Often when I would play my best music, I would step out of the room and there would be the cat sitting in front of the door in the hallway.....that cat will die soon of cancer, and I have taken the idea to seranade the cat when it is awake and looking around in it's pain and emaciation. So I open the door and I play my flamenco guitar, and I have been playing my best knowing well, that in a short time the cat will no longer be there to enjoy. I really now can say that with sadness that I know now that duende runs deep. Such a wonderful cat, and I will remember this whenever it comes to mind when I am searching for something to play. I haven't played this well in a long time. Even so......
Gary

gato wrote:Often when I would play my best music, I would step out of the room and there would be the cat sitting in front of the door in the hallway.....that cat will die soon of cancer, and I have taken the idea to seranade the cat when it is awake and looking around in it's pain and emaciation. So I open the door and I play my flamenco guitar, and I have been playing my best knowing well, that in a short time the cat will no longer be there to enjoy. I really now can say that with sadness that I know now that duende runs deep. Such a wonderful cat, and I will remember this whenever it comes to mind when I am searching for something to play. I haven't played this well in a long time. Even so......
Gary

Greetings, Gary,

I trust that your online name is in honor of your dear friend. What is your cat's name?

Your post is very touching and tender ... and it brought this to mind:

It is essential for an artist to invoke a response, to know they are reaching deep into the emotional psyche of their audience. They may achieve the rare quality of duende - total emotional communication and involvement with their audience, and the mark of great flamenco of whatever style or generation. Duende is an ethereal quality. It is moving, profound even when expressing happiness. It is mysterious, but nevertheless felt ... a quality that stops listeners in their tracks. ... yes, right outside of your door!

It is evident that you and your cat have a crystal clear comprehension of duende.

Lo siento [I feel for/with you],

Doog

Thank you for such a touching reply.....the cat's name is Buddy, we took her over from an old man who then had recently died. We found out all to late that she is very old. She started out as a farrel cat, following the old man's cat home one day as a kitten, on to him, and now us. I would say she went from rags to cat riches, and now it's time to say goodbye to a wonderful cat. I always called her Kitty. She had a wonderful life.

Duende can be found in the strangest situations, and it does run deep, as the mood of this household is very sad for me and my room mate Jim. I'm just trying to adjust and I have discovered something that I will always run to, and that is the healing passion of expression. The cat is just a cat for some, but not for me, of late I have found her my greatest audience of one. I have seranaded her before many times, and you know, she was always there, and the thing that I realize is that having an audience is that important, that just an experiance like this could teach me a great lesson about music, and now I have such respect for the transitions from practice to performance. Duende is there, and it awaits the call of the true situation. I want to perform now even more than I ever did. Just like that, and the loss of a beautiful cat did it for me......such joy, and now bittersweet. Performance needs no fortune and no fame, that is true, yes indeed it is very true. The experiance of performance is of a Spiritual Nature that is of a much deeper nature, and that is Duende. I have performed for people and you know the whole question is just silly, but I just didn't get it. It's funny now that I think of it that it took a housecat to unlock the door. I think that you can really learn your lessons in life in the strangest ways.
Gary
Thanks again

Oh, just one more thing before I go, performing isn't about rattling off perfect performances either, it's about coming from the heart and reaching out to your audience. You know, you never know who is in the audience, and people come to shows of all kinds and even in bars and cafe's, because they need something for their own spiritual participation in whatever aspect in life.

So reaching out to the people in the audience can be more of an act of blessing, or spiritual involvement than just appeasing the people who want to go see perfect guitar playing. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to reach out and uplift the members in the audience in a way that creates that experiance we call duende.

In other words technically you take what you get, and you give much more. Otherwise, you may never reach the technical expertise that you are working toward, and it is such a waste to obsess over such a shallow desire. Without that giving experiance it's just never going to come.

gato wrote:Oh, just one more thing before I go, performing isn't about rattling off perfect performances either, it's about coming from the heart and reaching out to your audience. You know, you never know who is in the audience, and people come to shows of all kinds and even in bars and cafe's, because they need something for their own spiritual participation in whatever aspect in life.

