Sex Surrealism Dali & Me Quotes

“Artists often feel sad without knowing why. They sense the cruel inevitability of fate. They smell the coppery scent of death. All artists live in a permanent state of angst knowing that what they have created could have been better.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“Love is a beautiful tapestry woven by two people and the moment it is complete they keep going until they unpick every thread.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“Writers seek rhythm not rhyme”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“Travel opens the mind but frees it, also. Anything seems possible and destiny is no longer some pre-set landmark like an old church on a hill, but a piece of wet clay you shape with your own hands.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“In Cadaques, time is suspended in such a way that days spent here are not counted in the ageing process.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“It is not surprising that Spain found a need for the word duende. It is the only country where death in the bullring is a national spectacle, the only nation where death is announced by the explosion of trumpets and drums. The bullring, divided in sol y sombre – the light and shade, is the perfect metaphor for life and death, a passing from the light into darkness. Every matador who ever lived had duende and no death is more profound than death in the bullring.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“Dylan, Duende, Death and Lorca
Does Bob Dylan have Duende?
DUENDE dancers perform moving, unique, unrepeatable performances
Does Bob Dylan have duende? Do you have duende? What is duende?

Duende is a Spanish word with two meanings.

A duende is a goblin or a pixie that probably lives at the bottom of the garden and gives three wishes to old ladies who deserve a break.

The duende was best defined by Spain’s great poet Federico García Lorca during a lecture he gave in New York in 1929 on Andalusian music known as cante jondo, or deep voice. ‘The duende,’ he said, ‘is a momentary burst of inspiration, the blush of all that is truly alive, all that the performer is creating at a certain moment.’

The difference between a good and a bad singer is that the good singer has the duende and the bad singer doesn’t. ‘There are no maps nor disciplines to help us find the duende. We only know that he burns the blood like a poultice of broken glass, that he exhausts, that he rejects all the sweet geometry we have learned.’

Some critics say Bob Dylan does not have a great voice. But more than any other performer since the birth of recorded music, Dylan has revealed the indefinable, spine-tingling something captured in Lorca’s interpretation of duende. ‘It is an inexplicable power of attraction, the ability to send waves of emotion through those watching and listening to them.’

‘The duende,’ he continues, ‘resembles what Goethe called the demoniacal. It manifests itself principally among musicians and poets of the spoken word, for it needs the trembling of the moment and then a long silence.’

painting off hell by Hieronymus Bosch
Hell & Hieronymus Bosch
Four elements can be found in Lorca’s vision of duende: irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death and a dash of the diabolical. I agree with Lorca that duende manifests principally among singers, but would say that same magic may touch us when confronted by great paintings: Picasso’s Guernica, Edvard Munch’s The Scream, the paintings of heaven and hell by Hieronymus Bosch.

The duende is found in the bitter roots of human existence, what Lorca referred to as ‘the pain which has no explanation.’ Artists often feel sad without knowing why. They sense the cruel inevitability of fate. They smell the coppery scent of death. All artists live in a permanent state of angst knowing that what they have created could have been better.

Death with Duende

It is not surprising that Spain found a need for the word duende. It is the only country where death in the bullring is a national spectacle, the only nation where death is announced by the explosion of trumpets and drums. The bullring, divided in sol y sombre – the light and shade, is the perfect metaphor for life and death, a passing from the light into darkness. Every matador who ever lived had duende and no death is more profound than death in the bullring.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“Artists often feel sad without knowing why.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“A picture may be worth a thousand words but it needs a thousand words to describe a picture.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“Bad writing is like garbage thrown away in the street.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“A skeleton key opens many locks.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“It was Salvador Dalí who said the red wine of Cadaqués has the bitter taste of tears.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“Belief is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me

“The secret of success isn't knowing what you want, it is knowing what you don't want.”
― Clifford Thurlow, Sex Surrealism Dali & Me