The 'silent discourse' of your flamenco venue is, precisely, the creation of a ... (expand) setting, imbued with a tradition and a history in which 'duende' might just occur and is, thus, an integral part of what happens. It will be in that setting and in the audience's estimation that musician X will or will not manifest 'duende', i.e it is not a fact of the musician's sole making. A Costa del Sol night-club full of English tourists with neither respect for musicians nor understanding of the flamenco tradition is unlikely to offer a suitable venue - however technically accomplished the musician. And it's in something like this sense that I said that art is a discourse: it takes place among and between, it's not a 'thing' in itself.   Mark Callan

Dear Mark, 

Cannot art be both a discourse whilst also being 'of itself'?  If not, why not?   Is not the reason why discourse takes place because of an emotional connextion we are making with particular art forms on particular occasions, but this doesn't necessarily rule out that this connextion and the particular art form are both exacty the same in every respect, merely that they each share something of the other at a particular moment.  Does this make sense? 

Dilys