LINDA MARY MONTANO

MASKS:ESSAY ON MY IDENTITY

2011-11-25T10:08:00.000-08:00

MASKS:
PART 1:INTRODUCTION
Thank you Neke Carson for hosting this event and thanks to Veronica Vera for asking Neke to host the event. In this season of gratitude I would like to thank my deceased friends who mentored, inspired and permissioned my being an artist.
1. My parents Mildred and Henry Montano,both artists who modeled that art was a good path.
2. My grandmother, Magdalena Becker Kelly,for her wild wisdom and singing sans false teeth on holidays
3. I thank Mitchell Payne, photograper and light giver.
4. I thank Barbara Lehmann, writer, performance art collaborator.
5. And I thank Dr Aruna Mehta, second mother, teacher and dispenser of blessings.
Although all of them have left this world, their invisible applause is always in my heart.
I invite you to bring to your memory someone who always supported your creativity, thank them and see them applaud and encourage you, even now.

And I thank you, my colleagues for choosing to hire a babysitter,buy a subway ticket, take a bus or taxi, thanks for eating a quick burritto, opting out of your Pilates class and coming here when you could be home wrapped in your leopard SNUGGIE,bathed in the comfort of reflected light: light from your flat screen TV,light from your laptop,light from your open refrigerator, watching re-runs of Wendy Williams, Dr Oz, Conan, Anthony Bourdain,Caesar Millan,Dr Drew's Celebrity Rehab, The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Bootcamp, ...You could be watching Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell,you could be watching your avatar float in second life, ...You could be arguing with Whoppie and Joy on The View, crying with Wife Swap,watching Prince sing to Travis Smiley or travel to a near east hotel with Anderson Cooper...I feel bad because I do admit that being face to face is a big sacrifice especially without technological access to control, alt, delete, off, hide and remove buttons, our new friends. Thank you, thank you for giving ME face and endured time.But no, lets digress and clear the air.Why am I so insistent on this? Why do I feel guilt and shame again? You see, I have the patience for only one minute max of Anne Sexton/Peggy Lee and Thomas Merton youtube posts on facebook.But wait, I cant feel guilty because we will do a group ice breaker performance and that will be a blast, and I give you permission to use your Blackberries, you can text,surf your apps, answer your ringing cell phones, you can twitter,iphone,create a new 2nd life persona, network,do facebook, email, take bathroom breaks without asking permission, and after my one hour 4 minute video,(edited by the inimitable Tobe Carey) you can share in the group wig performance. A certain resume boost.

PART 2:THE CONCEPT BEHIND THE FILM MASKS;
Over the last 40 years I have periodically played with persona and gender as an art material, becoming imagined and real people. I call this work, Creative Schizophrenia, that is, I choose to leave my personality for aesthetic purposes and for medical research.Some have no chopice and that is called Life.
In the 70's in the middle of a life trauma I sat in front of a TV camera on a daily basis for a year and talked to it resulting in the film: LEARNING TO TALK(VDB).A medical note: I suggest that this would be a wonderfull cure for other selective mutes with PTSD.The seven women who came out of me at that time seemed competent, verbally secure, but culturally limited, vapid, complicit and secretly competitive.I was in my late 30's.I call them the MASK ON people,
IN the 90"s, as a reaction to menopause, a tenure dilemma and countless other personal tsunamis, I made the film, SEVEN STAGES OF INTOXICATION. The seven women I became acted as if they were marginalized terrorists, abused addicts, dangerous alcoholics and furious narcissists.But actually,I use the alcholic persona as a metaphor for the meditator in spiritual rapture,the meditator Divinely Intoxicated, in unspeakable ecstasy. See Teresa of Avila, St Francis of Assissi. I call them the MASK OFF people.
In the year 2003 I began to see myself as a puppett and I also wanted to become real and not imagined people.Real, like Hillary Clinton, Bob Dylan,,etc. One of the tragedies of this category is that when I asked another real person if I cold be/duplicate her she rejected my offer. Very dishartening and a reason to retreat to SECOND LIFE, I suppose.The real people I have become have real imperfections and private hells that are exposed by TMZ, People Magazine, The Huffington Post, Wolf Blitzer and Oprah. I call them the MASK ON AND OFF people.
2005 THE LAST MASK was put on, the death mask, the last straw. Not so bad when my teacher Dr.RS Mishra talked so easily about death, "You are already Dead." and "Die Daily" via meditation and I add, via our art . Why die daily? To quiet the other masks because he also said, "You have a daily choiceof heaven or hell..." and another great one..."We all have a MOTHER TERESA AND HITLER inside us...." And Lama Tarchin said 20 years ago to me In the Quashas' kitchen while looking at masks on the wall,"Take off your mask." Now I understand what he was saying and I call this fourth mask research performance, THE LAST MASK.

PART 3: WHY THE NUMBER 4?
For the sake of order and structure I am using the number 4 to talk about these 4 masks that we all share. Maybe these following lists can be templated over the concept of mask to see similarites, make associations, compare information. Please imagine a spread sheet and for each category mentioned, there is a correspondence between the mask and the "category".

1.Psychology says there are four levels of consciousness:
unconscious... located in the midbrain...MASK OFF
subconscious.....located in the diencephalon...MASK ON
conscious...all parts of the brain above the midbrain i.e. the diencephalon and cerebral cortex...MASK OFF AND ON
superconscious...all parts of the brain...NO MASK
now we must find a psychiatrist and neurosurgeon to explain this.
2.Hindus say there are definately 4 Chakras but more like 7(use the same MASK analogy as above)
Muladhara
Svadhistana
Manipura
Anahat
associated with the colors Red,Orange,Yellow,Green
Corresponding with
love and affection
security and safety
power and control
compassion
And the 4 chakras are locted in the first 4 glands:
ovaries/testes
pancreas
adrenals
thymus
But we must find a Brahmin to explain this meditation model.
3.Then there is the medical world which says we have four brain waves:
Beta: 3-35 oscillations, normal thinking
Alpha: 8-13 oscillations , rest
Theta: 4-8 oscillations ,children, adults, dreams, strong emotions
Delta: 3-5 oscillations, sleeping newborns
Where is the doctor?
4.And there is:
Hell
Purgatory
Limbo
Heaven...
BAPTISM
COMMUNION
CONFIRMATION
MARRIAGE
Where is the priest?
All I know is that on a minute to minute basis, I move in and out of gehanna then paradise, in and out of terror then spa , in and out of leaving then staying.....A mask dance without end.

PART 4A: MY INTENTION IN MAKING THIS FILM:
1.I love structure . Number and form are important focuses and a reliable foundation and grounding that give me pleasure even when there is no content. I could make a film about numbers, structure and concept alone and be very happy.
2.But also, the message of hope is important ...that is, that we all share this condition of going in and out of mental waves but that there is a way out. And so the film,MASKS, has an instructional value and my nun self likes that especially when I translate and see addictions as misguided ecstasy and really spirituality gone amuck.
3.The tape is a study in time because there is really boring footage from the 70s in this film. Then,time was long and cheap and it is so hard to endure it now . We get to see how our attention has changed in the last 30 years.More instruction.
4. My intention is always to point to death in my work, either formally MITCHELLS DEATH or as metaphor, LYING DEAD CHICKEN LIVE ANGEL, where I lay on a CHICKEN BED for 3 hours...resting? preparing? motionless? meditating?
5. My last intention is to look at secrets as art....my own secrets, secrets I've seen or heard about, political secrets, cosmic secrets...They have to get out and get unwound from our organs our brains our minds and once we Hiermonyous Bosch them out, we feel better,the viewer feels better,purified and cleansed. Art is so generous and we artists are chosen to do this job for all. Art lets us spew the dark out,laugh with and at it and Mother Art then transforms the puke so it is no longer small t-truth. Mother stirs and cooks it, feeding our hunger and turns our stuff into big T-Truth .Mounting this TRUTH, we ride BEAUTY GOLD into the sky.

PART 5 DISCLAIMER:
1. In the final wig performance after the video:please use no blood , no urine, no semen, no phlem,no fire, no knives, no sputum, no physical harm to self or others, no bombs, no guns ,no tazer guns.See my archive for how I incorporated a similar list of no's when I taught performance at UT Austin.Now raise your hand and sign an invisible release form that says you will not sue me, send a lawyer after me, hold me accountable on any level for anything you see, hear, do or wear tonight.(sign the air)
2.I ask your pardon and absolution for using accents so freely in my film. I grew up in a family where my Italian grandparents spoke very little english and what they did speak , they did so with a very thick accent which I found fascinating and I use the accent now with all due respect and with honor for all immigrants facing language issues and cultural isolation.
3.WARNING: There are references to alcoholism, profanity, urine therapy, abuse, medical interventions in this tape so:
VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
4. I_________________________________________DO NOT HOLD LINDA MARY MONTANO ACCOUNTABLE FOR ANY THING.DATE.___________________________________.

LINDA MARY MONTANO

NOVEMBER 21, 2009
FEAST DAY OF THE PRESENTATION OF MOTHER MARY IN THE TEMPLE
SAUGERTIES NEW YORK:TRANSFIGURATION HOUSE

OCCUPY/FREE ART BY LINDA MARY MONTANO

2011-11-15T12:20:00.001-08:00

OCCUPY/FREE ART BY LINDA MARY MONTANO, 2011

IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE MULTIPLE OCCUPATIONS OF 2011,
I JOIN AND SYMPATHIZE WITH THEIR PLEA FOR A SPIRIT OF SHARING
BY FREELY POSTING MY FILMS ON YOU TUBE.

LINDA MARY MONTANO 2011

LINDA MARY MONTANO
THE ART/LIFE INSTITUTE
9 JOHN ST
SAUGERTIES , N.Y. 12477
845-246-4482

PERFORMANCES
ART/LIFE COUNSELING
TEACHING
VIDEO
SUMMER SAINT CAMP
RESIDENCIES

www.vdb.org
WWW.LINDAMONTANO.COM
http://lindamarymontano.blogspot.com

STARVED SURVIVORS (ENTER)

2011-11-04T08:33:00.000-07:00

STARVED SURVIVORS

Once upon a time, a very, very long time ago, in a very, very verdant green Italian village, there lived a girl child, an orphan girl child. All the other girls who lived there had long, thick, dark hair, olive skin, world-sharpened eyes and a freed up throat that could scream, yell, talk and cry. Orphan Girl, who was almost a mute, had blond hair, green eyes and as a cultural outsider, was shunned by her classmates who called her Orphan Girl. The name echoed in the mountains, "Orphan Girl, Orphan Girl, where are you?" She went into the forest, sat with the trees and flowers, drank cafe late from a thermos that she always carried and wrote nice words on the surface of a mountain stream, loving it when they instantly disappeared.

Of course, like in every fairytale, there is someone who represents wisdom and in this story, the deus-ex-machina is a wizened, wrinkled, long skirted, foul smelling, crabby, bent, rough talking but truth telling woman elder. Was she really a woman? It was hard to tell because her features had glued themselves together-----her nose to her chin, almost; her eyebrows to her cheeks, almost; her toenails grew into the bottoms of her crusty feet, almost. The gossipy villagers called her lots of names: witch, strega, bad news, nuscience, bother, charity case, pest, liability, and on and on...but for Orphan Girl she was a refuge and like-minded soulmate.

For the beauty of this story, let's give this elder an extraordinary gift and talent....it seemed simple and was nameless and it was that she could tell when the train which stopped in her village was 33 miles away and with her acute sensitivity she predicted the exact time the train would arrive at the station. Of course this savant knowing and sensing was so non-consequential that it impressed no-one but Orphan Girl. Who wants to listen for a train by putting your ear to the earth? Not a very practical skill!

Of course, she passed on this pedestrian knowledge to Orphan Girl but hidden beneath this simple circus-like-act was something more spectacular, something more usefull..a secret knowledge she handed onto Orphan Girl one rainy November day when the veil between life and death; the veil between truth and ignorance; the veil between suffering and happiness is very thin.

Here's how it happened: they were sitting in front of an open-pit fire, poking sticks at the embers, and the elder said: " Today is the day for me to tell you the complete story. Yes, I listen for when trains are near but also I know when they have wrecked. I know when trains have wrecked 700 miles away and Orphan Girl , it is important to know that life has many , many , many train wrecks because life is about change, vulnerability, flux, unpredictability, old age, sickness and death. You think you have it bad, being an orphan but I want to tell you the whole story about other weird and terrible things that have happened, might happen and could happen. Close your eyes and I will read you a story that I call: ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A TRAIN WRECK. Shhhhh. Let's listen."

__________________________________________________________________________________

ENTER

Admittedly we are all sensing a pre-renaissance black-out, a "dark age" with recognizable and historically accurate symptoms witnessed by historians of the fall (and/or transformation) of other dynasties teetering on the brink of armageddon.(The Roman ,Ottoman, German, British Empires perchance?)

BREAK

Can't we all agree that in this 21st century, we are communally experiencing a bad taste and aftermaths from universally experienced phenomena such as:

CIRCLE 475 PHENOMENON

Financial fumblings, cultural buffooneries, pervasive paranoia, modified mea culpas, bipartisan shenanigans, uncompassed morality, bipaped starvations, political circus acts, theological tsunamis, global tamperings, cyclical catastrophes, faux apologies, misleading marketing, conspicuous consuming, muddled multitasking, apocalyptic battering, padded documenting, salted wounding, power shifting, self loathing, hierarchical covering, pious grandstanding, spasmed tremoring, bankrupted dreaming, disintegrated remembering, virtual relating, techno crazing, outrageous compensating, congressional bullying and foreclosed trust!

CIRCLE 189 PHENOMENON

Diseased despondents, surrendered suicidals, unheld newborns, hooded jihadists, fundamental fanatics, antsy therapists, inattentive nannies, selfish narcissists, bonused buddies, media darlings, unconscienced thieves, suffocating egoists, discarded seniors, trafficked innocents, self inflicting terrorists, vulnerable victims, jolly junkies, over dutiful daughters, celebrity addicts, killer drones, spiritual materialists, scheming CEOs, interminable visitors, jealous sisters, stubborn students, lying boasters, ungrateful patients, cyber bullies, skeletoned anorexics, emotional mutes, nasty narcissists and miserable millionaires!

CIRCLE 362 PHENOMENON

Creepy oppressors, hypersexual prowlers, Holocaust deniers, death cheaters, begging borrowers, scud sharp shooters, carbon foot printers, attention mongers, greedy brokers, depressed designers, public apologizers, prepared preppers, subcutaneous cutters, sophomoric obsessors, inappropriate responders, furious professors, tormenting victimizers, parent starvers, neurotic neighbors, reputation slanderers, magnetic womanizers, surprise attackers, glad handers, halitosed dancers, grid locked commuters, grieving skaters, arrogant outsiders, soul sellers, gift refusers, aggressive reporters, sloppy visitors, pill stealers, animal abhorrers, hate disseminators, stinky passengers, authority balkers, sloppy foodmakers, name callers, energy suckers, germ spreaders, information secretors, junk hoarders, saccrine sympathizers, sweaty hand shakers, misguided worshippers, internet scammers, morphed murderers, obese outsiders, child abusers, frozen floormatters, dysfunctional reconfigurers, beauty kidnappers, unread biographers, gender assaulters, monumental mistakers, satanic afflicters, silent contemptors, counterindicated elders, hungry survivors, childhood stealers, guilted enjoyers, ponzi schemers, medical compromisers, careless caregivers, enraged partners, jailed minors, paralyzed players, unemployed loners, adulterous trespassers, vaccinated teenagers, double crossed informers, technological traumatizers, disabling humiliators, monetary misusers and nose pickers!

SHIFT

Oh, our poor bodies/minds are dodging the toxic arrows of it all! Dodging thoughts about pcb's and thoughts of no more potable water or no more fish or ice-sliding-glaciered polar bears! Thoughts about what to do about our arthritic thumbs twittered to spasm. Thoughts about ourselves and the suffering others! Not only thoughts but also memories of once looking in the mirror at our faces sweetly smiling back with innocent anticipation of a McDonalds. NO MORE. In preparation for a post-modern re-look at Revelationed-robotization, our current faces are facebooked/addicted into social shyness, not to be relieved by a 1970's Kumbayaah singing picnic on a green, chemical free lawn. That chapter is closed, my friend.
DELETE

Now, our poor bodies, steel-tight with earthquaked fear of the next day's news or trembling over the calories and sugar content of the morning's Starbucks or tripping out of buildings quickly when rumblings at yet another fault-line are recognized by sensitive dogs,....our battered bodies.... run on PTSD/empty seeking refuge in second-lifed, C-PAPED-accompanied nightmares.

HIDE

But wait, out of this harrowing scenario of a reality show gone bad, comes Hope?

SHIFT

PAUSE

______________________________________________________________________

The fairytale ends here and the old woman said, "That's it, Orphan Girl, you know the whole story. Now open your eyes and your voice and don't ever be surprised again when you encounter a life-wreck. They happen all the time and you are prepared, never to be surprised when strange things happen in your life." Orphan Girl was elated, glad she had been taught these important secrets and danced the OPEN HEART VOICE DANCE, around the fire.

That night, at 8pm, they both slept with their ears to the earth, in silent preparation for the next train to come.

The beginning of an end.

LINDA MARY MONTANO, 2010 Saugerties, NY

2011-11-03T10:48:00.001-07:00

MONEY IS GREEN TOO MANIFESTO
1. ALMOST ALL MONEY IS PAPER. THINK TWICE BEFORE CREATING A WAY TO SPEND MORE&MORE MONEY BECAUSE THEN YOU COMPROMISE A TREE.

2. SOME MONEY IS IN THE FORM OF PLASTIC CARDS. THINK TWICE BEFORE CREATING A PERSONAL NEED TO HAVE MORE TOXIC PLASTIC IN YOUR LIFE.

3. CREDIT CARDS ARE TO BE SEEN AS EQUIVALENCIES. THAT IS, IF WHAT IS VISUALIZED INSIDE THE CARD AS A REAL ASSET IS TRULY THERE, THEN USE THE CARD. IF WHAT IS VISUALIZED INSIDE THE CARD IS A PROBABILITY, THEN DON'T USE THE CARD.

4. MONETARILY DO UNTO OTHERS AS WAS DONE BY OUR GRANDFATHERS. THAT IS, OUR FATHERS AND GRANDFATHERS SPENT ONLY WHAT THEY HAD. FOLLOW THEIR EXAMPLE. IF YOU DON'T HAVE IT, DON'T SPEND IT.

5. DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WANT DONE UNTO YOU. BEFORE YOU MAX OUT A CARD, THINK OF THE TRIED AND TRUE AMERICAN WORKING THREE JOBS TO PAY OFF YOUR MONETARY EXCESSES. SPEND THREE MINUTES A DAY BEING SOMEBODY ELSE. THAT IS, BE THIS PERSON WITH 3 JOBS IN YOUR IMAGINATION AND THEN DECIDE WHAT TO DO.

6. THE GOVERNMENT IS HYPNOTIZING US TO BE FINANCIALLY CARELESS, EXCESSIVE AND IRRESPONSIBLE. IT IS A PLOY AND WAY FOR THEM TO THEN DO A POLITICAL INTERVENTION AND PUNISHMENT THAT HAS CONSEQUENCES THAT ARE TO BE FEARED.

7. "I WILL MAX OUT MY CARD BECAUSE I'M TERMINALLY ILL" IS A MONEY SIN AKIN TO ANYTHING YOU MIGHT CONSIDER A SIN IN YOUR INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE. WHY? BECAUSE SOMEBODY'S HARD WORKING BROTHER WILL HAVE TO EVENTUALLY PAY FOR YOUR DEBTS.

7. BANKRUPTCY IS THE INQUISITION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS: THE "WORKER" TAKES UP THE SLACK OF THE "WANTER".

8. DO ONLY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD.

9. WANT ONLY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD. IF YOU HAVE ENOUGH MONEY AND HAVE BECOME AN ADDICTED WANTER, THEN ASK, WHY WANT?

10. TRANSLATED, THAT SAYS: ASK, WHY DO I WANT WHAT I HAVE BEEN HYPNOTIZED TO WANT?

11. STOP IMAGINING YOU HAVE MONEY WHEN YOU DON'T. IF YOU DON'T HAVE MONEY, GET A JOB AND LIVE IN A WAY THAT SUPPORTS YOU, NOT A WAY THAT SUPPORTS A HABIT THAT IS AN ELITIST AFFRONT TO YOUR SOUL.

12. MONEY IS ONE OF LIFE'S TABOOS LIKE SEX, DEATH. MONEY IS IN THE PROCESS OF BEING DE-TABOOED, BUT IS NOW AT THE LAUGHINGSTOCK/FOOL STAGE OF DE-CONSTRUCTION. BY TAKING MONEY SERIOUSLY, IT WILL BE RE-INSTATED TO ITS PREVIOUS POSITION OF RESPECT/ KIND-CARE AND WILL HAVE SURVIVED THE TEST OF TABOO.

13. ASK: ARE LOVE AND MONEY OXYMORONONIC OR CONGRUENT? WHAT ABOUT COMMODIFIED/SATISFIED? SUSTAINABLE/WASTEFUL? BARTER/BUY? GENEROUS/HOARDING?

