Duende Discussions

12 - Oliver Mayer - Surfing Through and Wrestling With Duende's Poetic Athleticism, Alchemy and Vulnerability

Happy spring, almost summer, Duende Duders! Hope you’ve been feeling the recharging and renewing energies that this rebirthing season brings! You know what recharged and renewed my creativity and soul vibrance lately? Discussing duende with my guest for this latest episode, the OG Duende Discusser - playwright, poet, librettist and professor Oliver Mayer! Oliver is a master word conjurer/architect of the gutsy and lyrical, a passionately rigorous explorer of life’s vibrancy and pain, and the reason this podcast exists in the first place! I was his playwriting student at USC almost seventeen years ago - omg! 😭 - and he introduced the concept of Lorca’s duende to my class during an exercise on unearthing taboos. In our conversation, we get into how I responded to this visceral prompt, and the massive impact it and he had on me as an emerging playwright.  We also dig into how Oliver finds the most duende in moments “where the singer misses the high notes”, how he himself first discovered the concept of duende (I’d been wanting to know this forever!), and how his most powerful personal experience of duende was when, as a teenager, he witnessed the viscera-rattling athleticism of an opera’s Faustian final moments.  Oliver and I engage in an absolute love fest for the epic art effect and burning heart of our dearest duende lover - Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, he explains how the physicality of playwriting and theatre, what he calls "a hurt business", has played a specific role in igniting duende’s more painful confrontations for his male characters, and articulates how music helps him “surf” through his duende inspirations while dreaming up a play. AND, for the first time ever, I had a previous guest submit a question for Oliver! Such a provocative query, with a super beautiful response from Oliver.  It was such an honor to discuss duende with the person who first gifted it to me so long ago! I hope this very special discussion is a duende-y igniting to your creative souls, and energizes you the way it did me 🥰 Check out Oliver's website here http://olivermayer.com/ [http://olivermayer.com/] Read Oliver's L.A. Times article on duende here https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-aug-14-ca-duende14-story.html [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-aug-14-ca-duende14-story.html] Have a great duend-ay! 🙂 Follow @duendediscussions on IG for episode updates and fun, interactive duende discussing!

11 - Nathan and Shane Return for Love & Duende - The Sequel! *Mad with Gladness While Feeling Love’s Wound

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!

10 - Kristin Condon - Spirit Choreography - The Chaos, Calm and Communion of Surrendering to Duende

Happy Thanksgiving, Duende Duders! But more specifically, Happy Thanksgiving dinner! 😋 Along with your fave mains and sides, what’s been on your duende plate this fall-flavored month of gratitude and reflection? I love my mashed apple cider sweet potatoes served with an even more delectable dish - fresh self revelations and a more bonded sense of community born from honest internal work; aka, a duende discussion with my dream guest for this cozy dark-dinner-of-the-soul, the mystical-minded mover and shaker of female-first art - actress, dancer/choreographer, educator, film producer and women’s health advocate Kristin Condon! I’ve been wanting to discuss all things duendy with Kristin FOREVER - she is a dear friend and most beloved partner in conjuring up the weird and wild - and I love that she’s finally on for a thoughtful duende of Thanksgiving episode as a prominent part of her impactful art and advocacy is centered on new ways to define what health and healing actually are, and how to navigate through them as a process, not just an end-goal.  In this fun feast of both a deep and lighthearted conversation, Kristin, a longtime yoga instructor, gifts us with insights into how the chaos and calm of the spiritual practice’s lore is palpable with duende. She relays how she felt the vibration of communal duende while performing ballet - this idea of en masse duende blew my mind! - and opens up about how surrendering to the struggle with the duende (especially in the Hair and Makeup chair while prepping for a performance!) can reveal portals to new senses of self and other spiritual possibilities, including how her relationship with chronic pain has altered her creativity and how she moves through everyday life.  We weave nostalgic over how 90’s women in music went Full Duendz, and in a Thanksgiving food round of “Duende or No Duende?”, I ask one of the most controversial food questions TO EVER BE ASKED 😧 (Weigh in in the comments after you’ve listened if you have a strong opinion 🍇) And in true Thanksgiving dinner form, we express why we are thankful for our duendes, and for each other.  So much gratitude for this delicious and heart-nutritous convo with my curious and kind Capricorn queen! Hope you all have a tasty time giving thanks, and check out Kristin's info below on how to follow her and read her Substack. Happy Thanksgiving! 🤎 Follow Kristin on Instagram at @kristincondon [https://www.instagram.com/kristincondon/] Read Kristin's Substack The Happiness Body [https://open.substack.com/pub/kristindandreacondon/p/inside-outside-inside-out?r=1he19x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false]  Check out Kristin's website [https://www.kristincondon.com/] Have a great duend-ay! 🙂 Follow @duendediscussions on IG for episode updates and fun, interactive duende discussing!

