Duende Discussions
A fun and invigorating artist interview podcast where I talk to my brilliant friends about their personal and creative relationship with duende - the visceral vibration of the soul making impact with its most authentic, ancient self - made famous by Spanish playwright and poet Federico Garcia Lorca. My guests and I will explore how to define what the mysterious duende actually is, how to access it, what to do with our art once we've confronted it, wrestle with it - possibly in real time! - as well as decipher who/what has it today, and what role it plays in today's ever evolving and challenging artistic landscapes and vocabularies. Why duende today? Because like Lorca says, “The true struggle is with the duende.”
Duende Discussions
11 - Nathan and Shane Return for Love & Duende - The Sequel! *Mad with Gladness While Feeling Love’s Wound
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Duende Duders! I’ve missed you, I love you and I hope you’ve been hanging in there amidst these rough times. This latest Duende Discussion is my Valentine to you - my beloved sweetest, most compassionate and insightful creative twin spirits Shane and Nathan are my first-ever repeat guests for a very special Love & Duende sequel episode! Last year I did a Love & Duende episode with King of Heart-Centered Art and Convos Nathan, but I wanted him and Shane (my very first Duende Discusser!) to come back to talk about what role duende plays in love-focused art today. Should our art about love today have duende when it’s already so intense and bleak out there? Is it cathartic or too confrontational? What role does duende play in Romantic art when our ideas and feelings about love have evolved so dramatically this past year?
I wanted Nathan and Shane to help me navigate through these weird dramaturgical waters because they’re the most empathetic artists I know who are such masterful listeners and deeply spiritual. We have these super fun and inspiring movie nights over Zoom and I wanted to share that joy and comradery with you, dearest Duende Duders. While we dig into the more serious side of whether we should conjure duende during times of suffering and societal/political conflict, we also have a blast reliving the communal love of Bad Bunny’s halftime show and relaying the brilliance of an unexpected pick for best RomCom of the past year. They generously listen to me ramble about my fascination with dystopian love adventures, and we try to decipher how to inject more duende into contemporary RomComs. With some romantic scents and of course, chocolate, we discuss how KD Sims' erotic poems have all the duende that love art in 2026 needs, and Nathan gifts Shane and me the pod’s first-ever rapid-fire game of “Duende or No Duende?” RomCom version!
This was such a soul-enrichening and special conversation that truly highlighted to me how friendship can be the most fulfilling romance of a person’s life. I hope you feel the love while listening to it, and have the most soulful and heart-full Valentine’s Day. Sending hugs! 🩷🩷🩷
Have a great duend-ay! 🙂
Follow @duendediscussions on IG for episode updates and fun, interactive duende discussing!