14. THERE ARE 867,000 WAYS OF INTERPRETING POVERTY/LIVING WITHIN YOUR MEANS. RESEARCH THE TOPIC.

15. THANK YOUR HIGHER POWER FOR THE INVISIBLE RICHES IN LIFE, NOT THE ONES THAT CAN BE BOUGHT.

LINDA MARY MONTANO, MAY 21, 2011

WRITINGS FROM FRED POOLES CLASS 2011

2011-11-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

1.SECRET

Dear Brain,
You keep me in you.
His face red? I don't remember.
His clothes black? I don't remember.
He walked where he is supposed to walk,next to me on the side of traffic, holding my hand? I don't remember.
Believe it or not, it was this same street? I don't remember.
Was there a mailbox to our left? I don't remember.
Does he talk softly? I don't remember.
Did I believe him when he said,"If I was to kill a little girl, I would cut her up into little pieces and stuff her body into a mail box."
Was I shaking then? I don't remember.
I shake now.
SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE
SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE
SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE
I REMEMBER,
Love, Linda

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

2. AN IMPOSSIBLE SITUATION

front steps dot dot dot BREAKING
cellar floor dot dot dot FLOODING
green lawn dot dot dot POISONING
house foundation dot dot dot LISTING
wall paper dot dot dot SCALDING
outside paint dot dot dot PEELING
their bedroom dot dot dot SMELLING
kitchen chairs dot dot dot SCREAMING
inside ghosts dot dot dot WALKING
me dot dot dot CRYING
GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT!!!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

3. SOMETHING HAPPENED

4 2 weeks he watched.......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
4 2 weeks he watched......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
4 2 weeks he watched......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
4 2 weeks he watched.....AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
4 2 weeks he watched......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
4 2 weeks he watched......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
4 2 weeks he watched......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
4 2 weeks he watched......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
4 2 weeks he watched.......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
4 2 weeks he watched.......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
4 2 weeks he watched.......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
4 2 weeks he watched.......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

WHITE OUT

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

4. NO TIME LEFT

HEY LADY!!!!!! hair's thinning

HEY LADY!!!!! watch out, you're tripping

HEY LADY!!!!! coffee's spilling

HEY LADY!!!!! don't kiss, breath's stinking

HEY LADY!!!!! check book's unbalancing

HEY LADY!!!!! bone's hurting

HEY LADY!!!!! skin's wrinkling

HEY LADY!!!! WAKE UP!!!!! YOU'RE DYING!!!!

HEY LADY, STOP LAUGHING, HA HA HA, YOU'RE DYING

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

5. WAITING

Have you ever met someone and mutually, immediately, exchanged bodies, minds, memories, eyes, liquids, and fires
with him?
Even though he was only 20 glowing planets away from my left shoulder, smells of his wife's extra strength TIDE
travelled nose to nose.
Have you ever tasted unguilted saliva suctioned into staglited hungry caves?
Have you ever forgotten how to wait and chosen instead to google then buy sandalwood oil imported from India?
WHAT'S THE COST?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

6. A REAL LIFE SONG

PRAY FOR MY CNA, O LORD, PRAY FOR MY CNA
PRAY FOR MY CNA , OH LORD, PRAY FOR MY CNA

SHE COMES TO THE HOME EVERYDAY
45 OF US TO LOVE
SHE BRINGS US LIGHT, WE NEVER PAY
SHES A GIFT FROM UP ABOVE

PRAY FOR MY CNA OH LORD, PRAY FOR MY CNA
PRAY FOR MY CNA OH LORD, PRAY FOR MY CNA

WE CALL AND SHOUT NURSE NURSE COME HERE
FOR EVERY BODILY NEED
I'VE GOT THE BEDPAN DEAR DON'T FEAR
AND THEN 45 MOUTH'S I'LL FEED

PRAY FOR MY CNA OH LORD OH LORD
PRAY FOR MY CNA
PRAY FOR MY CNA OH LORD, PRAY FOR MY CNA

SOME SCREAM AND SHOUT EVERY NIGHT
IN SWEATY HALLUCINATIONS
MORALS, TEETH, AND HAIR ARE GONE
THE DARK STEALS TREPIDATION

PRAY FOR MY CNA OH LORD
PRAY FOR MY CNA
PRAY FOR MY CNA OH LORD,
PRAY FOR MY CNA

BODIES NOW BONES
PORES ARE STINKING
HOLOCAUSTED INTO SLIME
MY DEATH SKULL ROARS
THERE IS NO MORE
GOODBYE OH GHOST OF TIME!!!!!

PRAY FOR MY CNA OH LORD
PRAY FOR MY CNA
PRAY FOR MY CNA OH LORD, PRAY FOR MY CNA

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

7. ONE SENTENCE

She sweatily hands out copious copies
of zeroxed dribble,
sharing a passion for paper, not trees.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

8. REAL LIFE STORY

LETTER TO SENIOR EXERCISE TEACHER IN PHILDELPHIA

DEAR LEONORA,
Obviously your class is extremely well endowed by the US Government because they provide free PHYSICAL THERAPY membership to some elders so that we can move, stay well and don't financially burden medicare/medicaid or our supplementalS with payments for ills that come from non-preventive health maintenance. For some strange reason, my insurance companies don't play this free game with me and I pay 300$ a year at this RESOURCE CENTER.
Money aside and back to the class titled MOVE IT OR LOSE IT.....each exercise is designed and engineered to help old people maintain flexibility on and off ice, balance in the kitchen, arm strength to dress/undress/cook/shop and 5000 other skills that healthy 40 year olds take for granted.

You expertly transmit all of these pre-designed movements accurately and correctly but this is my concern which I have previously communicated to you at least 10 times! Yes it is about VOLUME! SOUND! LOUDNESS! MUSIC! TONE OF VOICE! I feel repetitively embarrassed to come over and over to the front of the class to say , "CAN YOU PLEASE LOWER THE VOLUME OF YOUR MUSIC?" And it is becoming clownish of me to keep gesturing from my "EXERCISE SAFELY CHAIR" while waiving my arms and signing, "TURN IT DOWN, TURN IT DOWN , TURN IT DOWN!!!!"
Leonora, I think you must be a written word learner and not an aural learner or listener. So, HERE IT IS!!!!!! IN WRITING..... PLEASE TURN DOWN NOT ONLY THE VOLUME OF YOUR MUSIC BUT THE VOLUME OF YOUR VOICE. I responsibly wear ear plugs to class but LET ME SHOUT...YOUR CLASS IS STILL TOO LOUD FOR ME!!!!CAN YOU TURN IT DOWN?

Your students are in their 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and have lived through life/deaths/accidents/betrayals/debilitating losses/dementia/alzheimers/sagging skin/depression/ disillusionment/diarrhea/constipation/falls/brain injuries and a gazillion other life wrongs. And there are lots of rights! We are social workers/doctors/mystics/lawyers/fathers/mothers/nurses/entrepreneurs/teachers/meditators/cooks/writers/black belts/functioning volunteers/artists/lovers and care giving friends.

So please use your inside voice with us and be assured that you don't have to infantilize us or cheerlead us back to life. We are alive. STILL. Softly teach this wonderful class and we promise to breathe very kind gratitude to you in return.

In my silent voice,
A participating elder

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WRITINGS, LINDA MARY MONTANO 2011

2011-11-02T08:21:00.000-07:00

1. SELF PORTRAIT

1942: BENEDICTINE HOSPITAL, KINGSTON NY & SAUGERTIES NY.......................................JUST TIME

1959: NEW ROCHELLE, NY....................................................................................................JUST TIME

1960: OSSINING, NY..............................................................................................................JUST TIME

1962: TOPSFIELD MASS..........................................................................................................JUST TIME

1963-65: OSSINING NY............................................................................................................JUST TIME

1966: FLORENCE ITALY............................................................................................................JUST TIME

1966-69: MADISON WISCONSIN..................................................................................................JUST TIME

1969-70: ROCHESTER NY..............................................................................................................JUST TIME

1971-81: CALIFORNIA....................................................................................................................JUST TIME

1981-91: NY STATE.........................................................................................................................JUST TIME

1991-98: TEXAS...............................................................................................................................JUST TIME

1998-PRESENT: ULSTER COUNTY.......................................................................................................JUST TIME

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************

2. I REMEMBER

" The ability to hold onto a piece of information in order to complete a task is specifically human. It causes certain regions of the brain to become
very active in particular, the frontal lobe,....which is highly developed in humans and is the reason we have such high, upright foreheads. Human
memory is acomplex phenomenom and involves other regions of the brain as well. Information is transferred from short term memory to long
term memory through the hippocampus,so named because it's shape resembles the curved tail of a seahorse(hippocampus in Greek.) The
hippocampus is a very old part of the cortex evolutionally and is located in the inner fold of the temporal lobe. Information is decoded in the
various sensory areas of the cortex then converges in the hippocampus which then sends them back from where they come from. We past
memories through the hippocampus several times....strengthen the associations , and then the cortex will have learned to reconstruct what we
call a memory."
Once she heard a story about a 12 year old girl who, while drawing a picture of an old Asian man from a book, remembered knowing him.
From where? A dream? Someplace else? Some other life? (Not a very Catholic explanation.)
Then 20 years later, she literally and truly met him, the same Asian man. Almost fainting, this real-time recognition was beyond the cortex.

********************************************************************************************************************************************************

3.BABY

A dream, flashback, past life? She walks east. A busy small village. Where? A tiny, adorable, cute, sweet, endearing 4 year old boy runs to her.
Brown skin. Another culture. A foreign country. Unaware of cars. Focused. One pointed. Wants to run to her. Why? Can hearts evolve from stone
to flesh in 3 seconds?Anatomically impossible but hers did. Adrenals propelled, eyes binoculared out of her head,silently shouting or maybe audibly,
"Baby, baby. Stop! Cars Cars Cars! Watch out." Fishing for languages she improvisatorily creates, she shouts, "Arete! Aiuto! Attende!" Nothing works.
Winded but frozen in place, her body morphs into Mother Love. My dream baby's 8 year old brother or cousin follows but the babitos pace is beyond
time and cosmically set, not to be matched.
Willing cars,trucks, vans,motorcycles, bikes and ambulances to be banned from the premises by some unseen force, he powers through the parted
sea of cars as potential killers into her arms. She kneels, absolves him, holds him at least in her mind, shakes him and tries 400 new languages to
teach Mother Law 101 to curb his instinct to innocence. "Dangeroso, dangeroso she moans. Dont you ever, ever, ever run away like that again.
Do you hear me?" By then younger brother and company are there translating my dnagerosos to periculosos, periculosos or maybe it is the other
way around. "Where's your real mother", I ask and the real is in silence. More commotion and a crazed with worry 16 year old babysitting aunt and
her friend breathlessly chant the same message, "Periculoso, periculoso, muy muy periculoso", and then THE MIRACLE! Time stopsand without
looking even to the sky to confirm his message, beauty babito baby point to his left and sings, "RAINBOW, RAINBOW!!",diverting his captive loves
from yet another almost 911 real time tear in the middle of the sorrow chest. Certainly diverting me from the coudha, wouldha, shouldhas mind to
instant rapture, and a harboring of new beginnings. As angel son and company concur and stop rescuing....rainbow, rainbow, they head west, I
north, but ever the magician he looks back at me with yet another translated by his cousin prophecy/warning,"Are you going home?"

********************************************************************************************************************************************************

4.MORNING

She knows how to give good gifts. Quality was always a 10, durability factored in, even if it was mail ordered. Nothing cheap, including the
clock they gave me maybe 10, maybe 15 years ago.... a travel alarm, because I was always on the road. Thoughtful gifts. An emergency kit
for my car one year when it seemed I was living in it. And then they ran out of ideas, energy, unable to remember who I am or what I do
so this past Christmas I aksed for something recycled, in fact she had mentioned she had a cassette recorder and I said, "That would be great,
i'd love that." But when they cleaned the cellar and found it, mold, mildew, dust and a barry Manilow tape or something else equally dispicable,
clogged it forever. So via ebay, or cragslist or Wikipedia, or QVC, via Taiwan, Istanbul, or maybe Beijing she found a duplicate Sony knock off
version which I actually use as a defense against the ipad/blackberry/blueberry/iphone/kindle/digital camera and robot caregiver.
This morning, I responded to the sound of the 15 year old gift that has never had a battery change but now flutters for 30 seconds before it
offers a polite European-like wake up call to this traveller who now prefers journeying in the silence of the dark night.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************

5.THE 39 INCH RULER

Thirty-six inbches long/yellow-golden/aged/smeared with wear/readable numbers:
1.blackout
2.remember
3.remember
4.blackout
5.blackout
6.remember
7.blackout
8.blackout
9.remember
10.remember
11.remember
12.blackout
13.remember
14.blackout
15.blackout
16.remember
17.remember
18.blackout
19.remember
20.blackout
21.remember
22.blackout
23.remember
24.remember
25.remember
26.remember
27.blackout
28.blackout
29.remember
30.remember
31.remember
32.remember
33.remember
34.remember
35.blackout
Then it says 3, not 36. Where's the 6? But there are lines and words: Amos Post INC.,Petroleum Products, Catskill 278. Smell? Taste? No, but it elicits
immediate and constant flashbacks: Dad, where are you? Tell Grandpa I'm really, really, really ,really sad and sorry I didn't say a proper goodbye and
apologize. He knows what I am saying. But maybe he's sad too? The story is that when Grandma woke up from being sick with the 1918 Spanish Flu,
he had to tell her it killed their 3 year old only daughter and sister of 5 brothers. Did he hand Grandma a rumored photo of her in a child's coffin?
Aunt Uula, after that your mom sat mute for hours by the Partition street window day after day after day after day after year, teaching me how to
measure time.

**************************************************************************************************************************************************************

6.JUSTICE

It was a total betrayal. Senoir citizenzry and all of that kevetching had set in. Activism and volunteering for political causes which demanded
outrage/inrage/anger/ability to harass and blow off group steam had served her well as an organizer for umpteen issues truly unfair; from
female circumcision to migrant equal wages; from Kendra's law to fracking...she was a card carrying angeraholic/suffragetted hope-ette on
wheels, barking for change.
There isn't one deciding moment or reason why it all changed, why the anger turned petty, went internal and tasted bitterly explosive. Illness?
Death of friends? Early dementia? Whatever it was, the focus shifted to one,singly solitary, oxymnoronic task: to stamp out public, uncleaned-up
dog do. Like a mad anchoress released from a medieval cartoon, her morning walks became exercises of such intense detecting that she actually
became proud of her ability to sleuth out the size, shape, odor, placement and sex of the offending canine's refuse, soon to be earth mulch or
creamed "awfull" on a walker's shoe.
Didn't CNN report that there are some equally irate seniors with nothing to do and nowhere to place their fear of dying who live in Long Island
and take DBM (dog bowel movement) samples (uck!!!) from their shared Long Island co-op lawn, and then send the doo to a lab for DNA matching
up to the 4 legged offenders who live in their neighborhood. Now this is creative justice at it's best or a retired lawyers prank. What mentors and
new examples of patrolling with attitude they were!
But I had an idea to offer them: Why not monogram used Wall Mart plastic bags to hand out to early morning dog walking offenders, especially that
one at 6:30 with not one but 2 life sized megaton monster canines, verging on the obese. Do you have an idea for the moniker? Hmmmm,how about:

MY DOGS PACKED UP SHIT OR

DOGGY DO IN HERE OR

NOT MY SHIT, MY DOG'S OR

DON'T WORRY DOGS, HOPEFULLY I'M GOING HOME TO DO THIS TOO

With liberty and justice for all, a concerned citizen.

************************************************************************************************************************************

7 . DREAM OF A NEW SCULPTURE FOR STORM KING OR WHEREVER : THE VISITATION

On 50 acres?
10 rocks
Each 7 foot circumference
Pink or grey
One a crystal rose
A metal plaque
Etched Mary holds Elizabeth
Easier as art.

*************************************************************************************************************************************

8. MOM, FIVE OF HER GRANDKIDS AND MITCHELL : A PHOTO

What's the title? "Unless the seed falls on good ground"...or something like that? Or is it the picture with 5 people wearing stripes, two not? Mom
stands, in lined pants stretched over an extended abdomen, legs suggesting A GRANDMOTHER QUEEN BIRTHING. She's my age now, or I'm her
age then and with a duplicate haircut, or wig, and if I were wearing those incredible pants, it would be me! And like her, I would be there , before
it happened, reveling innocence and forgetting like she always did, anything but beauty.
BIG BELLY MA, WITH THE KIDS IN STRIPES, that's the title. Most of them are happy to be there, a few pouters, all oblivious to the crouching , not
seen but actually center stage panting dog, symbolically previewing and harboriging the syncronisity of medical tortures to that BIG BELLY MA,
burned radiationally to death.
In the far right corner, a photographer taking a picture of the picure that is already taken. Double life , but he holds his camera to the same cheek
where the bullet entered and spattered now defunct grey matter all over his mother's kitchen.
Hey, new title: THIS PHOTO BY BIG BELLY ME: YOU'D BETTER GO GET A COLONOSCOPY!

***************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

9. A CONVERSATION ...FROM A PHOTO OF A GENERIC WHITE HORSE FOUND IN THE PAPER

I'm so large, so white, so magatonish! When just a stumbling gelding, Samantha dyed my mane pink and I tried out for a MY LITTLE PONY TV
commercial and a few years later, I wore feather angel wings for a walk-on in a play titled: Icarus. I was always a star. But that's the past. The
reason I'm even happier now is because I'm much too old for my current job in this charming village's equestrian competition. Samantha's family
used to bring me to jumping events every summer but I have to tell you what really happened and why I feel so liberated. Of course I will miss
the food, the apple snacks, the ohhs and ahhhs from the adoring girls and endless attention. How can I forget Miguel who hosed me down and
massaged me so lovingly every 4 hours when he wasn't running back to his hellishly hot trailer to check on his very situationally diabetic pregnant
wife and their other 4 vacantly unstimulated kids, hungry for lunch.
Even with all of the perks, the gig was horrible. How would you like it standing in a suffocatingly hot 4 horse capacity van driven by a taxied out
mother and a newbie teen who preferrred texting to talking. I never understood why Samantha's mom always seemd very peaced out on the trip
back after spending time with Uncle Bob at the local library or at least that's where she said they went, but they were so ozzingly gooey and happy
that it made me sick with suspicion. But the good news is that her mom was in a much better frame of mind (or was it body) and so she didnt mind
the 12 hour drive, round-trip! But me, oye vey! For hours I stood, in my own sweat, stink and shit, ankle-high-wet with pee , then robotically jumped
over pieces of wood, and endured the vibrationally lame stares of the entitled viewers who were eternally bored by excess, bored by too much food,
bored by too many stock dividends, bored by too many so called non-friends, bored by too much meaningless chatter about the Kardashians. By
association, I became as joyless, shocked into numbness and hopeless as all of them so one day I intentionally decided to become fat, sloppy, too
lame, too unfocused, and I tripped on purpose. Samantha cried for a week then her dad bought a new version of me to dry her tears.
Now, I truly fly in my dreams and gallop unhindered by phantom pain only when Samantha's not around.

*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

10. WHAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK: FROM MY JOURNAL

FOUR BILLION

DIAMOND-EDGED BLADES

SEVER EARTH ARTERIES

SO

BLOOD OF LIGHT

CAN BURN.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************

11. LOST

Dear friend,
For 27 years I have shared Nagasaki Day with you internally because at 9 years old, you lived about one and a half hours from there so for years I imagined
that you survived the violence and sin of war that occured in those two cities: HIROSHIMA/NAGASAKI. That was that, a quick and easy dismissal with horrible
images but my source of much information, the internet taught me otherwise, that is , I learned that Japan was incendenary bombed by B29's for about 6
months before the atom bombs leveled and decimated your country. But fire came first then nuclear devestation followed.

FORGIVE US: A LIST OF ONLY SOME OF THE FIRE RAIDS

TOKYO:
83,793 DIED( FIRST RAID)
40,918 WOUNDED
167,171 BUILDINGS DESTROYED

PLEASE FORGIVE THIS LOSS

NAGOYA:
3,609 TONS OF BOMBS
2 SQUARE MILES OF CITY DESTROYED
18 INDUSTRIAL SITES DESTROYED

PLEASE FORGIVE THIS LOSS

OSAKA:
8.1 SQUARE MILES DESTROYED
4000 PEOPLE DIED
678 MISSING
8463 INJURED
134,774 HOUSES DESTROYED

PLEASE FORGIVE US

NAGOYA:

PLEASE FORGIVE US

KAWASAKI:

PLEASE FORGIVE US

YOKOHAMA:
1.5 MILES DESTROYED
113,460 BUILDINGS DESTROYED

PLEASE FORGIVE US

OSAKA:
3.5 MILES DESTROYED

PLEASE FORGIVE US

KOBE:
4.35 SQUARE MILES DESTROYED
51,399 KILLED

PLEASE FORGIVE US

SASEBO:

PLEASE FORGIVE US

PLEASE FORGIVE US

FORGIVE US

FORGIVE

***********************************************************************************************************************************************************

12. CINDERELLA RESEEN

Once upon a time in a very verdant village in India, there lived a Brahmin princess, silver earringed at birth. She hardly had to chew as she grew since her
attendants, there were 8, did almost THAT for her, finger feeding her chapitis, dal, rice, keer, chai, and rice pudding. And she played back the attention
given her by fluttering her dark kohl lashed love eyes. Easy to adore, especially in a culture seeped in that virtue, she lived in mutually aroused ecstasy,
aided by loving touch by the massage walla who daily rubbed warmed coconut oil on her smooth as silk skin while and actually during the respective and
spiritually motivated touching of her lotus-feet in gestures of respect by friends, family and her growing numbers of students. At her birth, the village's
Guru had announced that neumerologically and astrologically, she really was a re-born saint/holy woman/Guru herself....a legacy holder of a tradition
forgotten generations ago.
Songs spontaneously came to her, lyrics hiding the secrets but in a new innocence she shared what she received from deep inside her primitive visioning
in a spirit of light-hearted joy. A true pioneer, breaking out of stody illusions, Padmavati suggested reform, suggested a pioneering reversal, suggested
change, an idea anethma to her class but there it was, right out on the table for all to see....let's not play around any more with this priestly class vs
the merchant class vs the agricultrual class vs the untouchables ! The gig is up and she sang over and over her message, practiced it, married a dalit
and taught her own family how to feed their attendants chapatis from their own hands. Love was the new name of the game.

*************************************************************************************************************************************************
13. A LOOK AT THE WORD KINDNESS: ONE WEEK OF UNKIND & KIND EVENTS: IN AUGUST 2011

GANDHI SAID:WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY, THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

1. K.....A Kitchen called LOVE KITCHEN , run by 2 sisters Ellen and Ashe, has given over a million free meals since 1986. They minister to what
they call the 5 H'S: HUNGRY, HOMELESS,HELPLESS,HOPELESS AND HOMEBOUND. They prepare and distribute 2000 meals a week.

GANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

2. I....Investors reveal that one of the causes of the stock market collapse happened because the brokers sold investor bonds assuming
them to be safe only to discover they were worth less than the stocks.

GANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

3. N....Names of the 30 US soldiers kileed in the helicopter downed by the Taliban, will soon be released lifting the public shroud of secrecy
that sourrounds navy seal operations.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

4.D...Discontent has been simmering among Britons urban poor for years and few have paid attention to the socila issues underlying the
anger in London.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGH HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

5. N...Nairobi reports a cholera epidemic sweeping across Somalia as thousands of starving people flee famine zones and pack into
crowded camps in Mogadishu.