9 - Sean Boyle - The Duende of Edgar Allan Poe - Confronting Death and the Shadow Self with Curiosity, Creativity, and Compassion

Happy Halloween, Duende Demons! I mean, Duende Duders 😈 Hope your spooky season has been super(naturally) fun and soul-igniting. I love that the liminal space between realms is so palpably dynamic during this time of year, it makes the ethereal nature of otherworldliness a bit more visceral, which is absolutely thrilling to me, and which is why I’m *beyond* excited to share this special Spooky Season Duende Discussion with you - the duende of 19th-century master of the macabre - Edgar Allan Poe - with the outrageously talented and creative craftsman/artist of all things beautifully strange and sublime - Sean Boyle!! Every time I see whatever wildly imaginative, cool new artwork Sean is working on (especially the period pirate hats - so cool!), or donning one of his handmade, incredibly inventive and intricate costumes at Ghouls Ball, I always want to discuss duende with him. So when I saw that he was performing his one-man Edgar Allan Poe show at Burnt Umber Coffee this Halloween, I knew I wanted him on for a Spooky Season Special.  This was such an inspiring conversation! We dig into Sean’s longtime love of all things gothic, what sparked his Poe show and its intriguing development over the years, and why he’s drawn to the inner turmoil of Poe’s provocatively grotesque characters and tales. We then dig even more deeply into the surprisingly tender duende of Poe’s close-to-the-bone, affecting melancholy and grimness, and discover some moving similarities between him and OG Duende Discusser, my beloved Federioco García Lorca. One of my favorite moments is when we go full Poe and lift the veil on Death, so to speak, uncovering the intimate vulnerability of confronting it with curiosity and compassion, two attributes seemingly absent from a lot of the world today. Such a treat of a convo! 🙂🖤 So have a rad Romantic and playful Halloween/rest of your Spooky Season, and check out this info on how to keep updated on all of Sean’s cool projects - His Edgar Allan Poe show will be at @burnt.umber.oc at 6:30pm this Halloween! 👻 Follow Sean on Instagram - @westonpeece Follow Sean's Poe Show - @fantasticterrorspoeshow Have a great duend-ay! 🙂 Follow @duendediscussions on IG for episode updates and fun, interactive duende discussing!

8 - Olivia Lilley - Conjuring Mystical Futures in the French Quarter, Free Reign Duende for Radical Protagonism, and Reimagining Romanticism’s Man-Made Monsters

Hi Duende Duders!! Happy September! Hope your summer-to-September transitions have been going smoothly, and that you’re staying cool out there. My guest for this 8th episode is absolutely perfect for this seasonally liminal time - it’s sharpest of the sharp emotional intellects and provocative writer/director/prolific podcaster, New Orleans’ freshest book apothecarist and Piscean world-building queen - Olivia Lilley! In this episode, everyone will get a glimpse of how Olivia - a hustler for impactful futures - is helping me endure the cosmic labor pains of moving from summer-mode to school-year art igniter by giving me tips on how to distill useful, life-plan-worthy duende from mystical experiences. Very September shadow-work vision board vibes :)  After the wondrous discovery that teenage Olivia wrote a feminist, anti-colonialist reimagining of The Phantom of the Opera musical - !!! - she reads her poem response to my question of, “What is your personal definition of duende?” - a thrilling Duende Discussions first! Through this we explore how New Orleans is, in her words, “a city that runs on duende.” She discusses the duende of her experience as the artistic director of an experimental theatre company in Chicago, and the unique vulnerability she conjured in the rehearsal room of one her most ambitious projects.  As an energizing force on Substack, we discuss how mystical poet Rilke informed her epistolary abundance, and, feeling in the moment, I have her write a letter to her personal duende (which I might try myself, tbh!).  After all of this inner intensity, we geek out over our mutual love for Gothic Romantic classics The Phantom of the Opera and Frankenstein, psychoanalyzing the strikingly similar monster tropes in both. And after a love fest for our hero, the irreverent and imaginative inventor of Gothic Sci-Fi, Mary Shelley, we play a game of Duende This-or-That, creature version! Mary would be so proud.  Olivia is such a stimulating, spontaneous conversationalist, I think you’ll be able to feel her ride-the-stormy-waves-of-life vibrance throughout this listen. I love how she prioritizes progressing one’s path forward to not only ignite one’s dreams, but actualize them. Please enjoy her soul-nurturing and vibrant harnessing of duende through this spirited convo 🩷 Follow Olivia on Instagram at @thisisolivialilley and @thefutureofartinamerica Check out her podcast here https://www.olilley.com/podcast Have a great duend-ay! 🙂 Follow @duendediscussions on IG for episode updates and fun, interactive duende discussing!