I am a fairly large proponent of the Andalusian concept of duende – the secret longing that seems to plague so many artists. The sense of hurt that exists below the skin, a malleable emotion which can be pushed and gently prodded to evoke the entire human gamut and allow audiences to tap into the sense of pure, albeit broken, humanity that ties us all together.

It was during a spoken word lecture by Nick Cave to the Poetry Academy in Vienna (full lecture in text – opening in audio) when I was exposed to the concept of duende and within the back of my drunken mind, my quest suddenly had a name. For years I had scoured art in myriad mediums, looking for scraps of what I suddenly knew as duende. That universal longing that seems to tie humanity together.

Even before placing a name to the concept, I knew my motivation – a working theory that if I surrounded myself with works imbued with what I wanted to portray, I could one day convey that type of experience.

Over the years, my album collection swelled. As did my library. And my film collection. Not to mention the sheer volumes of words I’d written. The bottles I’d emptied. The loves I’d lost. The cigarettes I’d reduced to butts and stubbed out. And from that mottled collection, I started to notice a trend.

A trend I’ve come to know as Maria.

Behind every piece of great art, behind everything that exemplified duende, there was typically a broken heart. Not the realistic end of a relationship, in which the good gave way to the gray, and the gray gave way to the pain. Not the kind of relationship which petered out. No, the holes created by Maria are different. These are the relationships which ambush the soul, which are not foreshadowed and which never grow to true fruition. They are comfort and connection and need which is too frequently snuffed out.

They are short, with passion that can only be described as explosive, if one is to dwell in metaphor.

You see, it isn’t possessing Maria which creates duende, it’s the brushing, the perception, the glimpse of what could be, of potential that marks Maria. Maria is the driving force from Linklater’s “Before Sunrise.” Maria is the focal point of numerous songs from the greater parts of Bob Dylan’s early catalog and the haunting he recalls for his later works.

Maria is the ghost which haunts the artist’s soul.

Josh Ritter altered Maria’s name, choosing the American “Marie” for his criminally overlooked “The Temptation of Adam.” (video)  To attain Marie, to be with his Maria, Ritter was willing to risk nuclear war and the destruction of all of humanity if it meant a continued relationship. Melodramatic, to be certain. But understandable? I think so.

A careful look at Ritter’s lyrics shows the truth of Maria. Though the happy ending is occasionally fostered in works inspired by Maria, reality is never so kind. The truest concept of Maria isn’t the having. It is the potential. Maria is a relationship marked by loss. Ritter’s Adam didn’t cause the war, and was forced to live with the memories of nights spent making love and days spent “ransacking the rations.” He lost Maria, and it was the loss which, on second thought, would have had him launching the missiles.

Dylan never got his Maria, either.

No one ever does. That’s what makes Maria unique, she is able to exist wholly in the mind – free of flaws, of reality, of humanity. In that way, Maria becomes a God, a concept which can’t be touched, which can only be embraced by logic-defying faith. Maria becomes a vision.
And through that holiness, Maria becomes a ghost. Exalted, yet haunting in the same breath.

Yes, hearts broken for Maria do not stand a chance. How can they? The piercing of a fictional blade knows no remedies. Time might dull the pain, but it never removes it. That longing, that duende, is always there. Days can pile up and obscure it, but one awkward glance, one glimmer in a crowded place, one wayward phrase or familiar scent is enough to rip that wound back open.

The mind is a terrible lover.

So, artists who’ve encountered Maria do what we do – we create.

Sometimes the art is a direct attempt at healing, founded in the belief that working out the relationship with Maria, with exposing the fiction to reality, of “showing the warts” might somehow lessen the pain. Others, the truer attempts to capture the vision of Maria, are appeals lodged in the misguided belief that “If my art is true and honest and powerful, she will come back.” Neither work, but both offer some important truths.

The first truth in either motive for creation is that Maria will not return. And the artist will not feel better. Yes, the chances are the art will be recognized for what it is – a love letter to Maria (whomever he or she may be) – but in the end the artist will only have spent a considerable amount of time focused on what ideally should be forgotten.

The second truth is that others will find that art, because they too have visions of Maria. Those of us who spend our days and nights in constant searches, in quests to remember our own visions running in parallel to quests to forget them, we all form a sense of global community. A loosely organized federation of hearts addicted to seraphim, of soporic romances. Of that glimpse that could never survive reality.

But in the end, in both the first and second truths, the reality is that Maria will never be again. The joy is in having been exposed to the fiction, the purity, and having that come through the ether. The experience might have meant a constant longing, but in the end, it was something real. It was something. And today, who can argue with that?