GHANDHI SAID: WEHN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGHOUT HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

6. E...Exercise, botox injections, denervation surgery, deep brain stimulation surgery, physical therapy, visualization, using a soft collar,
and elimination of all personal and siocial stress are some of the treatments used to deal with cervical dystonia/spasmodic torticollis.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGHOUT HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

7. S...Sharon stopped eating,began to exercise obsessively and after family nmeals, she would go up to her room to do crunches and jumping
jacks for 2 hours straight. She couldnt watch TV without doing pushups or running on the treadmill.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGHOUT HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

8. S..Spokesmen from the Maryknoll Fathers are determining if they will dismiss Father Roy Beaugeois who is campaigning to open the
Catholic priesthood to women. Father Roy indicates that he is following his conscience and that the prohibition on women ordination was
not an infallible church teaching despite vatican declarations to the contrary.

GHANDHI SAID: WHEN I DESPAIR, I REMEMBER THAT ALL THROUGHOUT HISTORY THE WAYS OF TRUTH AND LOVE HAVE ALWAYS WON.

KINDNESS............ K I N D N E S S

2011-10-24T09:29:00.000-07:00

MOTHER LOVE: AN INTERACTIVE JOURNEY TO OUR BIRTH MOTHERS, LINDA MARY MONTANO
AN INTERACTIVE LETTER/SONG FOR OUR MOTHERS

MONTANO WILL SING ABOUT HER MOTHER'S LAST DAYS IN THE HOSPITAL .

VIDEO IMAGES WILL APPEAR PROJECTED.

VIEWERS WILL WRITE LETTERS TO THEIR MOTHERS DURING THE EXPERIENCE.

AFTER THE STORY AND SONG, MONTANO WILL CHANGE HER CLOTHES AND THEN, DRESSED LIKE MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA, ALL WILL PROCESS OUTSIDE AND BURN THE LETTERS TO THEIR MOTHERS.

APPROXIMATE TIME: ONE HOUR

ART...THE BRAIN.......RITUAL....LINDA MARY MONTANO 2011

2011-10-21T06:15:00.000-07:00

DEAR ESTEEMED ARTISTS AND LIFEISTS:

I WISH TO TALK WITH YOU ABOUT THE BRAIN BECAUSE I SEE MY OWN ART AS MEDICINE AND MY DRUGS OF CHOICE ARE PERFORMANCE/VIDEO/BOOKS/ENDURANCE/PERSONAS/AND ACCENTS...WITH ALL DUE RESPECT TO MY ITALIAN GRANDPARENTS WHO TALKED WITH AN ACCENT...THESE DRUGS MOVE ME OUT OF LEFT BRAIN FEARS,GUILTS,JUDGMENTS AND ATTACHMENT TO SUFFERING AND ALLOW ME RIGHT BRAIN ART PLAYTIME.

MY INTEREST IN THE BRAIN IS MEDICALLY PERSONAL AND I HAVE ALSO RESEARCHED JILL TAYLOR, BRAHMANANDA SARASWATI AND BEDE GRIFFITH...ALL OF WHOM HAD LEFT BRAIN STROKES AND A RESULTING ARTIST-LIKE EUPHORIA.

ADMITTEDLY WE LIFEISTS/ARTISTS DONT HAVE TO HAVE A STROKE TO BECOME MORE CREATIVE OR BETTER LOVERS OF BEAUTY. WE MAKE ART WHICH IS A BRAIN GAME AND THAT'S ENOUGH. BUT WE DO NEUROBIOLOGICALLY SHARE OUR JOURNEY WITH OUR MEDICALLY COMPROMISED FRIENDS LISTED ABOVE.

TO ILLUSTRATE; I WILL FURTHER DISCUSS ART AND ANXIETY/THE BRAIN/RITUAL/THE GLANDS.

I'M SURE THAT THERE ARE A FEW UNIVERSALLY APPLICABLE PATTERNS STRUCTURING AND FOUNDATIONING THE ART MAKING PROCESS WHICH WE ALL SHARE.

PATTERN 1: ART AND ANXIETY

WHAT BETTER TIME TO BE AN ARTIST/LIFEIST? ADMITTEDLY WE ARE VOCATIONALLY CALLED TO WONDER ABOUT, BE HAUNTED BY AND SENSITIZED TO VACATED NOTHINGNESS AND CURRENTLY OUR JOB IS EXACERBATED BY HAIR RAISING STORMS, WINDS, WATERS, LIGHTENING, FIRES, EARTHQUAKES, FAMINES AND TOTAL PLANETARY COLLAPSE. AUTHOR THOMAS BERRY STATES THAT ANXIETIES ABOUND AND MANIFEST THIS COLLAPSE IN THREE WAYS : BODY/MIND/SOUL

1. WE ARTISTS ARE SENSITIZED TO AND FEAR PHYSICAL COLLAPSE, DEATH AND THE PARALYZING NIGHMARE THAT WE WILL CEASE TO BE, CEASE TO HAVE A BODY, SHELTER, SUSTENANCE.

2. WE ARE SENSITIZED TO MORAL COLLAPSE AND BECAUSE WE ARE OVERWHELMED WITH DECISION FATIGUE GIVEN THE PLETHORA OF FREE FLOATING WEB INFORMATION, WE FEAR WE WILL NEVER KNOW REAL TRUTH.

3. WE ARE SENSITIZED TO AND HAUNTED BY THE ANXIETY OF SPIRITUAL COLLAPSE AND FEAR THAT LIFE IS KARDASHIANLY MEANINGLESS, HOPELESS, HELPLESS, FOOLISH AND WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE.

THESE 3 ANXIETIES OF BODY,MIND AND SPIRIT ARE OUR ART MATERIAL, WORDS FOR OUR PRAYER, OUR CLAY, OUR PAINT.....

PATTERN 2: ART AND RITUAL

WITH THESE ART MATERIALS, WE PHEONIX OURSELVES RITUALISTICALLY AND COURAGEOUSLY THROUGH THE FIRES OF DAILY DISASTERS, POLITICAL DISASTERS, SOCIAL DISASTERS TO RETURN WITH NOT ONLY OUR OWN PSYCHES INTACT, TRANSFORMED & BURNT CLEAN BUT WITH FODDER AND BEAUTY FOR OUR CO-PILGRIMS.

I LEARNED EARLY TO BE AN ARTIST VIA THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RITUALS OF MASS, EUCHARIST, CONFESSION, INCENSE, STATUES AND COUNTLESS OTHER LITURGICAL WAYS THAT I WAS CATAPULTED INTO VATICANED MYSTERIOUS AND SYMBOLIC WORLDS. I WANTED TO BE ON THE ALTAR, TO BE A PRIEST, AND COULDNT, SO I IMITATED IN PERFORMANCE WHAT I SAW IN CHURCH BUT MORE EXACTLY WHAT I FELT, WHICH IS TRANSCENDENCE, ECSTASY AND TIMELESS SILENCE. BECUASE I AM A WOMAN, I CANNOT MAKE CHRIST PRESENT ON THE ALTAR BY CONSECRATING THE EUCHARIST BUT I CAN POINT TO THE NEED FOR CHRISTIAN MERCY AND COMPASSION IN MY OWN LIFE AND ADDRESS MY OWN NEANDERTHALIZED FLIGHT-FIGHT LEFT BRAIN TENDECIES.

GENERALLY SPEAKING, WE ARTISTS ARE VOCATIONALLY CALLED TO RITUALLY CREATE ORDER OF MATTER SO THAT WE CAN RISE UP, FLOAT AND FLY. WHY DO WE DO THIS? BECAUSE WE LIKE AND KNOW HOW TO CREATE CEREMONIES AND RITUAL.

PATTERN 2a: LET'S ADMIT IT, WE ARE

REPETITION REPEATERS

SYSTEM CREATORS

ANXIETY REFRAMERS

O-CDERS

COMMUNITY BONDERS

LIFECRISIS FIXERS

TRUTH KEEPERS

MIGHTY FOCUSERS

SYMBOL SEEKERS

SCAM SMELLERS

WORSHIP LOVERS

CHARMING HYPNOTIZERS

TRAUMA RE-ORGANIZERS

PURIFICATION ENACTERS

HOLY HAZERS

CONSCIOUS PERFORMERS

ECSTASY TRANCERS

SPIRITUAL MINISTERS

RIGHT BRAIN ADDICTORS

SECURITY STRUCTURERS

BODY MORPHERS

ENERGY NEUTRALIZERS

DEPRESSION PREVENTERS

ZEALOUS PASTORS

ROBOTIC REPEATERS

SOCIAL BONDERS

COMPULSIVE ENACTERS

MORAL RESTRAINERS

DEMON EVICTORS

DEATH DE-CONFIGURERS

PATTERN 3: ART AND THE BRAIN

ARTISTS BRAINS ARE DIFFERENT. TO PROVE OR DISPROVE MY CLAIM, WE TOOK THIS SCAM, BOGUS, TOTALLY UNSCIENTIFIC AND SIMPLISTICALLY INACCURATE TEST TO DETERMINE OUR BRAINS ORIENTATION. WE CAN AGREE WE HAVE 70 TRILLION CELLS, 230 BONES, 650 MUSCLES AND YET WHEN NEUROBIOLOGIST JILL BOLTE TAYLOR DESCRIBES HER LEFT BRAIN STROKE AND SAYS THAT THE RIGHT BRAIN THINKS IN PICTURES, IS PRESENT MOMENT ORIENTED AND LEARNS KINESTHETICALLY WHILE THE LEFT BRAIN THINKS LINERALLY, METHODICALLY, IS PAST AND FUTURE ORIENTED, HAS A SENSE OF I AND EGO AND FEELS SEPERATE FROM EVERYONE , I BELIEVE HER. DO YOU? I KNOW YOU NEUROSURGEONS, NEUROLOGISTS AND MEDICAL PEOPLE OUT THERE ARE SQUIRMING, PUTTING YOUR FINGERS IN YOUR EARS AND SINGING LA,LA,LA. BUT MY MEDICALLY NON-DOCUMENTED THESIS IS THAT WE ARTISTS ARE VOCATIONALLY CALLED TO MAKE SENSE OF LEFT BRAIN STUFF BY TAKING ALL OF IT...OUR BAGGAGE, WORRIES, GARBAGE AND TRUCK IT OVER TO THE RIGHT BRAIN WHERE COMPASSION, BEAUTY AND AGENDALESS REGARD IS ABLE TO TURN PAIN INTO PAINTINGS, PAIN INTO PAINTINGS, PAIN INTO PAINTINGS.

PATTERN 4: FROM CHAKRAS TO GLANDS

IN MY 50'S, MY HOUSE OF CARDS BEGAN TO SLOWLY COLLAPSE.

1. I HAD FINISHED 14 YEARS OF LIVING ART AND STUDY OF THE CHAKRAS

2. I HAD A LEFT BRAIN SILENT STROKE

3. I WAS REFUSED TENURE

4. I WAS CAREGIVER FOR MY DAD FOR 7 YEARS

5. MY TEACHER , DR ARUNA MEHTA ALSO DIED

6. I BECAME SICK WITH DYSTONIA, A PARKINSONIAN MOVEMENT DISORDER

I HAD REACHED THE SICKNESS, OLD AGE AND DEATH CHAPTERS OF MY LIFE AND FELT STRIPPED OF CHAKRAS, STRIPPED OF BRAIN NEURONS, STRIPPED OF EASY ANSWERS, STRIPPED OF DREAMS, NOT STRIPPED OF CELLULITE OR FACE WRINKLES, STRIPPED OF ART, STRIPPED OF CERTAINTY, STRIPPED OF CREATIVITY AND THROWN INTO HELL. GOING THERE HAS BEEN AN AMUSEMENT PARK RIDE OF TERROR INTO SECRETS STORED IN MY LEFT BRAIN ONCE CEMENTED SHUT AND NOW REDUCING ME TO AN ON MY KNEES POSITION OF SURRENDER.THE VIDEO, STARVED SURVIVORS IS THE RESULT OF THESE YEARS OF RESEARCH INTO THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL. WHILE IN THAT DARKNESS ONE DAY, SPASMING AND TWISTED WITH DYSTONIA, I HEARD AN INN ER VOICE THAT SID, "LINDA,YOU LOOK JUST LIKE MOTHER TERESA." AND AFTER YEARS IN LOCKED DOWN JAIL, I FEEL AS IF I CAN NOW TAKE THIS BODY WITH GLANDS, CLIMB UP OUT OF A DANTE-LIKE PUTRID SLIME, WASH CLEAN MY OILED WINGS AND FLY HOME. MOTHER TERESA THANK YOU FOR LOANING YOUR WINGS. THANK YOU FOR LOANING YOUR WINGS, THANK YOU FOR LOANING YOUR WINGS.

LINDA MARY MONTANO, 2011

HOPE

2011-05-26T06:42:00.000-07:00

WRITING HOPE IN THE BRONX: LINDA MARY MONTANO & NICOLAS DUMIT ESTEVEZ

What a great opportunity! A chance to be a transgressive twin again, this time not with a rope but with HOPE, binding me invisibly and happily to Nicolas Dumit Estevez for 3 days, 3 hours a day in his Bronx.

About 6 months ago, Nicolas invited me to help him celebrate his incorporation into Bronxdom and I suggested we perform a "HOPE/PIECE/PEACE". This is not the time or place to suggest the 563,000 reasons why hope is our most valuable personal, political, social commodity so I defer to conceptual art reasons to explain why my first idea referenced recycled plastic bags.... I said to Nicolas, "Let's stand on the streets, 3 hours a day, for 3 days and let folks write their hopes on plastic bags with markers. Then we hang the bags in the gallery." It seemed like a good concept coming from an ex-nun who had sworn herself to poverty and simplicity, right?

We agreed and then a few months later he contacted me, we talked and he said, "Do you want to scan the HOPES written on bags and show the scans instead of plastic bags?" Nicolas's sweet voice can convince me of anything and I let go of the simple, green, bag endurance and we agreed. Scan the bags. It seemed like an aesthetic and good fix and raised the level of plastic to fine art, even though it did involve technology, paper and a larger time commitment.

And then a few months later we talked and Nicolas raised the bar! "Let's let them write their hopes on us," he said. "We can wear white clothes!!!!" So in the tradition of our art mentors: Manzoni, Klein, Yoko Ono, Shirin Neshat and a litany of others; in the tradition of the cave painting ritual of signage as symbol, we ventured into Bronx-land and endured while wearing our white art suits. And as walking, talking, transgressing, living sculptures we invited elders, African Muslims, 12 year old school children, folks on the streets, subways, taxis and buses to STOP! DREAM! SHARE LIFE AND HOPE outside the traumas of the daily news and our individual unimaginably complex everyday dramas.

Nicolas, we play good art/life together,

Linda Mary Montano

TO ALL WHO ATTEND THE OPENING /OR READ THIS STATEMENT:

I am attending the opening invisibly and I invite you to collaborate with me by: WHISPERING YOUR HOPE TO THE AIR.

Bronx Hopes: From Riverdale to Hunts Point.

Linda Mary Montano has the gift of purging art of any of the unnecessary frills that might prevent it from overlapping with life. She strips her ideas to the bare bone, while my tendency is the opposite. Nonetheless, given our unique visions and particular approaches to art and life, several months ago we both found ways to agree to spend three days in my hometown, the Bronx, inviting people in the borough to share their hopes with us.

Our day one of the performance: Riverdale.
I am hesitant to travel from Longwood in the south, South Bronx to a fancy community closer to Manhattan than to my neighborhood. However, I feel responsible for faithfully following our pre-planned performance schedule. Linda and I ride with a taxi driver who does not have a clear picture of our exact destination. Riverdale seems so far removed from Longwood. In Riverdale, you have the impression of things being almost perfect, so there is not a single candy wrapper on the sidewalks. We spend an hour in this part of the Bronx in conversation with a thoughtful host who brings Arabs and Jews together for breaking bread. Linda and I leave the place with two brown bags containing falafels and with several hopes written on our backs. On the number 1 train we meet a group of teenagers and a handful of adults who inscribe their hopes on our clothes. At the Hub, a few blocks before reaching home, we encounter a passerby named Boobie. She writes on both of our hoodies. I vividly remember the woman in a wheelchair, not too far from where we meet Bobbie, who asks Linda to spell for her: “I hope to get my kids back.” In St. Mary’s Park, Linda and I unpack our falafels and eat them as we talk about hope.

Our day two of the performance: Riverdale: West Farms Road and the Grand Concourse.
Linda speaks with a group of students at an intermediate school about the subject of our quest: hope. The class is half-asleep, but eventually the children interject our questions with answers. A sick boy, who is comforted by a young teacher, regains his health surprisingly quickly. He smiles and joins the discussion. Children think twice before writing on our clothes, but soon enough they overcome their hesitation, as the adults in the room invite them to venture into art-life, to live a moment artfully, to break rules. On the other hand, while extremely polite, the staff at the school looks at the twins in white, Linda and I, with suspicion. Linda’s orange wig disrupts their monotonous, clerical routine. Art flirts with productivity.

Later that same day, seniors at a building not too far from the Zoo wait for us in a small room. As a result of some miscommunication, they expect us to give them t-shirts on which they can paint. Instead, they meet a middle-aged man and a woman of their own age who initiate a conversation on hope. The dialogue becomes heated as some of the seniors voice their thoughts about the lack of jobs for young people and the government’s interests in building jails instead of improving the economy. I promise one of them that I will spread the word about her request to get free tickets for the group to attend a play at a Bronx theater. I translate for six seniors called Las Comadres, the Godmothers. They write their hopes on our clothing in Spanish. Traveling from the seniors place in West Farms to Longwood, we watch a rowdy group of teens spill out onto the street outside the McDonald’s at the Prospect subway stop. We exit the scene swiftly. The police patrol the corner.

Our last visit that evening is to a Muslim Center on the Grand Concourse.
Angelika Rinnhofer, one of my former students at the Transart Institute comes from upstate New York to watch the performance. Shoes off. Linda and I climb up the stairs to meet some of the members. Some of the hopes they write match those written by many others, like “peace,” or address common needs in the borough: “Keep the Bronx Clean and Safe.” I ask myself whether these should be a hope or a right. We live in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, the Bronx included. The chanting on the lower floor counteracts the weight we carry on our clothes: so many hopes.

Our day three of the performance: Hunts Point.
A Community Development Corporation called The Point offers us a place where we are able to engage people at a women’s health festival. What a blissful ending. Linda and I meet inspiring teens, graffiti artists and a friendly chef. We eat arroz con gandules and drink lemonade. We step outdoors where a man in a van stops to write his hope on my sleeve. Linda gets several tags on her legs before leaving the scene, and the Bronx, for good. I cross the Bruckner full of hopes spelled on my legs, arms and hoodie. One of my shoes reads “courage.” The performance ends, yet people’s hopes outlive our three-day action.

Linda, I hope that you come back to the Bronx. Thank your for your mentorship and for three unforgettable days where art and life met.

Nicolas

***
"Hope" is an independent project initially commissioned by Longwood Arts Gallery/ Bronx Council On The Arts as part of “Born Again,” a project conceived by Nicolas Dumit Estevez for Longwood Arts Gallery/ Bronx Council On The Arts.
***

Photographs: Alex Villaluz

Life as Art, Art as Life: Meeting Linda Montano [+ My Video Art Response]

2011-03-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

by: Rachel Znerold

Linda Montano is legendary….an Art Saint, really.

I first knew her as the performance artist who, for an entire year, was tied by a rope to another person. Wow…now that’s dedication.

Linda has been a famed feminist performance artist since the 1960’s, her fascinating work exploring the crossover between life and art through beautiful life-altering ceremonies and rituals. In college, we used to adore her, along with other feminist/activist/artists Yoko Ono, Marina Abromovic, and Judy Chicago.

More recently, I was inspired by her ambitious “7 Years of Living Art,” an Art/Life project dedicated to exploring color and chakra energy. Each year, Linda wore one different monochromatic color corresponding to her seven chakras, switching from red, to orange to yellow throughout the rainbow. In addition, she meditated in a room of that same color each day and listened to a designated tone that connected to the energies and properties of each chakra. And when she finished her seven-year cycle, she did it again for “Another 7 Years of Living Art.”

Several weeks ago, my dearest artist friend and collaborator Lula Mae* brought Linda Montano to my attention again, when she forwarded on an e-mail from famous San Francisco feminist, performer, sex educator and artist Annie Sprinkle. Linda Montano is Annie’s mentor, inspiring her own seven-year color and chakra work, “Love Art Lab,” which is now in its final year.

Linda Montano was coming to San Francisco for a short trip! And right there in Annie’s e-mail was Linda’s phone number and an invitation to meet her for an Art/Life Counseling Session. I knew immediately that I needed to meet Linda, but I was petrified. What would I say?! What if she didn’t have time for me? What if I was doing this “artist” thing wrong?

Hand shaking, I picked up the phone and called her. We set a date to meet the next day, and she assigned me homework: write a 5 minute autobiography of my life as an artist.

When I arrived at the SF Art Institute courtyard, Linda was waiting for me, smiling radiantly, dressed entirely in peach clothing with red Doc Martins, silvery curls blowing in the breezy bay air. I knew immediately we were kindred spirits, and in that moment, I imagined myself in her shoes forty years from now, still making meaningful artwork, taking time to meet and counsel up-and-coming artists. What an inspiration!

Our Art/Life counseling session was intimate and soul baring, using role-playing and dialoguing to unearth my own Art/Life challenges and solutions. In our meeting, Linda held me accountable for things I said I wanted to do, but was afraid to pursue, then she wrote them down and made a pact with me to attempt them. She made my dreams feel possible, only just a few steps away.

One of these goals was to be able to make more video art, and literally THE NEXT DAY after my session with Linda, I met the talented videographer Betty Bigas and together we conceptualized a video piece about the Art/Life continuum.

Later that same week, with the help of talented artists Erin Dudley, Jeremy Teresa Lewis and Julia Russotti, we made the video. It begins with the realization that as an artist, you are one with your artwork, an extension of the work you create. And while we may feel bound or restrained by this identity (I certainly tapped into this feeling while I was stapled to the wall for over two hours), once you break free and begin the process of self-discovery, you can truly get in touch with your own power and strength. (Our Superhero Selves!!)