So reaching out to the people in the audience can be more of an act of blessing, or spiritual involvement than just appeasing the people who want to go see perfect guitar playing. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to reach out and uplift the members in the audience in a way that creates that experiance we call duende.

In other words technically you take what you get, and you give much more. Otherwise, you may never reach the technical expertise that you are working toward, and it is such a waste to obsess over such a shallow desire. Without that giving experiance it's just never going to come.

Gato,

I have to agree with your assessment. Perfection is nice, but should not be allowed to upstage the emotional heart and soul of music. Little technical mistakes become irrelevant when there is genuine duende.

Doog

thank you for sharing this with us gato. what you may lose in the physical world, you gained in a life lesson and experience. i'm glad to hear you have found some light in this. this is very touching. thank you for sharing this. best wishes to you and "kitty."

Some animals definitely respond to music. I used to have dog that would sit still and watch me play for hours. As soon as I would stop playing he would walk away.

Interesting discussion that hits at the heart of flamenco. With modern flamenco so many times the expression that a palo should reveal, is missing. Playing for a reason such as for an old cat's comfort and your sadness about the cat's health, is the essence of flamenco. I have two old cats 18 and 17 years old. They never cared for my playing and had the habit of vomiting when I was playing, so they are outside in the day now and I fixed them a special place in the garage for night. Their health has improved and they rarely vomit. The cats are like everyone else around here and do not care for flamenco. The only time I experience duende was in 1971 when I took three or four lessons from a student of Diego del Gastor in a mountain cabin by kerosene light while working on a Solea and drinking wine. I had to drive several miles up in the remote Colorado mountains, then leave the pavement and travel a mile or two on dirt road (tire tracks in a pasture), then park at the creek, take off my shoes and wade with my guitar across the cold creek and hike maybe 100 yards up the mountain to the cabin. Each lessons was about 2 hours of learning Soleares and Bulerias compas with palmas and guitar

Great replies, 'yeah that cat was really special. She was euthanized today (Friday) and I am definitely going to miss her, and yes I will live to find another cat, maybe after her scent gets out of the house so the new cat will feel like the #1 cat! It's definitely sad to loose your little friend, but we do go thru that a lot here as the cats we take in are already past middle age. We like to give them another chance at life and that is really what that old cat got. Now she is a free spirit, and I think I am going to remember all the lessons I learned while caring for her and even the lesson of loss.

Back to the flamenco, I really don't think that perfect music is the goal in the flamenco, it just seems to happen with the greatest players, who know more than we about their mistakes. In that respect we are all alike. But duende is from the heart, and it's all about the passion of the musician that is conveyed to the audience, and it is the primary goal as with all music. Nobody want's to see a machine perform, except those who really don't have any idea what real music performed by an artist is all about. And I don't really want to get into the rut of trying to (as I said) appease them although I want to play my best, what ever that is; I don't really know since it is so hard to actually hear myself play and have the emotional spectrum of a human being who doubts and denies himself, and actually feels good from time to time as though he were riding a rollercoaster.

Duende is free and happens as it does, and perfect performances that are machine like are forced and emotionless and not worth the ticket. Though there are musicians who pride themselves on their perfection, and I just don't. They may as well be faking it to a tape as far as I'm concerned. Performances bear the spirit of the performer, and machine like perfection is without expression and interperitation. There has to be a kind of give and take between the performer and his audience, which is totally unpredictable and completely more organic than the sterile and emotionless passing of perfect musical phrases whithout the spirit and soul of the performer which is the essence of creativity.

Duende is the very human imprint that we all seek, and as soon as we give up on perfection and just be ourselves and let the audience interact we will find a different kind of perfection that is the very essence of performance. It bears our personna and is by no means predictable or anything that we as artists can controll unless we learn to go along with the flow. But, then again great musical skills only bring out the humanity and that is what I am getting at; that is what I am seeking, and true, there is no better time than the present to go out and put ourselves forward and perform, with that I mean, what are we waiting for, but the real opportunities that we all seek.
Gary

Cool post, Gato.

Well said!

Doog