INTERVIEW WITH LINDA MARY MONTANO. LINDA WEINTRAUB 2023
INTERVIEW WITH LINDA MARY MONTANO
April 18, 2023
LINDA WEINTRAUB
WEINTRAUB INTRODUCTION: Linda Mary Montano describes herself as a 'deathaholic'. Her preoccupation with death has been igniting her creativity since the 1970s when her ex-husband, the photographer Mitchell Payne, was murdered. Throughout all the ensuing years, dying has invested her work with its meaning and purpose. The singularity of her pursuit of this age-old theme has assured her work's inclusion in the annals of contemporary art.
Montano suggested that we pause before launching into our interview by offering a prayer: "Let us call in the Holy Spirit of wisdom and compassion, that what we are about to find, and say, and think, is beneficial and fun. Amen." She immediately clarified her intention by adding, "By beneficial, I mean helpful to other people."
As it happens, the final moments of our interview affirmed her opening prayer for generosity. Between this introduction and conclusion, she led me into the unchartered territories that occupy her current death ventures. This interview introduces an approach that Montano is still formulating, which is why her discourse resembles that of an eager explorer more than a seasoned veteran. The significance of this fresh pursuit can only be revealed against the backdrop of the fifty-plus years of her public art-life.
I created the following list to consolidate the many strategies that Montano has pursued in her quest for the mystical transformation that accompanies awareness of life's impermanence. Each approach
contributed to her esteemed catalogue of performances and videos.
- Art/life counseling to facilitate mutual healing
- Tarot, palm readings, and psychic readings as tools of discovery
- Extended memberships at a Catholic nunnery, Hindu Ashram, and a Zen Monastery
- Offering long-term care to her dying father
- Researching death from historic, mythic, cross-cultural perspectives
- Conducting death rituals of her own devising
- Enacting death rites from diverse cultures
- Meditating to experience death as 'trance-formation.'
- Experiencing the death of the ego by impersonating others
- Laying in a coffin to trick death into believing she had already died
- Experiencing the death of one of her senses, such as wearing a blindfold
- Studying movement related to death
- Collecting sounds of death and mourning
- Assuming personae in order to "die to myself"
The role of this impressive history seems to be shifting now that Montano has celebrated her 81st birthday. She is candid about confronting the reality of physical deterioration and impending
death. One might expect that, as actuality of truly dying replaces imagining and performing, she would be primed to reap the benefits of prolonged death studies and experiences. But, as this interview
reveals, this is not so. Montano's response to my invitation for her to envision the post-mortem state begins with the statement: "I have no idea!" My initial reactions to Montano's surprising statement were all wrong. There was no failure to achieve the wisdom and guidance she has sought during her excursions into impermanence. Our conversation revealed that "I have no idea" did not indicate her loss of faith, or withering of imagination, or abandonment of hope. Her explanation yielded a more uplifting interpretation. It demonstrated that Montano has not waited to die to be reborn. In her new incarnation, she is pursuing compassion, not suffering, as a way to achieve death ecstasy.
LINDA MARY MONTANO: Linda, thank you for including me in your death research book. To begin, I would like to tell you this story. Maybe it was about a year ago, I heard an audible message: 'NOTHING'. That word was shocking and it was important! Was I dying? Death had always been “something”..... a companion, a nervous system goad, a trauma addresser, an autobiographical fix. What I am going to say sounds
harsh; but it is also like a self-killing. I've been dying to my personality via the persona changes I began in 1976. I've been killing time, tempting time to stop, via endurance. But 'NOTHING' is exactly where I am going now, and where I've really been, which is a different journey through trauma, via the path of artmaking. Previously I was saved from my own suicide ideations by acting out publicly. Now I've added additional teachings and technologies to address what I have been doing solo for myself.
By 'technology' I am referring to spiritual technologies, recipes that we learn when we aspire to 'know the way'. Spiritual technologies are guides for returning to the breath, the milk, the delight of 'what's this life all about'? There are mystical technologies, fundamentalist technologies, Eastern technologies, Western technologies.
Each sect holds close to its path. But I am now pathless. Remember, I am nothing. I am preparing for nothing. My physical house in Saugerties is telling me to get out, giving me clues that it’s too much. And my physical body home is aging and seducing me to leave it. To respond to these prompts, I am distributing my art, giving away my clothes and belongings, appealing to museums to collect some pretty nice sculptures. Any museums you know that might need a copper crucifix? During this clean-up, my ten or more life narrative traumas are flashing by. They are coming to the surface. I feel this happens to everyone in old age. But now, they are not to be performed as art; but to be loved. Now I am not burdened by my trauma stories. Now I can be more NOTHING, the way of flying angels or flying chickens..... floating. This is preparation for the next non-corporal flotation.
Although I've always dealt with death theologically, I'm excited and proud of myself for creating this private Religion of Linda!!! I have compared it to other spiritual technologies and noticed that my
methods reverberate with their NOTHING. My performative exhibitionism has stripped me of the distractions of my history. So basically, I'm pretty clean and non-dual. Some days that is! That's why I responded with the word 'angels' when you asked me for my thoughts on death. There are no more physical paths for me. I don't have the physical energy for the intensity of my former need for performative attention, my former need to work hard to know Truth. Just recently I changed my identity on Facebook. I say I am no longer
an 'artist'. I am a 'lifest'. That is, I am no longer compelled to address my hungers performatively. I am compelled to address breath and life with others, through publicly sharing, not by my art. I once identified as an anorexic. Now I am seduced by my heart, not food, and not by my talent. These are the actions of a dying person. I was always a dying person, but this new NOTHING is more heart centered. I am not the art star dying and performing. We are ALL DYING. We are all dying together. The pandemic reminded us of that. Climate change reminds us. Chemicals in our air and food remind us. Dying is not about me; it is us. We have moved from the paradigm of the artist as the big talent. That died, thank God.
WEINTRAUB: Is this a new existential crisis?
MONTANO: It is a cosmic crisis. I am speaking for everyone. I'm not talking about myself.
WEINTRAUB: What is the role of religion in this state of NOTHING’?
MONTANO: Religion is whatever can move each of us individually from fear and punishment to, I am God. You are God.
WEINTRAUB: Why, in your response to my request for a reflection on death, did you add after "I have no idea," the phrase "Maybe it is angel light"?
MONTANO: Angels are a form of the Good Mother's breath. Angels suspend us in light, in the sky. We are invited to swim in that soft light. My own aging and the pandemic have offered two incredible gifts for all eight billion of us and the trillions of other entities; we are all in the same mother's milk, flying in Light. ***
’WEINTRAUB CONCLUDING COMMENTS: The four text-based works that follow are both intimate reflections of Montano's current considerations and their outward manifestation. She juxtaposes these references graphically by combining dark, ponderous text brushed in black ink, with fluttering
chicken-cherubs rendered in delicate pen and ink. They testify to her diversion away from associating death with fear, guilt, and suffering that originated in her Catholic upbringing and a long life of trauma.
Instead, they invite readers to join her in seeking the embrace of beings of light, whether they are real angels or flying baby chickens, whose wings can enclose us in the embrace of peace and comfort.