Life as an artist is a beautiful dance; it is a struggle to find balance; it is an expression of love and spirit. It is simultaneously humbling and empowering to put yourself out into the world with authenticity and vulnerably. I am fragile. I am fierce. I am free.

I feel so much gratitude for my meeting with the amazing and spirited Linda Montano; she is a true example of living whole-heartedly. She seemed to appear in my life in the perfect moment…on the cusp of my 30th birthday…and I already feel the magic she reawakened in me.
I want to share a few other gems of wisdom Linda gave me, and whether or not you identify as an “artist,” they may inspire you to live your life as one grand and beautiful art experiment, and tap into the unlimited power and love we all possess.

Write Down Your Goals - As a young girl, my amazing mother taught me this tool of manifestation (“Write it down: Make it Happen!”) and my meeting with Linda only reinforced this. By putting your dreams into ink, you are making them real, validating their existence, and giving yourself a tool to remind you of them each day.

You ARE Perfect! – I’ve been telling myself for years, “No one is perfect! It’s okay to just be you,” in response to my perfectionist urges, but I found Linda’s approach much more refreshing. “But you ARE perfect!” she told me, “We ALL are.” Phew. That feels good. A subtle shift, but a meaningful one.

Get Down on Your Knees Every Day – Offer up even just a few moments each day to express your gratitude and focus on the Divine Light (or God, Buddha, The Great One, or your own spirit) in your life. As Rumi wrote, “Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” Ask for what you need, and give thanks for the abundance of blessings each and every day. (P.S. I’ve been doing this since, and it feels fantastic. Try it!)

Create Clear Mantras for Yourself - Be kind to yourself! Mantras are an important way to affirm your power, acknowledge where you are, and stay grounded in your goals. Try something simple like, “I am light. I am love.” or “I deserve abundance,” or something more complex and specific to your life. Then write it down and post it on your mirror, saying it to yourself every day.

Embrace COLOR! – A very real energy exists within color, and by incorporating and focusing on these colors in our lives, we can tap into their power while we live a more conscious and intentional life. Choose color when you dress for the day! Stuck in the all-black rut? Start by throwing on a colorful scarf or jewelry! When I joked with Linda that she must have an unbelievable rainbow-colored wardrobe now, she noted that everything she owns has been made for her, given to her, or acquired through thrift or second-hand, so she isn’t buying into the culture of consumption.

Love, love love! – What if every thought and action every moment of every day was based in love? What if we chose love above fear? Love above money? Love above jealousy? Love, love love! What a beautiful world that would be.

Want more Linda Montano Wisdom? (I do!) Take part in her 12-step performance art “Virtual Residency,” read her “Chakra Story,” or watch her fabulous videos to learn more about her work.

*Plus- Read the interview I did with the spectacular performance art divas Lula Mae and Sadie Lune about their show “Prove You’re Not a Robot.”

Photo of Linda: Gisela Gamper.
** This article originally appeared on ElephantJournal.com **

About the author: As a prolific painter, one-of-a-kind fashion designer, performance artist and writer, Rachel Znerold makes a life out of making art. Aiming to share her awe of the world and the art of the everyday, Rachel lives and works in the Mission District in San Francisco. www.rachelzart.com

SUMMER SAINT CAMP:THE 21ST CENTURY

2011-03-07T13:05:00.000-08:00

In 1984, for 7 years, I designed a way for people to come and live with me for a week and called it SUMMER SAINT CAMP. It was during my performance 14 YEARS OF LIVING ART and we all dressed in the color that I was wearing that year and performed actions relevant to the Chakra that I was practicing the year that they attended the Saint Camp.(see www.lindamontano.com) It was based on simple living ,the "art povera" principles of less is more and the practice of making art to bring closure to the past and homeopathically prepare for the future by acting strong in advance of the unknown.

Annie Sprinkle, Veronica Vera, Barbara Carrellas, Sylvia Nakkach, Helene Aylon and many others joined me in Kingston, NY at THE ART/LIFE INSTITUTE, each for a week and they received PERFORMANCE ART/SAINT DEGREES at the conclusion of their residency.

They practiced conservation of water,cold showers, used only 4 sheets of toilet paper, ate vegetarian meals, practiced silence, performed blindfolded and found ways to make an art of their everyday life as outlined in my book ART IN EVERYDAY LIFE, 1980.The days were structured in a convent format and as an ex-novice having lived in a convent for 2 years, I brought to the experience a good memory of that time and gifts from sacred and artful living.

SUMMER SAINT CAMP IS BACK!!! some 20 years later. This time I am inviting performers to come for 3 HOURS , and I suggest you take a vow to endure without using cell phones, laptops or any outside communication device for the time we are together. You have the option to participate individually or with a friend or as a group.

Come to Kingston NY, for THIS 3 HOUR hour ART/LIFE experience . Bring your own toilet paper, water and food. Choose beforehand the GLAND or SACRAMENT that you would like to explore, the life issues you wish to perform, the color you want to wear. I now focus on GLANDS and SACRAMENTS and as a certified Laughter Leader, we will also be using that sound-making device in our time together as well as have a chance to work on any art/life issue discovered during the residency. Everything is practiced in a careful, compassionate and yet energetic manner with respect for everyone's boundaries. You have the option to cite: "Collaborated with Linda Mary Montano", on your resume after this residency if you wish.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

TESTIMONIALS:

"SUMMER SAINT CAMP transformed my life for good and forever. I left Camp knowing I was truly the artist I had never allowed myself to be. Linda's encouragement and guidance still infuses all my work. SUMMER SAINT CAMP may be the most important commitment you make to your artist self." BARBARA CARRELLAS, Life/Artist and Author of URBAN TANTRA SACRED SEX FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

"SUMMER SAINT CAMP was simply the most brilliant, profound, life enhancing workshop I've ever done. I found my calling, quadrupled my income, got spiritually satisfied, fell in love, enriched my sex life and my art career really took off. Sign up today."
ANNIE SPRINKLE, Artist/Author/Lecturer/Ecosexual

"My first night at Linda Montano's SUMMER SAINT CAMP I had what Linda described as a "seven chakra dream". It encompassed the most pressing issues in my life at that time. By the end of my stay, I created an art piece that reflected that dream and improved my life. Her philosophy that life is art is the cornerstone of my Academy. Linda Montano will help you to be a saint and miracle worker." VERONICA VERA, Author and Founder, MISS VERA'S TRANSGENDER ACADEMY

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SOME SUMMER SAINT CAMP PARTICULARS:

FROM NYC : TAKE ADIRONDACK TRAILWAYS TO KINGSTON NY; TAXI TO 185 ABEEL ST, KINGSTON NY OR I CAN PICK YOU UP....

WHEN: CHOOSE A DAY FROM MAY 1-AUGUST 31

COST: SLIDING SCALE: $160-$700 for 3 HOURS: CASH

BRING TOILET PAPER, DRINK AND FOOD, WEAR ONE COLOR CLOTHES

DIPLOMA: YOU WILL RECEIVE AN ART/LIFE/SAINT PERFORMANCE ARTIST DEGREE AS AN EMAIL AFTER THE RESIDENCY

MAPQUEST: 185 ABEEL ST, KINGSTON NY 12401

CONTACT: lindamontano@hotmail.com 845. 246. 4482 (not after 7pm ET)

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DEAR ARTISTS OF ART AND ARTISTS OF LIFE

2011-02-22T07:34:00.000-08:00

BEFORE I BEGIN, MY FELLOW PERFORMER AND I, KATHERINE WILLIAMSON, WOULD LIKE TO PRESENT AN AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION GAME CALLED C.G.R.C., TRANSLATED AS COMMUNITY OF GIVING, RECEIVING AND CONNECTING. WE ALL KNOW ABOUT CPR, THIS IS CGRC,. IN FACT IF THERE IS A MEDICAL PERSON HERE WHO COULD DEMONSTRATE CPR, IF NOT, CHEST ONLY, NO MORE MOUTH TO MOUTH, USING THE HEEL OF THE HAND WHILE HUMMING STAYING ALIVE. CORRECT? CAN WE PRACTICE HUMMING STAYING ALIVE IN GOOD PAULINE OLIVEROS FASHION?

TO RETURN TO CGRC, IT WORKS LIKE THIS: PRESENT A NEED OR PRESENT TO US SOMETHING YOU CAN GIVE THEN CONNECT VIA IMMEDIATE CELL NUMBER GIVEN HERE, IN PUBLIC, OR EMAIL ADDRESS SHOUTED OUT OR CONNECTING AFTER THE PROGRAM? TO DEMONSTRATE: I NEED TO FIND SOMEONE WHO NEEDS A TAX WRITE OFF TO BUY MY ARCHIVE, OWN IT AND THEN DONATE IT TO NEW YORK UNIVERSITY. THE FINDERS FEE IS I GIVE THEM A DAY WITH LINDA MONTANO, TIED AT THE WAIST OR WRIST OR LEG WITH AN 8 FT ROPE. NOW LETS PLAY...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

SERIOUSLY, IT IS TRULY A PLEASURE TO BE HERE AGAIN AT THE SFAI, MY ART HOME. IT TAKES A TEAM TO COORDINATE OUR LIVES: FOR EXAMPLE WE EAT A BAGEL BUT FIRST THERE IS A SEED PLANTED IN THE EARTH AND IT IS WATERED, WEEDED, PICKED, HARVESTED, GROUNDED, TRUCKED TO A PLACE WHERE IT IS MADE INTO A BAGEL AND HEN IT IS TRUCKED TO A STORE AND SOMEONE DRIVES TO THE STORE AND BUYS IT, BRINGS IT HOME, CUTS IT, TOASTS IT, PUTS CREAM CHEESE ON IT AND THEN EATS IT.

THANK YOU SHARON GRACE, TONY LABAT AND ALLAN DE SOUZA FOR ORCHESTRATING THE VISIT, THANK YOU SARAH EWICK FOR MANAGING ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS, THANK YOU KATHERINE WILLIAMSON FOR PERFORMING WITH ME, THANKS TO SASHA DOBS, MANAGER OF THE LECTURE HALL AND KENT LONG , PROJECTIONIST,THANKS TOBE CAREY VIDEO EDITOR...AND THANKS TO EACH OF YOU FOR FINDING TIME TO COME HERE, ON FOOT, CAR, BUS, SUBWAY, BIKE, TAXI, ..I APPRECIATE THAT YOU ARE WILLING TO PARTICIPATE IN A GROUP, ONE HOUR, FACE-TIME PERFORMANCE. IN 25 YEARS WE MIGHT BE LISPING ROBOTS FACE TO ROBOT FACE, WHO KNOWS?

TRULY I THANK YOU FOR YOUR FACE TIME, A REAL COMMODITY, AND WONDER HOW YOU GOT HERE? HOW MANY PARKED INA 2-HOUR ZONE? DROVE OVER 1 HOUR TO GET HERE?

HOW MANY TOOK BUS? TAXI? BIKE? BOAT? HOW MANY LEFT CAREGIVING A PARENT, FRIEND, CHILD TO GET HERE? HOW MANY LEFT A GARDEN? MEDITATION CUSHION? MISSED A MEAL? HOW MANY SPENT MORE THAN 7 DOLLARS TO GET HERE? I AM GRATEFUL FOR YOUR PRESENCE.

ORIGINALLY I WAS GOING TO SHOW THE FILM, NO WORDS, BUT.. THEN THE BIRDS, THEN THE MUD, THEN MORE WATER, THEN OVER THE LAST FEW WEEKS MORE AND MORE NUMBERLESS TOXIC NUMBINGS KEPT COMING AND I RESPONDED TO OUR PRESIDENTS CALL FOR AN INCREASE OF ACCOUNTABILITY, TRANSPARENCY, RESPONSIBILITY AND CIVILITY BY MAKING SURE THAT YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH MY ART CONTENT. OF COURSE WE ARTISTS ARE NOT HAVING TO BE AS RESPONSIBLE AS THE NEUROSURGEON IMPLANTING A DEEP BRAIN STIMULATION UNIT IN A PATIENT, OR AS ACCOUNTABLE AS A JET AIRLINE PILOT FLYING TO COSTA RICA OR AS WAKEFUL AS A SCHOOL BUS DRIVER BRINGING FIRST-GRADERS BACK HOME AT 2:30PM. WE ARTISTS ARE ACCOUNTABLE IN A MYSTERIOUS WAY TO MYSTERY ITSELF OR AS POET JEROME ROTHENBERG STATES.... WE ARE TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED. BUT GOOD CATHOLIC GIRL THAT I HAVE RE-BECOME, I NEED TO GIVE WARNINGS AND DISCLAIMERS JUST IN CASE .......

THE FILMS:

THE BUDDHA SAW SICKNESS OLD AGE AND DEATH AND GOT BUSY WAKING UP..I AM INSPIRED TO DO THE SAME, NOT ONLY BECAUSE MY ITALIAN ZEN FATHER USED TO SAY, LINDA WAKE UP ALOT BUT BECAUSE 1. I HAVE A MOVEMENT DISORDER, 2. IM OLD, AND 3. MY BEST FRIEND DR. ARUNA MEHTA DIED.

DISCLAIMER 1. FOR FILM: THE LISPING ROBOT POVERA: MY MOTHER COLLECTED MOST OF THESE MASKS AND IN HER 70S WENT OUT TRICK OR TREATING ON HALLOWEEN WEARING THEM. SHE IS MY FIRST PERFORMANCE ART TEACHER. I DISCLAIM THAT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DISCLAIM HERE, EXCEPT THAT I GREW UP WITH THESE MASKS AND THEY REFERENCE NOTHING BUT MY EARLY CHILDHOOD INFLUENCES AND MY MOTHER'S CREATIVITY.

DISCLAIMER 2:FOR FILM DYSTONIA: HIDE YOUR EYES IF U DONT LIKE NEEDLES..TEXT, CLEAR YOUR CELLPHONE, CHECK YOUR EMAIL, BALANCE YOUR CHECKBOOK ...BUT KNOW THAT MY INTENTION IS TO USE MY PAIN AS A METHOD AND MATERIAL FOR ART. THE WAY I DO THAT IS TO CUT AND PASTE ILLNESS AND BRING IT OUT OF THE OYE VEY MIND, THEN TRANSFORM PAIN WITH WORDS, FILM, PERFORMANCE, BOOKS....
DEMONSTRATING THE RECIEPE: IF LIFE OR THE PLANET HURTS MAKE ART, IF LIFE OR THE PLANET DOESNT HURT, MAKE ART. ART IS NEUROBIOLOGY.

(HOW IT FEELS TO HAVE A STROKE. TED TALKS...JILL B TAYLOR, NEURO BIOLOGIST)

DISCLAIMER 3 FOR FILM: MOTHER TERESA: WITH ALL DUE RESPECT: ONE DAY WHILE MY DYSTONIA CRAMPED ME OVER , I FELT JUST LIKE MOTHER TERESA. THAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THIS PERFORMANCE. HONESTLY POPE BENEDICT, I’M NOT PARODYING RELIGION, JUST PRAYING AS ART.

DISCLAIMER 4 FOR FILM: THANK YOU DR ARUNA MEHTA: MATAJI, MA, BA(GRANDMOTHER ) HAS MANY NAMES, BUT I KNOW HER AS THE MOTHER OF

COMPASSION. IN THIS FILM ARE FOUR OF HER MANY GRANDCHILDREN: NEHA ,DIMPESH, AMISHA AND AMI AND HER HUSBAND. ASHISH, HER GRANDSON IS WITH US TONIGHT.

MY INTENTION IS TO HONOR HER AND SHARE HER GREATNESS WITH U. AT THE END OF THE PERFORMANCE I WILL GIVE YOU A PAPER WHICH CONTAINS ONE OF HER WISDOM SAYINGS.THIS FILM IS WITHOUT DISCLAIMER.

DISCLAIMER 5 FOR THE YOU TUBE OF 2 YEAR OLD GIRL SINGING. THE DISCLAIMER IS: COMPASSIONATE HOPE.

AT AMERICAN INDIAN POTLATCHES ,GIFTS WERE GIVEN. I END THIS INTRODUCTION WITH THE GIFT OF A QUICK VERBAL SCAN OF THE BODY. A GIFT OF GRATITUDE TO,

THE 300 TRILLION CELLS OF THE BODY, GRATITUDE TO THE 230 BONES, THE 650 MUSCLES, NO PAY, THE 7 GLANDS, THE 24 FEET OF INTESTINE,

GRATITUDE TO THE HEART, TO THE HEART, TO THE HEART..............

THANK YOU

LINDA

Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle Interview Linda Mary Montano

2011-02-17T06:49:00.000-08:00

LINDA M. MONTANO’S ARCHIVE
Elizabeth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle

Seminal performance artist Linda M. Montano’s archive is for sale. The buyer must insure that her life’s work will be properly preserved so it can be studied and enjoyed by future generations. Several major art institutions have nibbled and it won’t be long before one bites. Take a guided tour of the archive anytime; go to You Tube, search “Linda Mary Montano Archive For Sale.” Linda herself is the tour guide. There are three levels. Level I includes her paper writings, books, reviews and letters. Level 11 includes Level 1 plus her clothing, photo documents, early paintings, and items she used in her every day life, signed as performance art ephemera, as her “life is art.” With Level 111 the archive comes with a two-story building; “The Art/life Institute” in Kingston, New York, an artfully restored bakery, which Linda rebuilt and decorated herself.
At 69 years old, Linda Montano is going strong and her archive continues to grow. During a recent public intervention she spent three days in front of the Empire State Building performing as Mother Teresa of Calcutta where she greeted passers by and spread the love. Montano’s work has always been humanitarian in nature. The sari with the blue trim which she wore, will be added to the archive. These days Montano is a self-described “Catholic Performance Artist,” creating yet another groundbreaking genre of performance art. This is “testimony to my Catholic childhood and need to re-see early roots.”
Montano’s many endurance and durational pieces have strongly influenced contemporary performance art. Her visual art, her teaching, and “life as art” performances have profoundly moved and inspired many. She began doing performance art full time in 1971. Before that she lived in a Roman Catholic convent for two years preparing to be a Maryknoll nun, on a mission to help those in need and “cure leprosy.” When she became severely anorexic she had to leave the convent, and then she discovered that art making was her best medicine for recovery. Thus began her strong connection between art and life, and her conception of “life is art.”
Montano went on to get her MA in sculpture at Villa Schifanoia in Italy, then her MFA at the University of Wisconsin. She lived and worked in San Francisco from 1970 to 1975 and returned often to teach classes and workshops. She lived in a Zen Monastery. Later, she studied for thirty years at the Ananda Ashram with her spiritual teacher, Dr. Ramamurti Mishra. Montano taught performance art at many universities including the San Francisco Art Institute, Bard College, Temple University, Ohio University and University of Texas. Linda Montano has initiated many people into serious art practices and has given permission to others to make art of their life.
A few of Montano’s historic performance pieces are Rope Piece, where she and artist Tehching Hsieh tied themselves together with eight feet of rope between them for one full year during his Art/Life: One Year Performance. They never removed the rope and never touched. She has performed two seven-year-long pieces; 14 Years Of Living Art 1984-1998, where each year of her life was devoted to a different theme and color, and different commitments based on the theology of the seven chakras. During the first seven-year piece, once a month she sat in the window of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Manhattan, read people’s tarot cards and gave them Art/Life Counseling as art. The lines were continuous and many people reported that the experience changed their lives for the better. Her videos such as Mitchell’s Death and Learning to Talk are part of any respectable history of performance art class and have played in the world’s finest museums and galleries, including the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art. From 1998 To 2005 Montano “experienced” seven years of “Dad Art,” caretaking her sick father who eventually passed away. She states that, “this event was the culmination of my entire practice as an artist.”
Fourteen years ago, Linda Montano put out a public invitation to other artists to utilize her seven-year Living Art performance structure and do their own life’s version of it. This project is titled Another 21 Years of Living Art 1998-2019. Currently 14 other artists are doing her piece incorporating their own unique vision, including an eight-year-old boy in collaboration with his artist mom in Australia. We are fortunate to be part of that group, and the experience has been extraordinary.

ART/LIFE WITH LINDA M. MONTANO
Interview by Elizabeth M. Stephens and Annie M. Sprinkle

Beth: Which do you use, “life as art” or “art as life?” And how did this term get into circulation?

Linda: It is interchangeable and I learned it from Alan Kaprow who studied with Suzuki. I was in San Francisco in the 70's and was also influenced by Tom Marioni, Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Barbara T. Smith, and Bonnie Sherk who created the FARM. I see ART=LIFE/LIFE=ART as an Asian concept—that the sacredness of life touched everything-- that art is indistinguishable from life. That’s why Kaprow along with John Cage and Pauline Oliveros, became enamored of chance operations. They took away the "judging head " and broke down barriers. Then, moving to San Diego, I continued to be influenced by Pauline and Kaprow and Ellie Antin who taught at UC San Diego as well. Pauline had put her tape recorder on the windowsill and decided to tape everything, listen to everything and compose with that spaciousness....sound=music.
And of course the Women’s Building in Los Angeles, was a giant ART/LIFE experience/experiment.

Beth: So if you think about the work you’ve done and where you have been, what do you think your most important contributions have been to the art world?

Linda: Humor, an ironic twist that pushes things to another level and takes away the kind of seriousness and pomposity that could be a kind of elititism, and birth a world of artists who have gifts and brains that would set them apart from the populous, the people.

Annie: Do you have a favorite work you have produced?

