with the bull and with death, is also an artist capable of expressing duende.

cool beans.

This poem, which Lorca uses as an example of duende, I found especially pretty:

In the garden
I will die.
In the roses
they will kill me.
I was going, mother,
to pick roses,
to find death
in the garden
I was going, mother
to cut roses,
to find death
amoung the roses.
In the garden
I will die,
in the roses
they will kill me.

-16th c. from Cancionero musical del palacio

I also liked this quote from the essay:
"And just as Germany has, with few exceptions, muse, and Italy shall always have angel, so in all ages Spain is moved by the duende, for it is a country of ancient music and dance where the duende squeezes the lemons of death - a country of death, open to death."

Being Italian I ought to take offense at that, but I'll be the first to admit I'm a whore for aesthetics and the graceful form. Maybe my vampire novel is just another way of gussying up the big D in order to distance myself from it. 'Fuck Death' is my slogan de jour, after all.

I think I might add to my reading list:
Ernest Hemingway. Death in the Afternoon, The Dangerous Summer, and For Whom the Bells Toll.

Hookay. Now to get back to my own writing.