When you hear that song that reminds you

of something you don’t quite remember

but you feel a melancholy longing

for the intangible

When you listen to music that fills you with joy so great

you feel as if you might burst with happiness

Reading a poem that tears deep into your soul

stabbing to the heart of you with its truth

When you open a book and enter a world unlike your own

feeling both defeats and victories

When you watch a film that gives you chills,

worrying for the welfare of the characters you come to love

When you see a painting so beautiful you are lifted above yourself

when you walk around a sculpture and feel the emotion it embodies

whether pain, sorrow, joy, laughter

When you experience art, and understand

that art mirrors and enhances life,

projecting it back in such a way

that your body and soul sing with it

dance with it, whirl it around

wrap yourself up in it like a cloak and hold it close

and know that it is life, it is death

it is everything real and everything unreal

It is Duende, true and sublime

Duende: (Spanish) the mysterious power of art to deeply move a person