Linda: My favorite "piece" really was taking care of my father. That was a quintessential art life piece. I used my video camera not to make art but to hide behind because of the pain of having to watch him with my own eyes. When I started seeing it as art it was easier to witness, see and transform what was happening. Then later after my Dad died, I made a two-hour movie about him. That was pivotal, because it changed me from what I was before to what I am now. I went back in time, back into my child house, my childhood. Being so near my father, and the intensity of that, I became another person. Humor was my gift in my early work. I see the humor somewhat now, but it’s not a consistent humor. There is something else, and I’m not sure what. Something more real has entered. It’s not that I have given up humor. I just performed as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, which had a twinge of irony because here I am a “dystoniac”(I have cervical dystonia) bent over in spasm, and making believe I’m her. That's funny, no? There is also something else that is interesting that is happening. In 1970 I sat in front of a video camera for a year and became different characters. Now I’m wanting to become live people. Now I’m wanting to not be make-believe people, but Mother Teresa, Bob Dylan, and Paul McMahon. Before I was Dr. Jane Gooding, and it was fake. Before I was trying to get out of myself and now I’m trying to get nearer to people, to get out of isolation and into intimacy. I will be "you" because I need to share my life. Before it was I’ve gotta get out of my life and be these false people. Also I just finished an essay on this titled “Masks.” See my blog: (HTTP://LINDAMARYMONTANO.BLOGSPOT.COM) I talk about the four levels of consciousness: unconscious, subconscious, conscious and superconscious and I see that I have portrayed all four levels in my persona work: the alcoholic, the professional, the real person(Bob Dylan) and the Guru. It all revolves around accepting all aspects of the self. The neurobiological aspects of rehearsing being another person, changes my brainwaves.

Annie: I adore your humor. Your humor starts in my gut and radiates out my body. It’s not a surface humor that goes inward but a very deep humor that explodes outward. It is spiritually that provides spiritual nourishment.

Linda: Thanks Annie. My grandmother was very funny. She would take her teeth out on holidays and sing. And my mother dressed up on Halloween and went trick or treating.

Beth: My grandmother would take her teeth out too! It was very funny, and very scary. What do you think is the highest form of life-art?

Linda: Anything that creates an ecstasy in the artist; where there is a suspension of time, of judgment. Suspension. There’s a riding the wave of ecstasy when everyone is on the same page. No one is dragging the rudder of judgment or disbelief. It is when the artist is in the state of creation... Or when the artist is co-creating with other ARTISTS/LIFEISTS and they are riding the same train in the same manner and don’t care about time or space. In Catholicism it is called The Mystical Body of Christ. In life, it is ecstasy.

Annie: Are you proud to be an artist?

Linda: I’m very, very happy that I was chosen. I don’t think you choose. The universe chooses people. I am honored to be chosen to be an artist. I don’t think I have anything to do with it.

Beth: What’s the most fun you have had making art?

Linda: I love being different personas, I love being other people. The first time I was Mother Teresa I blew myself away. Me blowing me! And that is so correct because we think… is this blowing the audience away? No, that is the wrong thinking. We have to blow ourselves into ecstasy. When I was studying sculpture in Italy, I dropped the idea of being a studio artist. I collected Italian found objects , audience members picked up an object (according to numbers) which they individually assembled and make a sculpture. That was the beginning of my liberation. Another one happened when my college teacher and mentor, Mother Mary Jane at the College of New Rochelle, gave me “art-wings” and I made a group ceramic mural on a public wall in 1965. Oh yes, freedom for sure.

Annie: You’ve been using recycled materials for a LONG time. Would you say you’ve been in the environmental art movement?

Linda: I think it’s more that I learned thrift, a frugality and a respect for matter from my family. I remember my dad drawing one bowl of water to wash in the morning; everything was done with this one bowl of "sacred" water. Our life was very monastic. My grandmother recycled everything and had a whole album full of condensed milk cows cut from labels. Yeah, recycling is natural to some people because they grew up that way. And then it becomes a movement like Art Povera or Eco-art.
Poverty, war, recessions, depression, a non-consumerist ethos allows for a neo environmental-green that is now au courant.

Beth: Is there such a thing as a failed art project in art/life?

LINDA: We must always think about consequences even though we are these freedom-fighting-geniuses called artists. I would say, as a cautionary word, that the beauty of our calling as artists is to see beyond; we must be the creator, beyond limits, and regulations, and beyond consequences. And yet in the world of reality there ARE consequences. That’s the paradox and makes some of us want to stay in the cave. It takes time and wisdom, and it takes stumblings, and those kinds of haphazard and consequential mistakes to realize that first flush of, oh, I’m going to do this and its going to be fabulous, without thinking of the consequences. Horribleness happens. It is part of the game. But as I age, I can take less and less of it as my stress level seizes me up. Honestly I’m quite content sitting in the kick back chair and watching Entertainment Tonight re-runs. Its good ART/LIFE for me and I am failure-free!!

Beth: So do you think there is such a thing as failure, or is it just part of the process of becoming an artist, and an adult?

Linda: I think that there are no mistakes because there is reality in both. It is "What can I stomach?" I just wrote a "hell" poem inspired from my college days studying the Divine Comedy. My version is composed of layers of hell with exclamations of pain. The poem is titled ENTER (see blog). It is about serial failures and it was so cleansing to write. Failure as art. Exorcising the dark....

Beth: Can you talk about being a Catholic performance artist Linda?

Linda: In these complex times of recessive recessions, downsized possessions, boundaried vacations, medical quarantines, folded funding, foreclosed dreams, I decided or felt called to Become a Catholic Again! It is an exciting return and also has its own challenges. Being a Catholic artist is very new for me, about 10 years old. It came from teaching at the university because there, I had "art children" and I didn’t know how to be an "art mother". I had been a gig-er before that. I went to gigs in different cities/countries, did my thing and left. No consequences, no muss, no fuss. But teaching for seven years with a group of young people at the same place was a whole other ball game. I had to be a moral compass and protector of their physical/psychological/spiritual safety. Not having had children, I had no idea how to do that so there were times when there were flower-child-art-students, running aesthetically in the halls and a whole lot of performative incredibleness happening that Linda-art loved but Linda-teacher had no idea how to decipher. I went to the Church to get help!

Beth: If you had a young student now that wanted to do life art what advice would you give?

Annie: I’d say ‘call Linda Montano because she’s the best art mother there is.’

Linda: Annie, you are always so generous and supportive of me, and I tear-up with it always… What would I say? Don’t be scared, yet be careful. I’m watching an extremely ill friend who is in her sixties. She had a stroke. Kathy Brew and I were standing next to her bed. She was in critical care. We sang to each other, because we were both feeling the same thing, “What’s it all about Alfie?” And I guess we both agreed that it doesn’t matter how long that resume is when it comes down to the deathbed and final breath. I think I’m coming to that kind of realization which time and age reveal… How to illustrate this? I think when people begin aging and see other people age and when things change so drastically, like my father’s illness, and then returning to Catholicism, having a medical issue where I’m so health focused… I think priorities change.
Can I now be as spicy, and as loyal to the image, to my students, to the video, to the performance, to my brilliance, or to the painting as Georgia O’Keefe was in an interview of her I saw when she was ninety-two. She looked as sharp and committed and focused on being an artist… just like a rattlesnake watching her prey ....and this I could see as she was getting out of her car, going up into the woods on her way to paint New Mexico sunsets. I want to bull dog my way to the end and hang on to the bone of my art and life in a dignified, totally comical, graceful, divinely directed and correct way just like Georgia. Fate might deal me a different strategy. Thanks to my belief-system, it is all, no matter what, wonderful art and a wonderful life.

Beth: Do you think your work is interventionist art? And what do you think that term means?

Linda: There are programs on some of the 400,000 TV programs I watch a week that are about interventions for drugs, alcohol, etc. I think intervention is about: speaking the difficult. Artists really hang out in the difficult, are obliged to communicate the difficult.

Annie: How do you feel like feminism and religion have interacted with your work?

Linda: Feminism is a word that I really don’t apply to myself and I feel really quite inept in this journey I’m on with this Catholic position. Sometimes its working and I’m pretty happy with it and other times not. For example, I go to the jail on Sundays and do a Catholic service there. There is one guard, a man, who likes telling anti-Catholic jokes. There are two other women there and they just listen to the jokes and laugh. They’re more mature than I am. Last time he said he had a new joke. I said, ‘Is it a Catholic joke? Because if it is, I’m leaving.’ And I left. I don’t like the way I did it. I’m proud that I left, but I wish I had done it with more creativity, with humor. With ART! Creativity is the ticket. How to get out of situations or into situations that are more nourishing because I ended up winning in my own eyes, and I don’t want to do that any more. Loving is winning because when l look at a friend on her deathbed…who cares who’s winning. Who cares? There’s just one less person at MY funeral when I’m so intent on winning!

Annie: In terms of your art life practice what are you current commitments/projects now? Didn’t you take a vow to not write for a year?

Linda: The writing commitment is up 2012. It was for seven years. I was going to wear orange forever, and that is getting really mushy. I have a lot of orange clothes but I slip in browns and purples and reds. But as I said before, I’m more focused on compiling, completing, concluding the past, and bringing it into some sort of crescendo/conclusion. That was why I took this no-writing vow. I wanted to cure myself of greedily creating as if I were an art addict and not a lover of truth. Artaholics are not necessary.

Beth: Could you talk about the current group that Annie and I are participating in with you? There are about ten other artists using your Seven Years of Life as Art and seven-chakra structure. Are you glad you made the call for people to join you in using your structure? Is this maybe a strategy for a longer project? What’s it like collaborating with people? What is your response to having this project?

Linda: As far as 21 Years of Living Art is concerned, every 7 years, artists “do their 7 year thing” under the auspices of this school that I founded because I truly love endurance and I wanted to share my love with others. One day I see my thinking about what people are doing in this school as ecumenical-offerings which are not quite Roman Catholic but certainly are spiritual (not religious), and then the next day I want to hide and feel as if I am uncomfortably pushing my boundaries of Catholic belief. Yes, that says it, my boundaries of belief. So right now the school is a wonderful mix of geniuses who are forcing me into deciding whether I’m going to be a fundamentalist finger wagging Catholic church woman via SNL, or if I am there to encourage creativity.

Beth: Here’s a question from our editor, Roxi Hamilton, “How do you feel that ritual and longevity, like 7-year performance cycles, intervene in and shape our conceptions of how art affects life?”

Linda: I want her to answer that one!

Beth: Here’s another one from Roxi., “ How do you regard your extension of ancestry, and that’s borrowing appropriating and extending your 7-year chakra paradigm and whether the 7-year performances should be repeatedly reconceptualized by other artists?”

Linda: I think it’s in the culture anyway. I think that performance art has a way of infecting culture, and then reappearing. It’s already happening, and it’s happened. A lot of it is because the computer has squashed and trumped time, and is preparing us for robotization and intellectual piracy. These attempts of these interventionist artists to speak to, and hold on to time is really an Armageddon-like attempt to point towards a loss via the machine. Endurance is a response to the information age. Endurance is availability. Endurance is staying the course. Endurance gives us a taste of solidity that is being lost to floating avatarily in SECOND LIFE.

Beth: One more question from Roxi. “Your personal spiritual, and artistic vocabulary seems to be composed of a hybrid of mostly Catholic but also Indian influences, the guru, the chakras, etc. Can you comment on the significance of combining your own childhood religion with the language and practice of other cultures?”

Linda: It can only be a richer meal.

Beth: Anything else you would like to say?

Linda: Buy my archive so I can simplify. lindamontano@hotmail.com See it on You Tube. Its called “Archive for Sale.” I’m giving a finder’s fee for the best price.

Annie: Who would the ideal buyer be?

Linda: The Getty, NYU, Bard, An International Institute? See Part 4 of the video and find a place. Fast. Anywhere that the Archive can be used for research would be good. I’m really putting effort into putting my papers, books, videos and objects in order. I’m becoming an archivist. Does that mean I’m now a librarian? Not another persona, please! The best scenario is if somebody bought the Kingston “Art/Life Institute” and kept the archive there and used it as a study center, a performance center. That would be perfect!

Annie: I’d give anything to see that happen.

Beth: That’s really exciting.

Linda: ART LIVES!!!!!!!!!!

We highly encourage you to contact Linda Mary Montano for Art/Life/Laughter Counseling. Or gather her unique wisdom from her three books: Art In Everyday Life, Performance Artists Speaking In the 80’s, Letters from Linda M. Montano. Invite her to do lectures, workshops, and performances in your city. Visit her web site at lindmontano.com. If you are interested in acquiring her amazing archive, contact her at lindamontano@hotmail.com. Buy it and donate it to NYU or find a rich uncle who needs a tax write off and let him buy it, then donate it to NYU. Your finder’s fee is a day tied to Linda with love.

2011-02-17T06:36:00.000-08:00

Hotmail - lindamontano@hotmail.com - Windows Live

2011-02-17T06:26:00.000-08:00

LINDA MARY MONTANO'S : ANOTHER 21 YEARS OF LIVING ART:1998-2019

2010-11-19T15:52:00.000-08:00

ANOTHER 21 YEARS OF LIVING ART (1998-2019): LINDA MARY MONTANO

MISSION STATEMENT: ANOTHER 21 YEARS OF LIVING ART(1998-2019) is art that compassionately practices an appreciation for life and is a durational continuation of my exploration of the art of consciousness. The artists/lifeists invited to this experience,ecumenically choose their own unique methodologies and explore their work while remaining in virtual/internet communication with each other throughout their practice of compassionately transforming their life,via art. It is based on Linda MARY Montano’s endurance: 7 YEARS OF LIVING ART + ANOTHER 7 YEARS OF LIVING ART= 14 YEARS OF LIVING ART, 12/8/1984—12/8/1998.
www.lindamontano.com,www.vdb.org http://lindamarymontano.blogspot.com/

DESCRIPTION: “When I finished 14 YEARS OF LIVING ART,an art experience-endurance based on the 7 chakras, I became so enamored of working with time that I wanted to share that joy with others, and so I designed ANOTHER 21 YEARS OF LIVING ART. I felt that other artists could become virtual/internet art family and I would feel as if I were in good company, with like-minded friends, doing work based on time,endurance and with reference to my past work, but interpreted by each artist according to their discipline, practice and personal aesthetic. I am proud and honored to be in the company of the following life-artists.” Linda Mary Montano

PARTICIPANTS IN SECOND SEVEN YEARS OF: ANOTHER 21 YEARS OF LIVING ART:

MICHELLE BUSH: SEVEN YEARS OF POSITIVE OBSESSIONS,12/8/2005-12/8/2012. I obsess on one sentence/statement and colour in relation to the chakras producing collaborative or interventionist and performance pieces each year.

BARBARA CARRELLAS: EIGHT NEW/ANCIENT SACRAMENTS OF PLEASURE AND CHANGE, 12/8/2004-12/8/2011. I create chakra-based rituals which I celebrate on the eight natural holidays (solstices, equinoxes, etc.) that explore and celebrate the paradoxes between the fixed commitments/initiations of the seven sacraments of the Catholic church and the ever-changing, fluid realms of intuition, pleasure and nature. EIGHT YEARS OF LIVING ART, www.barbaracarrellas.com

SC DURKIN: SEVEN YEARS OF MUSIC, 12/8/2005-12/8/2012.I endeavor to learn one musical instrument a year for the next seven years. SEVEN YEARS OF MUSIC,www.scdurkin.com

KOOSIL-JA HWANG: 12/8/2004-12/8/2011. www.dancekk.com

VERNITA N'COGNITA: 7 MORE UNTITLED YEARS OF WHEREVER MY ART LEADS ME, 12/8/2004-12/8/2011. www.ncognita.com

ESTHER K. SMITH: THEIR HOUSE IS A MUSEUM,12/8/2004-12/8/2011. Seven years in other people's houses. EK SMITH MUSEUM, www.purgatorypiepress.com

KRISTA KELLY WALSH: SEVEN MIRRORS, 2006-2012. My work is based on the Cabalist system of reading the will of the seven planetarty spirits in the seven mirrors that are made of seven metals and associated with the 7 days of the week, seven planets and cooresponding themes. Each year I will make a corresponding mirror and wear a bead of the same metal, make projects and performances based on the themes of that metal.

SATELLITE PROJECT:The satellite project is an ongoing congruent program of artists/lifeists within ANOTHER 21 YEARS OF LIVING ART.

PARTICIPANTS IN THE SATELLITE PROJECT:

STEVEN REIGNS: S(T)EVEN YEARS, 1/12007-1/1/20014. I intend to explore the connection between art, life,and spirituality through writing practice, public writing workshops, and publishing chapbooks. S(T)EVEN YEARS SANCTUARY, www.stevenreigns.com

VICTORIA SINGH & KURTIS CHAMPION: SON/ART—CHAKRA COLOR RITUALS, 7/7/04-7/7/11. Kurtis celebrates the chakra colors of each 'year' with art projects on the 7th day of each month.

ELIZABETH STEPHENS & ANNIE SPRINKLE: LOVE ARTLABORATORY—7 YEARS EXPLORING LOVE AS ART,12/8/2004-12/8/2011. We make art about love. LOVE ARTLABORATORY

Mother Theresa at The Empire State Building: Video by Mark Shaw

2010-10-10T06:55:00.000-07:00

More MT

2010-09-29T10:26:00.000-07:00

More Mother Theresa

2010-09-29T10:23:00.000-07:00

Mother Theresa at The Empire State Building 8/25/10

2010-09-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

Mother Theresa at The Empire State Building 8/25/10

2010-09-29T10:07:00.001-07:00

TIMUR CIVAN VIDEO:MOTHER TERESA 100TH BIRTHDAY

2010-09-08T09:37:00.000-07:00

Timur Civan Mother Teresa

Timur Civan Mother Teresa

TALK AT UNITARIAN CHURCH JUNE 2010

2010-06-25T09:07:00.000-07:00

INTRO TO TALK AT UNITARIAN CHURCH

Neuroanatomist, Jill Taylor chose to study the brain because her brother is a schizophrenic and she wanted to know why. But about 10 years ago, she had her own neurologic event when blood vessels exploded in her left brain, leaving her a case study of herself.

In her TED you tube now gone viral lecture she profoundly and completely explains what it is like to have a stroke and what it does to the brain by describing the two hemispheres of the brain:

THE RIGHT BRAIN: thinks in pictures, is about the present moment, learns kinesthetically, and is the brain of energy and connection.

THE LEFT BRAIN: thinks methodically, is about the past and future, judges, organizes projects for a later time, thinks in language, says, I AM and becomes separate from the universal flow of energy.

After her stroke which literally almost dissolved the thinking brain, everything in her body slowed down, she began focusing on internal rhythms, the molecules of her body merged with the molecules of the wall, the numbers on her phone became pixels and although she heard an inner voice say, "You need help," she had forgotten the number of her colleagues at work and it took her 45 minutes to find it in the first inch of a 3 inch stack of business cards. When she looked at the cards, the numbers pixeled and so she looked at the numbers on the phone and matched them with the numbers on the card, and in dialing the number, she forgot if she had dialed so she held her by then numb hand over the numbers she had dialed, giving herself visual cues.

Jill states: I was inside a silent mind, captivated by the energy around me, I was one with the energy of all that is. It was beautiful there because I was disconnected from the brain chatter. I had a sense of peacefulness because 37 years of emotional baggage was gone. My spirit surrendered as I lay on the gurney and I said goodbye to life.

For a comparative look at a similar flight to heaven by a philosopher and mystic, go to you tube and find BEDE GRIFFITH's account of his stroke where he also explains his medical experience as an explosion of love and a bath of bliss. And another story: in the late 80's, I also witnessed my own teacher Shri Brahmananda Saraswati, of Ananda Ashram, after his stroke. He continued teaching while living in this bliss bath and called his supposed illness, A STROKE OF GOOD LUCK. And to make these stories more personal, even though I had a TIA, silent stroke in 1991, nothing like this happened to me. Why? Maybe because my stroke didn't occur in the La-La part of my left brain, maybe because I wasn't spiritually prepared for heaven on earth and so when the stroke gave me an opportunity to feel bliss, I wasn't ready? Maybe for thousands of other medical reasons. But I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting that a stroke is a guaranteed ticket and the only or sure path to enlightenment.

Back to Jill who survived an operation that removed a golf-size mass from her left brain. It took 8 years of re-hab for her to come back to herself and she says:" Now that I have found nirvana and am still alive, I feel that anyone can find nirvana if they choose to step to the right of their left hemisphere." And her new purpose is to encourage folks to access that right brain and feel the heaven she experienced.

And to continue, she says:"We are the life force, the power of the universe. I can step into that right hemisphere where we are ONE! Or I can step into the left and be solid and separate.

She challenged the TED audience with these words: "What do you choose?"

MY presentation today is offering a suggestion; a suggestion of a way that I use to go right, to the right brain, a way to temporary nirvana, a way to ONE and the more we go there, the better and easier it gets to live in beauty, peace and ecstatic compassion. We all have our way, our path, our methods, our stariways. In this time of cosmic planetary worry and concern, it is opportune that we share the goods.

Now for the "way".....(paper 2)

THE JOY OF THE LORD: LINDA MARY MONTANO

After a series of upsets and traumas and the death of my dad and illness of my best friend, I decided I needed to learn how to laugh(stop and illustrate and include all). So in 2006, I took a course in Atlantic City with Steve Wilson, a student of Madan Kutaria MD of India, who founded the now internationally famous laughter phenomenon . Dr Kutaria realized that Laughter is a good complementary medicine to his AMA practice and he borrowed the exercises from ancient relaxation practices used in Tibet and India eons ago adding thousands of other exercises over time. They are used institutionally and personally and privately and therapeutically and medically and it seems that St Francis of Assisi may have been a practitioner given the depictions of him in films and literature. A joyful saint for sure. And TERESA OF AVILA would lead her nuns in dancing ,singing and said, quoted loosely, I don't want sour nuns but happy ones. So religious/spiritual/mystical traditions do encourage us to receive the joy of the LORD with conviction, that's for sure.

This talk today is based on 3 aspects of learning , a model of interdependence and flexible moving from one to another in case of necessity or when burdened by an off balance in daily life. The three models are: Learning by relaxing and laughing, learning by hearing and thinking, learning by imagining and feeling. All are necessary, all can help each other, all can intertwine. I call today a Triple Decker Sandwich event a weaving of the 3 methods into one big triple decker sandwich.

