Formative Energy

Art Goblin

Nothing is as specific as an image for conveying a feeling. But since language is the currency of everyday communication some languages try harder to offer words where the importance and intensity of the feeling warrants it. The Spanish language is rich with words for emotion, and the one I love best is ‘duende’. I discovered it by accident online and when I inquired of my niece’s partner to see what it meant for sure I was surprised when the answer was goblin. When I googled it the first definition was goblins, associated with folklore. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Languages used by google it also means “a quality of passion or inspiration”. Google’s AI describes duende in art as “a mysterious force that arises from the depths of the artist's soul, compelling them to create, and deeply affecting the viewer.” To think that it took me until my seventies to find the word for what I have so often had the privilege to experience. The examples used by AI mostly regarded music and the powerful effect of live performers on their audience. I’ve heard many students speak reverentially about a concert they attended and the spiritual connection they felt to the musicians and the crowd. The capacity of art to meet such deep layers in our humanity has an integrating effect. Better than any language, art has the subtlety to show more closely the endless variations of melancholy or any other deep feeling. Think of all the ways that people are devastated, from the personal to ecological. One word for such a range of tragedies. For people to develop their emotional awareness we need more ways to see how we feel. The word “duende” and the goblin that represents it also connects to magic. That seals my affection for this word and concept. My lifelong pursuit of illusion is the trickster in me that wants to prod at conceptual certainties. My inner goblin is the part within that has one foot in the collective unconscious, the spiritual realm where inspiration finds its source. The use of an imagined entity, my duende, is a way to refer to something real that can’t be verbally expressed any other way. As representative of the spiritual realm, it’s the resonance music and art offer connecting to the multidimensional life force that mystifies and fascinates. Finding personal connections to the larger consciousness may require more goblins to be conduit for the positive qualities they reinforce. Orwell knew that the ability to think for oneself depended on having the language to describe it. Rather than allowing labels to lessen what it means to be human we need to find the words and images that show how much bigger the picture.

Loosening

Images for Spirit

A young woman in my ceramics class is making artifacts dedicated to the goddess Diana. Having heard her talking with another woman about Catholic school I couldn’t help but think how absent women were in most of western religion, one of many reasons people have rejected them. There is a spiritual yearning that isn’t addressed. In his book The Alphabet and the Goddess, Leonard Schlain wrote about how early more unifying cultures, revering the feminine, centered on community, were crushed by the armies of the male god. The male in charge is still the center of western religions more concerned with obedience than spirit. The imbalance of the male dominated structure of most religion has imprinted itself on modern attitudes even in the absence of the religion itself. For twentieth century Indian teacher Sri Aurobindo, the Mother represents the divine source of energy at the center of everything. The female brings forth life. Robert Chilton Pierce emphasized the need for the feminine in his writings. The last chapter of his book, The Biology of Transcendence, is called The Resurrection of Eve. He puts great emphasis on birth and early development as laying the foundation for capacity to love and engage with the world. His recommendations for changing our troubled world begin there and he offers science that supports them. To understand something better it helps to see it, have images that allow a person to examine details and relationships that stir their own thoughts about mysteries beyond the visible. Structures of insight like archetypal compositions or mandalas that focus attention inward offer scaffolding to find a personal connection to a spiritual center. The problems of today can only be solved with love. We need better imagery to connect to the universal love that includes all. Finding core visual structures that attract us personally resonate and integrate our energies. So much of today has degenerated into top-down autocratic with conditional love used to control. Those mindsets have led to chaos and disruption of individual peace. Personally meaningful imagery to contemplate can be a unifying light. Since Michael died, I’ve watched many documentaries of Near Death Experiences hoping to get a sense of what he might have undergone when he left his body. He definitely wasn’t there anymore, but the idea that all that he’d been simply disappeared seemed utterly implausible. One of the most consistent features of most people’s descriptions included the tunnel toward brilliant white light. Carl Sagan suggested about this phenomenon that we might be remembering birth. The choice of Diana as personal image underscores birth and connection to nature and cycles. Imagery to help integrate the feminine could start with the tunnel, apt metaphor for the journey toward a loving unknown. Time to balance all those obelisks with sacred wells and grottos.

Mis-Assumptions

Tennis as Art

When I think of the recent French Open, the first image that comes to mind is the joy on Spike Lee’s face that so perfectly mirrored my own after a miraculous shot by Coco Gauff who went on to win the Women’s Championship. Getting a little teary knowing how hard and long she’s worked, the same joyful teariness when Madison Keys won the 2025 Australia Open is due to my enormous appreciation for the power of hard work and determination that tennis exemplifies so well. One of the most competitive tennis tournaments I’ve seen in my decades of watching tennis, the 2025 French Open culminated in a men’s final that went for a historic five and a half hours. Players at the top of their game pushing each other farther than each had ever gone. I would have been fine with whoever won it was so close. Carlos Alcaraz beat Jannik Sinner, but it was the two of them together that created the extraordinary match. We, the spectators, maintained attention, joined in our absorption and admiration of what we were seeing and what it takes to be there. I always feel connected with the others watching, what we feel and appreciate is a linkage unlike any other for me, a congregation. Such devotion, skill and creativity raise the sport to art. TNT Sports’ coverage underscored the beauty of tennis with dance sequences loosely based on tennis moves which functioned as refreshing transitions between matches in early rounds. Watching tennis at that level, my bodymind is awash with dopamine and endorphins. Admiration is wonderful brain chemistry, full of the unexpected with virtuosity that takes your breath away. Other athletes appreciate the level of athleticism required to play that long and that well. Announcers pointed out the NBA players and other well-known professional athletes in the audience who know what it’s like to keep changing direction and adapting to other players for long stretches. As a person plagued by self-consciousness, the external focus is relief and appreciation of the courage required to have cameras on you the whole time as you experience the most important match of your life. I feel honored to witness how each player is affected as it shows in face and body I always feel improved after watching an intense tennis match. My mirror neurons have gotten a workout, twitching and shifting with the players movements, invigorated and inspired by the high level of excellence. I face my own work with the understanding that one meaning in life is finding out what you’re capable of, something my husband told me once that I’ve held as a principle ever since.

Betrayal