Duende

I didn't know what the word duende meant. In fact, I hadn't even heard it until Thursday when I read this article about David Simon and his new HBO show Treme. David Simon is the man, and I'm pretty jazzed, pun intended, for the premiere of this show. If you don't feel like reading the entire article, just sample this passage.

“THERE’S A THING about being capable of a great moment,” Simon told me on a break from shooting. “This city is capable of moments unlike any moments you’ll ever experience in life. To see an Indian come down the street in full regalia on St. Joseph’s Night on an unlit street of messed-up shotgun houses and one burned-out car, and he’s the most beautiful thing on the planet, and everything around him is falling down. It’s a glorious instant of human endeavor. It’s duende from the Spanish, chills on the back of your neck, and then the next minute it’s gone. Lots of American places used to make things. Detroit used to make cars. Baltimore used to make steel and ships. New Orleans still makes something. It makes moments. I don’t mean that to sound flippant, and I don’t mean it to sound more or less than what it is, but they’re artists with a moment, they can take a moment and make it into something so transcendent that you’re not quite sure that it happened or that you were a part of it.”

And you wonder why the writing on The Wire was so damn good. But back to duende, defined as the ability to attract others through personal magnetism and charm. So about two hours after reading the article on Thursday I'm walking from my office, through Grand Central, to the subway, and there's this huge painting on the wall in one of the buildings that connects to Grand Central that says "Duende". Coincidence...I suppose. Blog fodder...fo' sho'.

Duende sounds like a very appropriately seasonal word. Very "Spring-like". Warm, but not oppressively so. Flirty, but no overwhelmingly so. Now that I know what duende is, I want it. But alas, duende is most certainly a quality that's going to be elusive for a good percentage of people, and one person who does not have duende was a nice young lady I became acquainted with on the 6 train this past week.

It was a crowded downtown train but I had a seat. As the car I was in got increasingly crowded, people were getting jostled as they tried to exit at each stop. At one particular stop, I think maybe Union Square, this small elderly white woman tried to push her way through to exit the train. Her path was blocked by an extraordinarily tall black woman. The white woman couldn't make it out, missing her stop. The black woman then went on a rant saying how all white people were ignorant and didn't have the courtesy to say "excuse me" and that all the small white grandma had to do was say "excuse me" and she could've gotten out at her stop but now, because she was ignorant, she had missed her stop. Things got awkward for a second and then slightly more awkward when the charming black woman got in the white woman's face and said, and I paraphrase, but barely, "I'm 8 months pregnant. I'm from Brooklyn and I'll knock that ass out and leave you in the gutter because that's how we do". Now, I'm no doctor but I'm pretty sure a woman who is 8 months pregnant should avoid knocking anyone out and leaving anyone in the gutter. I'm just saying. I'm sure this woman's child will end up being as non-confrontational as her mother. The story ends well though, because at Astor Place as the train pulled into the station I believe every single white person in the entire subway car said "excuse me" whether they were getting off or not. I know I did. What, you think I'm trying to end up in a gutter? This woman certainly gave me, as David Simon says, "chills on the back of my neck", but obviously for all the wrong reasons. Sadly, there was no duende on the 6 train that afternoon.

But if I can't find duende on the 6 train, where in the world can I find it? Las Vegas perhaps. Yes, that sounds about right. I'll be venturing out to Sin City for the first time this Thursday evening. I've been told there are some incredibly sweet and charming young ladies who just like hanging out and doting on you and rubbing your shoulders as you gamble. How sweet and innocent sounding. From what I've heard, after 3 nights in Vegas I'll be so cooked and over it that I'll welcome an old fashioned Brooklyn beatdown from a pregnant woman.