LEARNING BY LAUGHING: REPTILIAN BRAIN PERHAPS? To illustrate the way we use this wonderful temple of body mind and spirit via laughter we will do a series of laughter exercises for those who choose to do so and those able medically to do so. This brand of laughter is not about jokes but is about faking it, simulating to stimulate and we all know why...to induce serotonin and all of those medical chemicals that make us feel fabuloso. The sandwich aspect is that we will laugh, then think then laugh then imagine and then laugh.(example)

LEARNING BY HEARING: RIGHT BRAIN? To illustrate this model I will share a book I read by Kathy Mcgowan titled, THE SOURCE OF MIRACLES, which is based on the OUR FATHER .Mcgowan has interpreted the 6 petal rose situated at the center of Chartres Cathedrals labyrinth as a pathway to LOVE which sits in the center of the rose. She says that if we walk the six petals praying the OUR FATHER we will do the 6 practices that the OUR FATHER suggests and then land in the center circle LOVE! The bottom line is that we all, each and every one of us, want love. Here is not the time or place to analyze or see the complex paradoxes of that statement or to include treatises on evil, computer viruses, foreclosures, BP scams or jihad training camps. We are going to remain fuzzy/cozy and pray through laughter instead, hopefully refueling the atmosphere with our ions of Joy.(exercise)

LEARNING BY IMAGINING: LEFT BRAIN? To illustrate this method of prayer, we will choose to imagine journeying/traveling the 6 paths of the ROSE, and feel the gift of each petal, or see it or be in touch with our sensory learning devices so that the truth of it goes deep into the poetic and sensitive consciousness. Of course , this will be sandwiched with laughter-joy as well.

I thank you for participating in whatever way is appropriate for you and may the Joy of Divine Beauty be our inner food, a food we share with our own inner hunger and the hunger of ALL in this crying, weeping, spilling, hurting cosmos.

Linda Mary Montano, 2010

FACEBOOK AND THE RECESSION:

2010-04-30T04:48:00.000-07:00

"Dear FB,

For about a year, at the invitation of pioneer and techno-composer-legacy-holder, Pauline Oliveros, I have been "feeling" the family of FB and this internet/virtual relationship has generated new thoughts about art/life.
We are animal/human and need community. We attain and get that in many ways. It used to be neighborhoods but no more...kids cant play in the streets or their yards. We used to go to church , no more, we used to visit relatives , no more. Silently and slowly we are being forced into non-horseback riding time and catapulting into robotization and computer mind. We are being lured into sub-cutaneous implants and AI and no-think and machine speed. And the art world is led by the carrot of sameness into this silence by not offering any other options because:

Only the high rollers are getting the gigs and the teaching spots held tight by the past-timers.
Only the ones who will bring in the bucks are galleried.
Only the safe and sure are shown.(Names known by only the Guerilla Girls.)
Only the content that is wow and now is wanted.

Soooooooooooooooo

FB has become:

SCHOOL
GATHERING PLACE
HAPPY PARTY
JOB FINDER
MATE GATHERER
LOSS CONSOLER
RANT RECEIVER
PAST WORK DISPLAYER
DREAM MAKER
WHAT I ATE FOR LUNCH PHOTOGRAPHER
INSTANT AUDIENCE
TEACHER OF ART AS FREE COMMODITY
SHOW OFF CENTER
GROUP FORMER
JOB PLACEMENT SITE
FRIEND/FAN MAKER
PRODUCT/ART OBJECT ADVERTISER
RECESSION SNUBBER
GALLERY
SELF-IMPRESSION INFLATOR
RESURGER OF THE SPIRITUAL IN ART
DEPRESSION ADJUSTER
GREED DETHRONER
QUESTION ANSWERER
GRADUATE SEMINAR STUDY PLACE
NEW IDEA SHARER
PERSONAL BELL RINGER
WEBSITE ADVERTISER
FRIEND THIEF
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY FORGETTER
PET PHOTO/VIDEO SHOWER
WASTER OF TIME
ADDICTION CREATOR

The list is longer for the positives and less for the delete/hide/escape apps. And as a result, FB, I still like you, I share your wisdom and your messages and your great facilities. OK I am using you and asking periodically for help to sell my archive, to ask questions about where the gigs are these days, and other narcissistic dreams. So maybe i'm not so pure and that money and being SEEN is more important than your friendship, but until I completely find your game a pitiful excuse for having a life, I will continue to tell all of my "friends" my news, the world's news and my extraordinary wisdom! And in an early morning Starbucks burst of energy, I will continue to SHARE other wonderful and informative bites I find that all 28379874982749874 of you might like. I know some will "hide" me but I will never know because I still have access to my other 409872474987 "friends". FB, I know that galleries are few, that $ is tight, I know that 328479874329 people are seeing my videos for free via you, but i'm not bitter oh FB, i'm just glad to be in your family. Art is finally about life and not art? How long this generosity and high lasts, who knows? Maybe not until the lawyers arrive.

Thanks FB for playing. One of your 238979857985798274983783009209947676 "FRIENDS",

Linda Mary Montano , PERFORMANCE ARTIST . In case you are interested, my web is www.lindamontano.com

ENTER

2010-04-30T04:44:00.001-07:00

Admittedly we are all sensing a pre-renaissance black-out, a "dark age" with recognizable and historically accurate symptoms witnessed by historians of the fall (and/or transformation) of other dynasties teetering on the brink of armageddon.(The Roman ,Ottoman, German, British Empires perchance?)

BREAK

Can't we all agree that in this 21st century, we are communally experiencing a bad taste and aftermaths from universally experienced phenomena such as:

CIRCLE 475 PHENOMENON

Financial fumblings, cultural buffooneries, pervasive paranoia, modified mea culpas, bipartisan shenanigans, uncompassed morality, bipaped starvations, political circus acts, theological tsunamis, global tamperings, cyclical catastrophes, faux apologies, misleading marketing, conspicuous consuming, muddled multitasking, apocalyptic battering, padded documenting, salted wounding, power shifting, self loathing, hierarchical covering, pious grandstanding, spasmed tremoring, bankrupted dreaming, disintegrated remembering, virtual relating, techno crazing, outrageous compensating, congressional bullying and foreclosed trust!

CIRCLE 189 PHENOMENON

Diseased despondents, surrendered suicidals, unheld newborns, hooded jihadists, fundamental fanatics, antsy therapists, inattentive nannies, selfish narcissists, bonused buddies, media darlings, unconscienced thieves, suffocating egoists, discarded seniors, trafficked innocents, self inflicting terrorists, vulnerable victims, jolly junkies, over dutiful daughters, celebrity addicts, killer drones, spiritual materialists, scheming CEOs, interminable visitors, jealous sisters, stubborn students, lying boasters, ungrateful patients, cyber bullies, skeletoned anorexics, emotional mutes, nasty narcissists and miserable millionaires!

CIRCLE 362 PHENOMENON

Creepy oppressors, hypersexual prowlers, Holocaust deniers, death cheaters, begging borrowers, scud sharp shooters, carbon foot printers, attention mongers, greedy brokers, depressed designers, public apologizers, prepared preppers, subcutaneous cutters, sophomoric obsessors, inappropriate responders, furious professors, tormenting victimizers, parent starvers, neurotic neighbors, reputation slanderers, magnetic womanizers, surprise attackers, glad handers, halitosed dancers, grid locked commuters, grieving skaters, arrogant outsiders, soul sellers, gift refusers, aggressive reporters, sloppy visitors, pill stealers, animal abhorrers, hate disseminators, stinky passengers, authority balkers, sloppy foodmakers, name callers, energy suckers, germ spreaders, information secretors, junk hoarders, saccrine sympathizers, sweaty hand shakers, misguided worshippers, internet scammers, morphed murderers, obese outsiders, child abusers, frozen floormatters, dysfunctional reconfigurers, beauty kidnappers, unread biographers, gender assaulters, monumental mistakers, satanic afflicters, silent contemptors, counterindicated elders, hungry survivors, childhood stealers, guilted enjoyers, ponzi schemers, medical compromisers, careless caregivers, enraged partners, jailed minors, paralyzed players, unemployed loners, adulterous trespassers, vaccinated teenagers, double crossed informers, technological traumatizers, disabling humiliators, monetary misusers and nose pickers!

SHIFT

Oh, our poor bodies/minds are dodging the toxic arrows of it all! Dodging thoughts about pcb's and thoughts of no more potable water or no more fish or ice-sliding-glaciered polar bears! Thoughts about what to do about our arthritic thumbs twittered to spasm. Thoughts about ourselves and the suffering others! Not only thoughts but also memories of once looking in the mirror at our faces sweetly smiling back with innocent anticipation of a McDonalds. NO MORE. In preparation for a post-modern re-look at Revelationed-robotization, our current faces are facebooked/addicted into social shyness, not to be relieved by a 1970's Kumbayaah singing picnic on a green, chemical free lawn. That chapter is closed, my friend.

DELETE

Now, our poor bodies, steel-tight with earthquaked fear of the next day's news or trembling over the calories and sugar content of the morning's Starbucks or tripping out of buildings quickly when rumblings at yet another fault-line are recognized by sensitive dogs,....our battered bodies.... run on PTSD/empty seeking refuge in second-lifed, C-PAPED-accompanied nightmares.

HIDE

But wait, out of this harrowing scenario of a reality show gone bad, comes Hope?

SHIFT

PAUSE

LINDA MARY MONTANO, 2010 Saugerties, NY

Linda Montano, Student of Real Presence

2010-04-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

by Karen Gonzalez Rice — Duke University
April 16, 2010 – 00:21

Curator's Note
In her video Linda Mary Montano: I Dreamed I Was Mother Teresa (2009), performance artist Linda Montano takes on the persona of Catholic nun and humanitarian Mother Teresa. She presents the gestures, gait, actions, and speech of this absent, beatified woman: wearing the habit of Mother Teresa’s order, the Missionaries of Charity, she moves slowly before a handmade cross, her spine painfully curved. Accompanied by an audio track that includes singing, bells, and the voice of Mother Teresa speaking at the Philadelphia Eucharistic Conference in 1976, Montano pats a baby, bows her head in prayer, smiles, and gestures toward the camera. The video’s sepia tones and hazy surfaces locate this scene in the nostalgic past, while the obviously fake baby doll, a substitute for the real infants tended by the nun, parallels the substitution of the artist’s body for Mother Teresa.

Long recognized as a pioneer of American performance art, Montano recently has cast herself as a “Roman Catholic Performance Artist.” In Linda Mary Montano: I Dreamed I Was Mother Teresa and other new works, including St. Teresa of Avila (2007) and A Silent Three-Hour Prayer Retreat inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral (2007), Montano explicitly links her ongoing investment in religion with the medium of performance art itself. As a medium, performance art locates both the art-making subject and the art object in the body of the artist. The performance artist, then, embodies both being and doing. This media-specific insistence on embodiment and connection in time, place, and space echoes religious believers’ concerns with divine presence, as during the Catholic Eucharist, when Christ is considered actually present at the altar. Montano highlights the significance of this concept in her “Roman Catholic Performance Artist Manifesto” (2009) when she frames her commitment to the Catholic Church in terms of its status as “the Church of the Real EUCHARISTIC PRESENCE!!” Montano’s manifesto goes on to define her art practice in terms of her attention to presence: “In a spirit of research and study and dialogue and obedience, I remain a student of Real Presence.”

Montano’s work is rooted in her experience of convent life as a novice with the Maryknoll order in the early 1960s and in her return, in the late 1990s, to the Catholic faith. In her best-known performances, Montano metaphorically and metonymically enacted Catholic monastic and worship practices of endurance, self-imposed discipline, and transformative, habitual action. For example, in Art / Life One Year Performance 1983-1984 (1983-4), she was tied by an eight-foot rope to artist Tehching Hsieh for one year; her piece 7 Years of Living Art (1984-91) established a set of psychologically grueling year-long commitments that stipulated the details of her what she could wear, how she could speak, and how she should act in everyday life. By attempting to make religious experience visible, Montano’s recent performances continue her life-long engagement with Catholic forms and pivot on the complex notion of performance as presence.

http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2010/04/15/linda-montano-student-real-presence#comment-1851

Videos and texts by Linda Montano are available at her blog, on Facebook and YouTube, and at Video Data Bank.

Tags
art | performance art | religion
Comments

ETERNAL LIFE
by Barton Scott — Montana State University
April 16, 2010 – 11:08

Karen, thanks for this wonderful post, which has the added virtue of referring back to so many things that we have talked about this week: India (Mother Teresa’s Calcutta), religion and the body (as in Vince’s post), flickering filmic addresses (as in Jenna’s), and, perhaps most hauntingly, church bells (enter Isaac).

I was hoping you could say a little more about the relationship of performance art to film/ video— which, it would seem to me, threatens to undermine Montano’s insistence on divine presence. This piece seems to be, as you suggest, much more about absences and substitutions— of the doll for a real baby, of Montano for Mother Teresa. The latter’s recorded voice, meanwhile, lends a mediatized edge to what she is saying: "For it is by dying that one awakens into eternal life." I suppose similar things could be said about the eucharist as sign— a sign that also evokes and memorializes a death.

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BART, THANKS FOR RAISING THIS
by Karen Gonzalez Rice — Duke University
April 16, 2010 – 14:18

Bart, thanks for raising this really important question. The idea of presence is much-debated in film and video studies, and from my perspective as an art historian, documentations of performance art only complicate the issue. Performance art as a medium is predicated on presence in that the artist is the art object; the presence of the artist IS the artwork. The relation between the artist and the viewer is more complicated: even private performances, or artworks done for the camera alone, anticipate an audience, if only the self. For Montano, the paradox of this presence-in-absence is linked to exactly the kind of theological paradox you draw attention to with your references to eternal life and to the Eucharist.

DEATH: DO NOT FEAR

2010-03-23T16:43:00.000-07:00

Death is hidden, feared, wondered about. It creates all kinds of responses in our emotional and thinking lives. This class would open the chapter called DEATH and examine it from the many different angles and interests of the participants of the class.

Youtube videos, past art and internet research sites will be examined as well as trips to cemeteries, morgues, embalmers, funeral directors, pathologists..

My tapes: MITCHELLS DEATH and BENARES will be studied and I will share my research about death with my lecture: DEATH IN THE ART/LIFE OF LINDA MARY MONTANO.

The participants will write their wills, study how to draw up Power of Attorneys, Health Care Proxys and Obituaries and will teach each other the techniques of legally protecting their final days and health care decisions.

Their interviews with theologians, hospice workers and medical people will help with their understanding of mortality/immortality.

We will perform DAD ART, my 3 hour interactive study of the old age, sickness and death of my father as a final presentation as well as group shows of work produced during this class.

All aspects of this class are improvised and adapted to the needs of the group.
Linda Mary Montano

2010-02-10T09:10:00.000-08:00

photo:MITCHELL PAYNE, 1971

INTERVIEW BETWEEN LINDA MARY MONTANO AND NICOLAS DUMIT ESTEVEZ, JANUARY 2010

2010-02-01T14:44:00.000-08:00

LINDA: NICOLAS, YOU ARE STANDING ON A VERY INTERESTING GROUND RIGHT NOW...THE GROUND OF ART AND THE GROUND OF LIFE BECAUSE YOU HAVE TIES TO WHAT IS PROBABLY THE LARGEST DISASTER EVER: THE EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI ...BECAUSE YOU ARE DOMINICAN, YOU ARE LIKE THE COUSIN WHO KNOWS MORE THAN EVERYONE ELSE ...YOU ARE FROM THAT ISLAND AND KNOW THE HISTORY, CULTURE AND STORIES. SO WE NEED YOUR INFORMATION AND INSIGHTS RIGHT NOW! PLEASE TEACH US.

Nicolas: Linda, I am still processing a disaster that made itself present to me in bits and pieces through the media, the telephone conversations that I have been having with my mother, Maragarita María, in the Dominican Republic, and e-mail exchanges with Haitian friends in the US and abroad. Unlike my stepfather in Santiago, who when the tremors hit, called his wife thinking that he was having a seizure, I have been shaken intermittently by the graphic images coming through computer and TV screens. I don’t have a BlackBerry.

Before I continue answering your question, I would like to mention that recently I had a long telephone conversation with Sandy Plácido, a young Dominican scholar from the Bronx. Haiti, of course, was at the very center of our dialogue. We asked each other whether this was the right moment to talk about it or to concentrate all our energies in helping this country. My replied to Sandy was “Why not do both things?” Why not use the momentum this nation is experiencing to ask questions we never dared to voice. Before hanging up, I brought up to her your idea to take on some of Haiti’s pain(s) through your DYSTONIA treatment. Can you expand on this? How does the transference of pain works for you and those on the other side? What are your thoughts behind this art-life action in the context of such a devastating catastrophe? Can I ask you one question I often get? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?

I am going to take up the cousin comment in your opening statement. Cousins are for me very close family members since for fifteen years I was an only child. Haiti was the cousin we never visited or the one whom, at any attempt to visit us, we would flee from. Nevertheless, this family member would stop by our places by way of defamatory stories circulating word of mouth in primary school about a black man from the other side of the island stealing Dominican children. Haiti was the boogie-man, el Cuco. Haiti was the cousin with whom I would have LOVED to played hide and seek in the dark Caribbean night. The cousin I was longing to meet. Haiti is the cousin that for two years has kept me an insomniac in the South Bronx. From 2008-2009 I received grants from Art Matters, the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) and Printed Matter to engage in Borderless, an art-life experience for which I have been traveling from my home in New York to Santiago de los Treinta Caballeros, my birthplace in the Dominican Republic, to trace any connection that my relatives and I might have with the neighboring Republic. Did I tell you that part of my mother’s side of the family came from Lebanon by ship? Some Lebanese families not related to us settled next door. Anyhow, I cannot yet discard the possibility of connecting with Haiti through a Middle Eastern relative.

To summarize what could turn into an extensive narration, in 2009, in the town of Guayubín, near the Haitian border, Uncle Julio gave me confirmation of the Haitian background of my great-grandmother Inocencia Ortíz Belliard (Belliard was her French last name). Triggered by this revelation, I asked Uncle Julio and my cousin Venecia to take me to the local cemetery to find her grave. “She was a black”, he said, un-self-consciously approaching the stereotypical topic of race and ethnicity dominating almost all conversations about the relationship between the two countries. The same dialogue unveiled a link with Venezuela on behalf of my father’s side of the family. But let’s go back to Haiti. Inocencia’s grave is unmarked, and is next to that of her husband Manuel Espejo (Papá Muele). His is also unmarked, so we do not know for sure which is Inocencia’s. The two of them are resting side by side on what felt to my feet like a big sandbox dotted with conch shells in various states of disintegration. Why has it taken me forty-two years plus what seems like an endless journey through the cosmos to get to this particular moment? I don’t know if my late father Nicolás would have approved of this. His resting place is not too far from the locus of action. Papi shares a wide, white washed grave with his twin brother Eufemio. They are a few feet from Inocencia and Papá Muele.

L: WHAT DOES IT SIGNIFY, BEING DOMINICAN?

Rather than putting words in someone else’s mouth I am going to leave this question open for people to answer. What does it mean for you, reader to be Dominican? Please send your responses to: indioclaro@hotmail.com _indio_oscuro@live.com or post them on this blog at the end of this Q&A.

Is it dancing merengue, clinging to the tricolor flag, or eating an elastic mangú (man-goo) boiled and mashed green plantains that makes one Dominican? Have you have this dish? I could make it for you or we can have it at a restaurant in Longwood. We should have gone over this question while enjoying mangú with sautéed onions on top, melted cheese, and a glass of morir soñando, die dreaming, (orange juice mixed with milk). We can call it art-life. Any ideas for this? By the way, I don’t know how to play baseball. Does that make me less Dominican? I found this interesting video on youtube posted by a what seems like a young Dominican man living in New York City. It is worthwhile watching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh6l666W_Sg

In my case, Dominicanidad has meant undertaking an on-going search of all of the elements that inform who I might be. I am Dominican because I am a: New Yorker, Bronxite, Lebanese-Dominican, Dominican-York, Lebanese, Catalan, Venezuelan, Haitian, African, New Berliner, Spaniard, and who knows what else. I came to the realization that I am engaged in an undertaking that can bring my identity to some kind of dissolution or collapse. This process I am pointing to has brought me at times to an uncertain territory. I am up for this. Better there that than spending life in a prefab Lalaland.

L: BRIEFLY, WHAT IS THE CULTURAL HISTORY, THE POLITICAL HISTORY AND SPIRITUAL HISTORY OF BOTH THE DR AND HAITI...HOW DO THEY COMPARE AND CONTRAST?

N: What we know today as Haiti and the Dominican Republic was colonized upon Columbus’ arrival in 1492. The whole island was named Hispaniola, becoming part of the geographic portfolio of the crown. In less than a century after the conquest its indigenous inhabitants were decimated and after years of colonial neglect, Buccaneers, a group of freebooters from different European places, settled on the island of Tortuga on the northwest coast. In 1667 France took possession of the west portion of Hispaniola. What follows is a long series of dispute between France and Spain for leadership over the colony and later on, Dominican and Haitian struggles to define the border demarcating both nations. The biggest national holiday in the Dominican Republic is the independence of the country not from Spain, but from Haiti in 1844. What is today the Dominican Republic was from 1822-44 Haitian territory.

It is worthwhile moving back in time. In the XVIII, as a result of dissimilar economies, African slaves and their descendants on each side of the island were engaged in a different kind relationship with their European masters. While French Saint Domingue’s expansion made Haiti the jewel of France in the Americas, the Spanish counterpart barely got by in an economy of subsistence. This resulted in a higher number of Africans arriving in Saint Domingue, and not only that, in a stricter demand for production. All of this will come to inform the overall identity of the Haitian and the Dominican Republics in regards to Africa and the colonizers. The stereotypical perception is of Haitians as poor and African and of Dominicans as lighter skinned Latin. The Spaniard Grandparent Syndrome (SGS), as I call it, is so prevalent in the Dominican Republic, where many claim to have a Spaniard ancestor. In any case, the first time I traveled to Spain I was taken aback by feeling at home. Was I not properly weaned from the motherland?

Have you watch Pat Roberson’s video on youtube? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QszyMLxrQvk
where he talks about the pact Haitians made with the devil in order to obtain their independence from France and to form the first black republic in the Americas? The tele evangelist is not as historically uninformed as he seems to be at first, but ingeniously deceiving in masking the why of the many misfortunes of Haiti. The major one is the heavy reparations that France imposed on the newly created country (the equivalent today of 21 billion dollars) to recognize their independence and the US later involvement in the country’s politics. What Pat is skillfully describing is the affront of a bunch of colored peoples to fight for their freedom. Historically, Pat is talking about the Bois Caïman ceremony on August 14th, 1791 were slaves gestated the revolution that would free them from the colonizer. The conflation of African beliefs was a unifying force in this event. Anyhow, Pat is not alone in his description of a nation who faithfully follows the wrong path, a crowd of glassy-eyed zombies walking after dark. The media has done a magnificent job painting Haiti as the poorest place in the whole hemisphere. Have we been told why? This link is to a video giving some answers to this question. It was sent to me by a Haitian colleague living in Berlin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVwqar4e4Ks
One recurrent comment that I have been hearing in the midst of the catastrophe is that implying that something good might come out of this: What does a 7.0 earthquake mean in a place that before the earthquake hit was already a disaster? Wasn’t Haiti in a state of emergency prior to that?

A day or two after the earthquake, a reporter on TV got confused and said Haw… (meaning Hawaii), while trying to refer to Haiti. He quickly realized his mistake. It seemed like he swapped the names of heaven and hell during mass.

Can we I leave the discussion on spirituality for later? I know that you are about to ask me about one particular aspect of it.

L: WE ARE ALL VERY INTERESTED IN THE CONCEPT OF VOODOO AND HOW DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT VOODOO AND HOW IT IS PRACTICED IN BOTH THE DR AND HAITI?

N: Voodoo, Vodou, we call it Vudú in Spanish, has had a good share of treatments in the US, from Hollywood movies to anthropological literature. From The Serpent and the Rainbow to Tell my Horse. To give you an example, in the section on Haiti in I Tell my Horse, Hurston narrates how she came face to face with a living dead, a Zombie, and goes on to describe some of the bloody secret societies that flourished in Haiti at the time of her research in the late 30’s. In the Dominican oral history of zombification, people are taken from the East to the West side of the island to be turned into one of these creatures. There are those who affirm having seeing someone who disappeared in the Dominican Republic walk the streets of a Haitian town.

Growing up it was commonplace for many of my family members and neighbors in the Dominican Republic to practice ritualistic actions for the purpose of changing the course of an everyday situation: an upside down broom with several crystal of sea salt, propped on a corner helped an overwhelmed host get rid of an undesirable guest. I tried this on many occasions. Women stuffed in their shoes a piece of paper bearing the name of the man they wished to keep subjugated and under the soles of their feet. The names of undesirable people were frozen at the subzero temperatures of the electric refrigerator. To me this was a mild form of zombification. We used camphor to shoo away evil and were instructed to pick up suspicious packages with our left hand. I remember helping my grandmother tie Saint Peter’s testicles, symbolized by a stone, which we hung to stop a torrential rain. Chromolithographies of saints were put upside down until the saint fulfilled one’s request. Saint Anthony has spent a lifetime with his head on the Dominican soil. Wannabe brides do so to urge him to find them a suitable candidate for marriage. Some of the ritualistic actions that I described above could possibly trace their origins to our African heritage, others are the product of the religious syncretism that prevails in an area where Africans forcefully brought to the region worshiped some of their deities through the representation of Catholic imagery. For example, Changó, the god of thunder is represented by the image of St. Barbara and Belié Belcán’s Catholic equivalent is as Saint Michael Archangel.

L: WHAT DOES VOODOO MEAN TO YOU PERSONALLY NOW? BACK WHEN YOU LIVED THERE?

N: Linda, How does one deal with Catholic guilt? How does one reconcile with believes other than those instilled through centuries by the Church? Is it fair to answer a question with another question? Please give us a recipe for shedding off our Judeo-Christian guilt. We are the children of the children of the children of the children of the children of the children of the children who were brought here from Africa. We managed to hold onto a piece of the umbilical cord. Mine was sandwiched in a photo album. I was born with forceps, went to church every once in a while. The Catholicism we practiced at home was a lax one. I will try to keep our conversation on Vodou as simple as possible. We are treading into a complex territory. The reference to horses has to do with the fact that when the Vodou practitioner is possessed by one of the misterios or luas (spirits) he or she is said to be mounted by them. The lua or misterio rides the person hosting him/her. So much to tell. My mother would take me to the houses of people who had the most amazing altars. We would go there for consultation and to get help fixing certain aspects of our lives. There were those who would go to them to get trabajos, works for getting married or for enhancing their luck. Our visits were mostly for spiritual purposes. I was told over and over that I had a light and that I was eventually supposed to get baptized in order to serve the spirits. By the age of seven or so I had amassed a personal altar of a remarkable size. I would use all of the money that Lebanese relatives would give when I would go to visit them at their textile stores downtown to buy chromolithographies of Catholic Saints. The 4” x 6” were no more than a quarter. One of my favorite ones was St. Clare holding a monstrance in her hands. Clare, Clara (clear) in Spanish. Her role was to clear up our path from obstacles.

Now. I keep in touch with one Vodou practitioner. We became good friends when I was attending a master degree at Tyler School of Art. He helped me with my thesis on the aesthetics of the Dominican Vodou altar. This man and his friends taught me a great deal about sharing and caring for one another. Together we would travel to the most economically disadvantaged areas of Santiago and would be received by those who had so little with such amount of generosity. Now I do not practice Vodou but recognize that I have been deeply shaped by it. I often think of the light that I carry inside of me. I ponder about the implications of awakening it.

The Spanish speaking Caribbean had very strong relationship with the flesh, with the here and the now. I have call it a culture of the flesh. Vodou is a religion in which the deities can travel to our physical world and manifest themselves tangibly. For example, I was able to interact with El Barón del Cementerio, St. Elijah or the Lord of the Cemetery, during a celebration. The woman possessed by him wore a purple and black gown. She resembled a dead person. Here we are talking about gender bending. Linda, I warned you before of the complexity of the subject. I am just scratching the surface.

L: HOW DOES IT INTESECT YOUR ART/LIFE? ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WITH IT? IT IS MYSTERIOUS AND VERY COMPELLING TO OUTSIDERS AND SO WE ARE ALL CURIOUS. AND FRIGHTENED BECAUSE IT IS SEEN AS TABOO. THE TABOO MAKES US INTERESTED AND ALSO FRIGHTENS US...

Not too long ago I realized that almost everything I create references altar building in the Vodou tradition. When I moved to the South Bronx, five years ago, I vowed to myself to keep my office free of art, objects, or any kind of decoration. You should come and see the place: braids in glass jars, a calendar of the Sacred Heart of Mary and two of Fefita La Grande (a folk singer in the Dominican Republic who is in reality a performance artist who happens to play the accordion), a huge French Canadian print of a nurse tending to sick man, who is in reality Jesus, a holy Rosary in a plastic bag, a purse of yours that I got at one of your performances, soil from the Dominican Republic and Haiti side by side in jars, like the two portions of the island, like the graves of my father and his twin brother, like the unmarked tombs of my great grandparents near the border, like the Vodou Marasas: St. Cosme and St. Damian.

There is fear in what we don’t know? I fear to drive on an US highway. I fear the prospect of wearing a suit and tie and working on Wall Street. I used to fear leaving New York City for more than a day. There is fear in treading into the unfamiliar and getting swallowed by it. I used to fear becoming an American until I realized that I was one before I moved to the US from the Americas.
Why do you think that outsiders including yourself are scared by Vodou? Can you suggest a performance for dealing with fear?

L: HOW WILL THE EVENTS IN HAITI AFFECT YOUR ART AND LIFE? WILL IT CHANGE THEM FOREVER?

Any security we have put in place to make our lives safer can slip away in a matter of seconds. We should not wait for a tragedy to come in contact with those we care for. I open my eyes and everything is standing. I close my eyes. I open them again and I find myself in the midst of the rubble. Earthquakes are constantly trying to wake us up. Some of these tremors can only be experienced at an individual level, but nevertheless hit all of those around us. Paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, videos, installations, audio pieces, site-specific works, get lost during periods of wars, massacres, nuclear destruction, genocides, ethnic cleansing. Yet art remains forever as reminder of its power to pull us out of the muck. I mean art as: helping others in distress, transporting a sick person to an emergency room, emptying our pockets and sending money to those in need.

Days after the earthquake my cousin e-mailed me from Hong Kong to ask me how will this situation change Borderless. I think she really meant to ask me how is this going to affect my search. I am sure that many of our Haitian cousins lost their lives to the tragedy. I am sure that many more remain to be helped and rescued from the debris, and that many, many, more than those dead have survived and will be there for our first encounter.

On January 25th I received an e-mail from Notreda Belliard sent from the border town of Ounaminthe telling me in broken Spanish that she was OK:” Estoy contento de tomar tu noticia. Espero que todo va bien para tí. Para nosotros no hay nunguna persona que se muerte durante este terremodo. Y tú como estas?” I am happy to hear from you. I hope that all is well. There are no dead among us. And how are you? Notreda and I met during my visit to Haiti in 2009. She promised to introduce me in future visits to other members of the Belliard family.

Dear Reader I am looking to get in touch with the Belliard family in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. My e-mail addresses: indioclaro@hotmail.com and _indio_oscuro@live.com

L: ASK YOURSELF ANY QUESTIONS I MISSED.

N: Thank you, Linda.
What can we do to help Haiti’s current situation?
Donate Now. Please don’t wait.
Pray.
Get involved.
Adopt a Haitian orphan.
Research the history of the place.
Update our own image of this country.
Give a presentation on the colonization of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Question the leaders of the powerful nations and their involvement in other countries.
If living in the so-called First World: Avoid repeating historical mistakes.
If in the Dominican Republic or in Haiti: Strive to live in harmony.
Write about Haiti in your church, office, school or college newsletter.
Become a Haitian.

MONTANO'S COMMENTS: NICOLAS AFTER READING AND THINKING ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT, I AM THINKING THESE CONSIDERATIONS:

1. DO YOU THINK THAT YOU HAVE A LIFE'S WORK/ART SORTING OUT YOUR AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

2. DO YOU FEEL THAT YOUR LIFE AS A PERFORMANCE ARTIST CAN BE "USED" TO MAKE A NEW UNDERSTANDING, A NEW PEACE, A NEW OPENING OF TOLERANCE BETWEEN THE D.R. AND H.?

3. WE TALKED ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE OF MY BEING OTHERS (BOB DYLAN, MOTHER TERESA, PAUL MCMAHON AND FICTIONAL OTHERS INCLUDING THE ALCOHOLIC, FRENCH WOMAN, COUNTRY WESTERN SINGER). DO YOU FEEL THAT IN D.R. - H WITH THE PERFORMANCE PRACTICE THAT YOU ARE DOING IS TIME FOR YOU TO BE EVEN MORE PERFORMATIVELY "HAITIAN" THAN YOU ARE ...THAT IS THE BRAIDS ARE "HAITIAN" CORRECT? I AM NOT PROPOSING YOU DO "BLACK-FACE" BUT I WOULD DEFINITELY TALK TO ADRIAN PIPER NOW ABOUT YOUR CURRENT PRACTICE...

4.HOW DO YOU TEACH TOLERANCE AND RESPECT TO THE CHILDREN OF EACH CULTURE, D.R.-H.? CHILDRENS BOOKS? WORKSHOPS? LECTURES?
WHY? IF I WAS BROUGHT UP IN THE D.R. AND WAS FED THE THOUGHTS YOU WERE FED ABOUT H. , I WOULD THINK THAT IT IS TIME FOR A RE-THINKING OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TWO CULTURES. AS A PERFORMANCE ARTIST AND A D.R , YOU ARE IN A VERY WONDERFULL POSITION OF BEING ABLE TO INTERVENE HERE, HELP TRANSFORM SOME OLD WOUNDS.

I SEND THESE AS COMMENTS , NOT AS QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED. AGAIN, N, THANKS FOR TEACHING ME AND GIVING ME HOPE THAT ART CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE IN OUR OWN LIVES AND IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS. IN ART/LIFE/LAUGHTER, LINDA MARY MONTANO

Dear Linda:

I just saw your comments at the end of the interview. I kept looking for them within the main text. I would like to think about your words for several days, since there are very relevant to the path that I am seeking to take with art-life. I don't know if I mentioned to you that before I e-mailed you for the first time in 2006, from Saratoga Springs, I kept hearing a voice telling me: "get in touch with her, get in touch with her". I am glad that I did. God bless you.

I am including some images of my trip to the cemetery in the Dominican Republic Taken by Sol Aramendi. Unlike in the US, some of the cemeteries there are quite active with people bringing food to the Lord of the Cemetery, people performing Vodou, people praying, talking to the dead or enacting rituals. Most cemeteries are gated and close around 6pm.

Nicolas Dumit Estevez Raful Espejo Ortíz Morel Belliard

Photographs: Sol Aramendi
© 2009 Nicolas Dumit Estevez

Linda M. Montano - Video Works

2010-01-04T07:56:00.000-08:00

Archive for Sale 1 avi

Archive for Sale 2 avi

Archive for Sale 3 avi

Archive for Sale 4 avi

El Chow De Faustina

Linda Mary Montano as Bob Dylan

Linda Mary Montano as Paul McMahon

Linda Mary Montano as Mother Teresa

Father Le Bar Linda Mary Montano

DYSTONIA Linda Mary Montano

Two Ayruvedic Doctors

DEGENERATION/REGENERATION: LINDA MONTANO SPEAKS WITH LINDA WEINTRAUB

2009-12-31T17:00:00.000-08:00

AUGUST, 2004

Performance artist Linda Montano has not waited to die to be reborn. Her rejuvenation is inspired by her father’s illness. Montano is his primary caregiver, monitoring his physical and metaphysical condition as it evolves moment by moment. Her art is a record of his physical decline and their synchronous spiritual awakenings. He is her teacher, but this is an ecological lesson for us all to learn. Linda Montano’s father is 91 years old. He enjoys his meals and wheelchair trips to the village. Three years ago he began painting. Sometimes he creates works of stirring beauty. They are spare, Zen-like, mysterious. It is also true that Linda Montano’s father has lost the ability to speak, walk, feed himself, and dress himself. Seven years ago Montano says she heard voices beseeching her to return home to care for her aging father and prepare them both for the inevitability of death. Five years ago she declared this experience a work of art. I requested an interview with Linda Montano to gather information about this art piece to accompany the section of my book, Avant-Guardians: Ecology and Art at the Cultural Frontier, which deals with degeneration and death. Instead, she revealed a joyful (she used the term ‘ecstatic’) revitalization of her own life and career. She may be his caregiver, but her father has been her teacher. The new wellspring of creativity and soulfulness that he exhibits, Montano believes, stems from his life-long spiritual practice within the Catholic Church, but also from the loss of his discursive faculties. His spirit seems ultimately liberated. The only end-point she discussed during our interview was the ‘death’ of the pioneering role she once played in the art world as one of the originators of performance art in the 1960s. But her art is being revitalize by the teachings she is receiving from her father. Once, Montano says, she felt like art’s left-over, a waste product of a bygone era. Now she is being ‘recycled’. She is transformed. Her work seems, once again,timely, innovative, and compelling.
LINDA WEINTRAUB

LINDA MONTANO’S EDITED COMMENTS FROM THE INTERVIEW

HOW I RECYCLE

Six years ago I began getting messages to return to the small village in New York where I grew up. I heard voices saying, “Go home and care for your dad.” I obeyed in increments. At first I helped dad with shopping and doctor visits and paying his bills. By the third year when Dad had a stroke, I became a total, full-time care giver. At the time, Dad was 89. It took me two more years to name this situation ‘art’. That is when I decided to save it and not delete it. I recycled it from the refuse bin of life where it had no value. Once I called it ‘art’, my dad and I started collaborating and being at home felt divinely designed. Before his stroke he allowed me to video tape his life. He instructed his friends and family about what they should do for the video. He would say, “You can smile, wave, sing, walk.” He enjoyed the camera. I reflected his brilliance and creativity. It brought us incredibly close. It recycled our friendship, a process I think of as art/life ecology.

HOW PERFORMANCE IS BEING RECYLCED AND HOW THE COMPUTER RECYCLES REALITY

Performance art has been imitated by very high energy young artists who understand that they need to challenge the tradition. They have knowingly and unknowingly imitated many of the themes, styles, rituals, and techniques of performance art from history, including futurism and even referring to its cave origins. In doing so, they have deleted the pure and sacred understanding of brain waves, energy, and initiation. They have substituted the gross elements of exclusion, greed, competition, and shallowness as seen in Survivor, Big Brother, Fear Factor, You’re Fired and other reality TV programs. All of these basic, non-compassionate virtues are present in unconscious motivations of early performance artists, but early performance artists ritualized hese motives or denied them. Remember, we were the good saints, poetic, spiritual beings. Now, the younger performance artists added the hidden motivations. They brought the darkness of the human condition to light. This is a good thing. The computer also makes us look at reality differently. It offers the possibility of taking off the blindfolds and seeing everything, everywhere.

HOW ARTISTS CAN SURVIVE BEING DISCARDED:

The artists who were active in the 60s, 70s, and 80s cannot mirror today’s Olympic-styled, risk-taking athletes and technological dare devils. We are no longer useful. We have been discarded. We are the cultural garbage of the art world. This, too, is good. It frees us of the need to stay within the old direction. As garbage, we can either seed a new flowering or we can bitterly pick at our archives and shop for our names on Google.

HOW MY FATHER HELPED ME RECYCLE MYSELF

The younger artists have created a brilliant diving board to the next wave. It’s an incredible personal challenge to artists to find a way to recycle themselves. I had no idea I would find myself in my father’s light. Since 1969 I have been attempting to process light as art, as performance, as sculpture, as installation. Now I feel that everything was a dress rehearsal for making ‘DAD ART'. The rug has been pulled out of my art making process because, for the first time, I am not in control. I am fascinated by having to learn a new role as I’ve had to recycle my art statement from one of controlling time to one of relinquishing time. I have no idea when this performance will change. Time is gone from my art statement. I’m at the mercy of space because I’m committed to make ‘DAD ART’ as long as I receive the message. I am here in obedience to the voices, to this teaching.

Retired artists pray for opportunities to be taught new concepts. That is our ecological gift. I am experiencing the ecstasy of finally marrying art and life.

HOW I MAKE DAD ART

I’m saving all of Dad’s charts about his diet, baths, sleeping patterns, the condition of his teeth, his bowels, his genitals. I add comments from the nurses and tips on transporting him. His miniscule actions are noted. We document the new ways that he is creative. He was never a painter before he had his stroke. Now we sit him at the table and give him a brush and he is happy. He creates Rothko-like paintings. He seems to be channeling. You can see his concentration. It sometimes takes him a half hour to make one beautiful line.

HOW I ONCE MADE CONCEPTUAL ART

Every artist has permission to create a definition of what is art. Some people say only my paintings, sculpture, poems are art. Early in my career, I needed to appropriate everything as art, and find creative ways of parenthesizing certain aspects of my life as art. I did this by saying, “I will wear red this year. I will be blindfolded for a week. I will expose my embarrassment for three hours. I will call my house art.” It is a mind frame. You have to admit your intention and choice to the air, to yourself, your friends, the art community, the world. This game has satisfied me and kept me busy since 1965.

HOW DEATH MAKES ARTISTS OF EVERYONE

Death, after birth, is the greatest mystery. I have no idea what’s going to happen when dad or I stop breathing, but I know I have to practice states of transformation while I’m still living. I use Catholicism to direct me. I know I have to feel and study the technology of the sacred (the title of a Jerome Rothenberg book)so that I become a good student. The reward of spending this much time with my Dad is that I’m having an opportunity to bask in his light which he emits because he has surrendered his discursive mind. My father is Italian and Catholic, yet strangely his quality is Zen-like. He is half way between life and death. The payoff for his surrender is pure beauty. Beauty is a vibrational frequency, a brain wave. It comes and goes. His meds are carefully selected and all lined-up to contribute to his peacefulness. There is no doubt that he is helped by chemistry, but his good character and endurance are also contributing to this end game. Thirty four years of studying with a Catholic spiritual leader taught him how to keep focused. Sunday afternoons he would sit in silence in the church and meditate. He knew where to get his spiritual food. Now he seems to be reaping the benefits of his practice. He has become a living ecstatic.” It’s like a little monastery here. That’s what my art was always supposed to be like. Thanks Dad for being my co-pioneer in developing a new art/life – death.

What will remain after he dies?

Invitations to revisit Beauty.
Gratitude at having this time with him.
SILENCE.

Linda Mary Montano Interview by Mary Lachman

2009-12-31T16:53:00.000-08:00

Linda Montano’s work was introduced to me fairly recently, as I expanded my ideas about dance beyond traditional technique and into the realm of performance art. Performance art is simply a conglomeration of all live elements of art. It is the act of breaking down the walls between visual art, dance, theater, voice and sound. The body is the necessary element to the form, and so I immediately found an affinity to the ideas behind performance art.

After reading about Linda, I became more and more fascinated with how I could expand my choreographic eye into areas I had never thought of as dance. Due to Jennie Klein’s generous offer, I was able to attended the National Review of Live Art in Glasgow after interviewing Linda, and was blown away by the many different kinds of physical expression I witnessed. And all of it was coming from outside the “dance world.” Thus, I feel as if my acquaintance with Linda opened a new door into an expanded definition of performance.

Last December I met Linda in New York City on the second floor of a little diner on Time Square. Construction workers sat next to our table and the ceiling had a leak. We tuned that all out and just talked for an hour. The way Linda spoke of spirituality is entirely different from the rhetoric of Bebe Miller. Linda actively practices and identifies as a Roman Catholic artist. Her work is created with doctrine and specific religious topics in mind. She had come to the city to read a letter in front of St. Patrick’s. The letter addressed the issues of the Catholic Church, which found to be misunderstood in the Church. So, when we finished our conversation we proceeded to St. Patrick’s and prayed together in the chapel, kneeling before God.

Interview Transcribed

Linda: Do you mind? I close my eyes when I interview.

Mary: When did you first begin to think of your work being influenced by your spirituality?

Linda: I’d like to begin this with a prayer…Holy Spirit let us collaborate on finding information that will be useful for both of us, and may it support our visions and help not only us, but people who come in contact with this information.

I guess when I left the convent and I went back to college and there was a nun there who was teaching, a wonderful nun. Just free. Back then she was wearing full Habit, but she was teaching sculpture and her attitude was so free and so loving and so helpful and so humorous and she gave me a spiritual key. And the key was to unlock my door of freedom, of creativity. And that door was also related to the door of spirituality because I had placed art on such a high pedestal, of vocation, and attainment, and reverence. It had the same…I knew art could get me to that same level of transcendence that I was getting when I went to church. Because I had seen it happen. I had seen my dad listen to music and transcend, and I could see my mom paint, and my grandmother, who was like a performance artist. I had seen her make art and transcend daily life.

Mary: I agree with you. I see artists transcend daily life through their art, but do others, outside, share in that transcendence?

Linda: I think it is a neurological…In fact you should read Oliver Sack’s book on music. He talks about the brain being wired for not only different sensational responses to reality, but also spiritual response. I think it’s sometimes just habitual wiring patterning. We were not a verbal family. We didn’t talk. We didn’t discuss. We didn’t debate. We didn’t work things out verbally, so I was really moved to my head chakra so to speak. To the Penial and Pituitary, and from the neck down I was pretty disregarded or inert. So maybe what was concocting up there was allowing me to play in that head arena with more joy and with more imagination, creativity, and sensual fluency, because that was my language. So you really want to look at things in terms of neurology and brain, and heart also, but it’s really your upbringing, culture, atmosphere, home life, and things happening inside the home. I mean if you compare the home life in the 40s and 50s, I wonder if you have the same kind of patterning neurologically or chemically. You’re talking about chemistry. Somewhere I was reading, God is G spot. Maybe God is a place of the sacred, but what is “sacred?” What is “transcendence?” What is “transfiguration?” Or spiritual ecstasy or the unitive. What is the unitative way in terms of a spiritual practice? But I felt like I was not only addicted but I was kind of programmed to get to that path via my family upbringing and programming and having gone to church and having being programmed for ecstasy.

Mary: I know you were quite involved in the practice of Eastern religions, so how do you see them in relation to Catholicism? How do you feel they fit together?

Linda: Well, actually, I was teaching sculpture at a Catholic women’s college in Rochester, NY, and a yoga teacher, an old old woman, maybe in her 60’s or 70’s, came in and started Hatha yoga, and through her I met her teacher who became my guru so to speak. He was a wise, smart, compassionate being who had been a medical doctor, a neurosurgeon and a craniologist, who switched allegiance so to speak from the medical practice to yoga because he thought he could heal better if he were immersed in traditional yoga, but he wasn’t traditional at all. He was very charismatic and able to create this community of meditators and Sanskrit scholars and artists. He was absolutely well rounded in his ability to enter us through all the charkas, so to speak. When I met him he was very magnetic. I was magnetized to him. I was also newly married to my husband and I was just really magnetized to yoga and I think what it did for me was it got me past my head and back to the bottom of my body, which had been cut off. And yoga was the beginning of acknowledging that I had feelings, I had language, I had a body. And I actually began performing once I began practicing yoga. In public dancing, in public lying in meditation. So yoga and performance were natural allies. And I think what happened was that I really had a strong calling to be a catholic priest and because that wasn’t an option in Catholicism I was able to segue from the catholic priesthood for women to performance. And as a performance artist became a priest. Meaning, I could help not only my self but others climb to the sacred, or move to the sacred, or ascend to the sacred.

Mary: Like the performance becomes a kind of Mass?

Linda: Yeah, yeah, that’s heretical what were saying right now. But that’s okay, I just want that on record that this is heresy…but yes. I mean that’s pagan and heresy and not something a catholic would say, but yes it’s true.

Mary: Metaphorically.

Linda: Symbolically, metaphorically, oxymorannically, moronishly,

Mary: How did people react to the sacred in your work? When you were creating work around the post-modernist area, did people say “no” to religion, “no” to meaning…

Linda: Well is was in the 70’s and 80’s and late 60’s and it was more about “yes” to eastern religions and “yes” to feminism, and “yes” to drugs, “yes” to experimentation, “yes” to no authority and “yes” to the breaking down of all systems into peace, love, and community. And “yes” to feminism, so women embraced performance…but we all felt that we were creating a movement and not only mentoring the movement, but modeling what was happening politically and culturally and physiologically. I don’t think I answered the question…

Mary: Well, no. I guess I’m wondering how people reacted to your use of eastern religious concepts in your performance. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you had been vocal about your devotion to the Catholic church and organized religion at the time, other artists would not have been on the same page at all so to speak, but was it a different story when you associated your work with eastern religion?

Lind: I did something very disloyal. When I was getting my MA in Europe in Florence, Italy, I was still practicing, a fringe catholic. I was unhappy with Catholicism, but I was still internally and subconsciously aligning myself with the titles; sacred art and sacred artist. And then, I went to grad school in Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, and something clicked there, and it was: Linda, artists cannot be Catholic. And I divorced myself. I was not a strong practicing Catholic then, but I decided that I would be a flip-flop artist. I’m not going to be “religious”…I’m not going to be Catholic. Cause, you know, I was making crucifixes in Italy…

Mary: That is a strong current in the art world today as well, the idea that you can’t be religious.

Linda: It’s over now. It’s now, today, currently, very avant garde to be a Catholic artist. To be “practicing religious fundamentals” or whatever. But it is a beginning, it is a beginning trend. So I really felt bad about that. I felt like that was a pattern of disloyalty, that I have to watch that in my self and not do that. I have to really ask; what is right to believe? I have to ask; who am I being disloyal to? Is it myself? Or what crowed am I trying to follow? And you know, why am I doing what I’m doing? And who am I betraying in my choices? So I really betrayed my call to be a catholic artist when I went to graduate school. From then on I laughed at the Church, I laughed at nuns. I made art that was down right sacrilegious. Not a lot of it…you know I did pornography… I was in the healing mode of disregard. Let’s be cynical about it, laugh at it, poo-poo it so to speak. But I did honor the eastern way because it was exotic, it was different, it was not catholic, it didn’t have the sins that I had ascribed to my past religion, and so, I played with the sacred, but via eastern traditions. Then, as I aged a little more, discerning, and knocked around by life I realized, wow, I better start working hard, because I had dropped my youth and the values of my youth, and the security I had found in Catholicism, and especially when I taught full time and I had all these students who were being very wild and wonderful and permissive, but I hadn’t had physical children. I think when people have physical children they change and I hadn’t changed. I was still like “do what you I want! Lets have a bong!” And we were all having a ball, but I got in trouble. And they got in trouble, and then I got in trouble. And I though “gee, I’ve got to rearrange and become accountable in a new way.” And then I took care of my dad and in doing that I was going back in time to my early Catholicism. So now…

Mary: Caring for your father was kind of also a way of taking care of a child figure that you never had. Caring deeply for someone.

Linda: I think so, I think so. Because I was just taking care of “Artist Linda,” who could do whatever she wanted, whatever way she wanted. Anyway…

Mary: I wanted to know how creed and doctrine, and the restrictions that religion places on art effect you.

Linda: Restriction and art? Restriction is like labor pains and art… artist really thrive on pain and suffering and upset and chaos. That’s our food. And for me it has been extremely chaotic and extremely painful. And people are mad at me and angry. Where’s the old Linda?! You’re not supporting us anymore! I have been through great, great pain. It’s almost symbolic. I can’t believe we are talking about this today because today is my graduation. I see priests and confess, and I found a real smart one. They become directors and mentors and smart people who can help. And one said “Use it [Catholicism] for your art,” which I know and it is something that I teach, but today is a real breakthrough for me. I found the venue to take the pain and create with it. To make it my clay, my dance, my poetry, my sculpture, my living sculpture. So, I think the secret is to not get all discombobulated when the caldron of chaos is at boiling point and ready for what’s to be put in it. But it has been a tremendously painful process, and I’m at the point where I can’t go back and be the old me. I mean, I use old also as…there is something that happens with aging and art, and women and art, and aging in general and the spirituality of aging in general. I think what happens is that people get scared because death is looming closer and closer and my age group starts dying. I want to be an intelligent Catholic this time around. Before I was young, I was believing without intelligence. Now I want to be free, but I also want to be obedient and respectful, and I want to be for justice without displaced anger, which makes basically angry people do activism. So I don’t want to be that kind of gnashing, masturbation…[angry sound]…gay rights…[angry sound]…women priests, but I want those subjects in there in a different way. All those things need to be in there. So I feel it is really wonderful to have met you. You are a midwife to me…that is really nice.

Mary: I run into the attitude that you have to be in a tumultuous place in your life, having crazy or awful things happening in order to create your art. But if you create art from some place that’s stable in your life or a place of balance, which a spiritual practice such as yoga or meditation can sometimes offer, your art is somehow less meaningful.

Linda: I think I understand what your getting at, but I’m not going to answered it how you expressed it. How I hear what your saying is that previously there was a belief system built up around art and the artist as the wild, untamed, suffering, crazed, unstable, not calm, not peaceful, not loving individual who was going to drink, smoke, fuck, and not get paid. And that died, that concept died, but it died when artists started making lots of money. I think if you looked at the timeline it went from crazy to wealthy, and I think now the door is opening for the artist to go toward mystic or enlightened, or compassionate, or aware, maybe aware is a more general term for what we are talking about. But those are almost cultural/political positions that follow the concept of art. I think as art became more, the doors opened to what it is to be an artist. We’ve moved from the genius of Michael Angelo with his socks being adhered to his feet, to the art of individual interpretation. It’s really opened the doors. And for you it might be about the practice of balance and compassion. I’ve always been a ricochet kind of artist. The creativity ricochets off what is happening in my daily life, and this particular ricochet event is not always tragic and chaotic, but the cure this time has been rocky. The medicine, the chemotherapy of it has been a bit painful.

Mary: You said there is an event that your art ricochets off of, and so I’m wondering how your spiritual life fits into that?

Linda: Because I am a performance artist I have used my body. That is my medium. I made sculpture, but now this is what I call living sculpture, and my body is my clay, my paint. What I do now, I’m living in my dad’s house, but I make believe almost that in order to heal myself on a daily basis, to work with myself, to keep myself out of chaos and places I’d rather not be visiting, I perform in my house for me and for God. I perform for God until I feel…I use God in quotes. I perform for the Holy Spirit until I feel that the Holy Spirit has visited me. So, I no longer have to use you, or use the audience, or use others, or use the eyes of other, or the voyeur, or the look. I no longer have to use that in order for me to create a change in consciousness that is a higher consciousness. That I can then transmit back to them. You see, it was a game of them to me, me to them. So what I’m doing now is Holy Spirit to me, and me back to the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit to me and then me to my environment. And I don’t wait till I have an audience to do that and I don’t wait for a gig to do that, cause I don’t have many gigs these days. I think this speaks to what you were talking about with yoga and the spiritual practice. The practice now becomes when I go to church in the morning I’m doing it, when I’m at church, and when I come home and I turn on the radio and I try to incorporate a kind of …actually I have neurological disease called Dystonia, so I have to perform with my body in mind, not and mind, because of my body discomfort. But now performance is truly daily life.

Mary: what is that?

Linda: Medically I had a stroke in 91, and some people get this misfiring into the dopamine, where the nerve is telling my head to turn to the left. So if I didn’t have this scarf on I’d be looking at the wall. It has different manifestations. I use it, I make art about it, I put it in one of my videos, actually, I’m going to do this comedy act about it. So, things are good, It’s okay to be in a particular kind of jail of prohibition now because I’m working with it. It’s making me do the research to become more intelligent in my external practice so that I can internalize it, and maybe find a way…there are things called mental option and conscious. There are very fundamentalist ways of to be a Catholic and then there are liberal ways of being a Catholic. I am now in the fear, fundamentalist, don’t do anything bad or you’ll go to hell school, but I’m having to train myself so that I can make intelligent decisions about my choices. And that is part of my art practice.

Mary: So there are fundamentalists and then liberals on totally opposite ends of the spectrum?

Linda: Well, there is a kind of radical liberal on the other side of the pendulum from fundamentalists, and then there is conservative in the middle. The fundamentalist say, you can’t do anything, and then with liberals there are women priests, but they get excommunicated from the church. Having come from an Eastern playground of permission, love, and joy and peace and then back into this punitive church is my work right now. And yet, you know it’s almost embarrassment because people say, “what the hell are you doing, you use to be so fun. Come play with me.”

Mary: but for some reason that doesn’t sound like it’s stifling you…

Linda: no, no. it’s just a different call. A different path. And I was getting in trouble being out here. I was having affairs, which was hurting me and them. I need “no, no, no, no.” I needed no, no, no. I needed focus because I wasn’t doing good.

Mary: Maybe fun for other people, but not you.

Linda: Yeah. I needed a change.

Mary: It’s tricky in the art world, there is a lot of “whatever goes” attitudes towards individual choice, behavior, and morality. Often those attitudes translate further into; the more wild or rebellious the artist is, the better the art produced.

Linda: Well that’s the training. You almost go to art school to get that. And I was training people like that, with that mantra.

Mary: It seems like people need to have their view of the world shaken a bit in order to make interesting work. If you never question, explore, experiment, the artist will find it hard to produce anything beyond the mundane. So, the “art school” training is not entirely unfounded. One needs to break out of the mold of conformity and similarity of culture, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that one must go through rebellious debauchery.

Linda: Exactly. I think it really is, “whatever goes” in order to get to transcendence. And during the process, it’s like we broke that myth, we broke that stereotype of the need for money, security… greed, our upbringing, the fear of death. We got all that worked out, but some people just need to find that through doing things that are bombastically, chaotically, permissive…and that’s what I had to do. Would you say a prayer?

Mary: Yeah. God thank you for this time. This moment to share where we are both at in our artistic processes and our spiritual journeys. How those two things relate, and how that feeds us and lets us grow closer to you, God. Thanks you for this lovely cold day and our time together. Thank you Lord.

I DREAMED I WAS MOTHER TERESA: by LINDA MARY MONTANO

2009-12-31T16:51:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, there lived an old, old old and getting older girl-child who dreamed that she was Mother Teresa. On awakening she asked herself,"How could anybody have the nerve to dream that she is Mother Teresa?" Remember , this is a dream , and it happened because a cute, pink MY LITTLE PONY dream-horse spoke to the girl in her dream and said, "Old old older girl-child, on the third, sixth, ninth and twelth day of the seventh month, you can sit on my back and I will ride you to a special place where you can pretend to be Mother Teresa." The old girl always wanted to be Mother Teresa and said,"This is wonderfull but why me? I'm not nun material, because I like to fight against life." "How do you do fight, you are too old to fight?" said the pink pony.

The old , old one said, I dont fight with my fists anymore because I have no strength, I fight life because:

I worry about my 401K

I watch Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood,Kathe Lee and Hoda,CNN, Cash Cab,The View

I fight life because I eat tons of dairy products

BOO HOO, BOO HOO, BOO HOO: I dont want to fight but:

I keep fighting life because I drive a gas guzzler

I have taken abouut 399 face book quizzes

I cook along with Rachel Ray

I laugh uncontrollably at I LOve Lucy re-runs

I have only one tomatoe plant in my garden

OH BOOOO HOOO pink dream pony, the list goes on and on and on, Im so bad, bad bad.

The pink dream pony was aghast and concerned and said, "You are right old girl, you arent Mother Teresa material." And that made her cellulited legs shake and made her feel worse and she confesssed even more and said, "BoooHoo, Im a lost cause, a facebook junkie, a tv addict and carbon footprint disaster. Im an American-aholic. Help me Help me Help me pinkster! Im asking for help but how can you, a tiny MY LITTLE PONY with a pink tail help me?

(S.D.Change music here to the CD:PAVAROTTI NESSUM DORMA..Volume lowish while talking then really loud when the text finishes...make sure turn the cd off when the song is over..or down as i leave stage....)

The pink pony said,"Close your eyes, feel my every word and in this dream prayer of ST FRANCIS OF ASSISSI, you will change.

LORD MAKE ME AN INSTRUMENT OF YOUR PEACE

WHERE THERE IS HATRED LET ME SEW LOVE

WHERE THERE IS INJURY, PARDON

WHERE THERE IS DOUBT, FAITH

WHERE THERE IS DESPAIR ,HOPE

WHERE THERE IS DARKNESS , LIGHT

WHERE THERE IS SADNESS, JOY

OH DIVINE MASTER:GRANT THAT I MAY NOT SO MUCH SEEK TO BE CONSOLED AS TO CONSOLE

TO BE UNDERSTOOD AS TO UNDERSTAND

TO BE LOVED AS TO LOVE

FOR IT IS IN GIVING THAT WE RECEIVE,

IT IS IN PARDONING THAT WE ARE PARDONED

IT IS IN DYING THAT WE ARE BORN TO ETERNAL LIFE, AMEN

The old old one said,"Oh wow, I have put down my boxing gloves and now I WAKE UP!

I have forgotten about WENDY WILLIAMS , KATIE KOURIC, DAN RATHER, TRAVIS SMILEY AND my retirement fund!

I can NOW feel like MOTHER TERESA! Smile like her!Laugh like her!Cry like her! Help like her!Act like her! And bless like her!

( S.D. CD SOUND UP A LITTLE LOUDER)

And that is the end of the story and beginning of an ecstatic dream about how an old, old older girl child learned how to celebrate life ,celebrate the air and moon and herself and celebrate everyone and still live in this old older olderst dream world of beginning to end.

( S.D.TURN CD REALLY REALLY REALLY LOUD AS I LEAVE OR MAYBE I HAVE LEFT ALREADY, WHO KNOWS)

PERFORMANCE OF EVERYDAY LIFE

2009-12-31T16:49:00.000-08:00

With respect for my living art lineage and those who inspired me, I refrain from mentioning the 3878947982 artists' names because this always indicates exclusion and bad feelings. But please know that I participate, as a practicing performance artist, in a still lively and co-collaborated trend, journey, history and google-able phenomena which allows us to offer our personal lives as material/memoir for our art.

Why we made/ make an art of everyday life:
NUMBER 1: MONEY

Live artists often don't have to buy art materials because their post traumatic stresses, unrequited loves, daughters' first birthday parties, eating disorders, tango dancing and chronic illnesses are already there waiting, FREE; waiting for low budget transformation and voice.

Why we made/ make an art of everyday life:
NUMBER 2: TIME

Life/art artists love to mold time, endure in time, play with time, structure time, repeat time, eliminate time, silence time treating it as if it were steel, paint, wood, stone.....

Why we made/ make an art of everyday life:
NUMBER 3: PERMISSION

Living art gives permission for anything , everyone, everything and everybody to be used as art. This permission of inclusion, headily practiced without boundaries or ethical concerns until the 90's,allowed for a 30-year play land of intelligent limitlessness and ecstatic trance.

Why we made/ make an art of everyday life:
NUMBER 4:PARTICIPATION

We, life/artists, antennenned ourselves and through atmospheric, vibrational frequencies, picked up ideas (1950-1990) already conversantly fertile. Ideas from India, Japan, Asia, from feminism, from the civil rights movement, from the drug culture, from musicians and we rocked our way into a brave new world, alongside these co-rocking practitioners.

Why we made/ make an art of everyday life:
NUMBER 5: MYSTICISM

We, living artists, really believed that we were altering our consciousness by altering our bodies, our faces, our identities, our names, our personas, our genders, our beliefs and our everyday lives. And this felt sacred, non-commodifi-able, and verging on the mystical. Like early believers, freely we shared photo images, ideas, food, gig information, studios, money, and kudos...without thought of litigiousness, verification of copyright, plagiarism issues or bitter intellectual property battling. Our grandfathers walked to school 14 miles shoeless in the snow, as the story goes. We wax poetic as well about our holy and happy early living art years.

Why we made/ make an art of everyday life:
NUMBER 6:TEACHING

Many of us became so conversant with the genre, with the history, with the technology of dissemination (documentation via video , audio), that we accepted the charter and invitation to teach by example, by writing but also in academia where we learned how to muzzle our instincts for wildness so we could ethically direct other artists in progress(students).Guided by experience and tenure denials, some of us were able to carefully monitor our artist friends' enthusiasms and we directed them toward a more guarded/boundaried living art expression.

Why we made/ make an art of everyday life:
NUMBER 7:DEATH

Now, trained to be artists of all of life, some of us segue trembling toward our most dramatic performance, our death. Now, accustomed to recycling our every insult, every illness, every disappointment, every marriage, every divorce, every death of parents, every hot flash, every betrayal, every beauty, every truth. We have every credential needed to make artfully sacred our last, documented, youtubed eternal and soft final breath.

LINDA MARY MONTANO

St Teresa of Avila Linda Mary Montano

2009-12-31T12:21:00.000-08:00

QUESTIONS FROM LINDA MARY MONTANO TO GODDARD SKYPE WORKSHOP, 2008...

2009-12-15T13:33:00.000-08:00

1. What is the result of "paying attention" to another in performance?

2. How doesw it "feel" to receive attention during performance?

3. What to do with the attention once accrued? How share it?

4.Is art a transformative medicine?

5.Is art the only permission we really have?

6.Are there examples of cultures who live as art and dont have to "make" art? How can we do that?

7.The brain and art....authenticity and art....Can Temple Grandin and IN MY LANGUAGE, work by 2 autistic women be seen as models of AUTHENTICITY and how can our work become so natural to us that it has this kind of authenticity....although their work is not "art" they can become mentors of authenticity.

8.Who are current performance artists using the medium aesthetically?

9.The computer is our new best friend and so we spend hours there with "her"(computer) and our human face is the new taboo, the new genital.Is the human body devalued and beoming unnecessary?

10.Is the invisibly computer community preparing us for robotic life and robotic intelligence?

11. What is the effect of the delete button on culture?

12.Time and duration are to perforance art as paint is to a painter.

13.Have reality shows commodified early performance concepts stripping themes of the "sacred" from early work but adding new gifts?What are the current gifts? Lack of fear of competiton and money,and what else??

14.Is performative persona a way to switch from persona drama and trauma and creative schizoprenia?

15.Performance endurance is a homeopathic medicine which prepares for the endurance of life itself which is like an endurance.

16.Why are all the voices on american idol the same? What is authenticity? Is it necessary?Are we capable of it? Do we want it?

17.What is the power of Blessing and touch in our art or life? Is it more necessary because of the internet?

18. What can we teach ourselves to do? Where does this inspiritiion come from? Trauma? Dreams? Researcdh? Need to help others?

19.Neuroscience might be the new art?

20.Are we culturally so "combined" that cultural imperialsim is impossible?? How do you feel when you "borrow" and become a "fusion" artist?Is this generation or the next one more able to fuse cultural symbols so that feeling like an "image thief" will no longer be an issue or option?

21 What is one world art?

22.What is "roots" art?

23.Non-violent communication( google) and truth telling nonviolently, might be an interesting paradigm for peace making. As well as becoming more generic so as not to offend others culturally?

24 WHAT IS TRUTH?

Linda Mary Montano, 2008

For performances, Art/Life Counseling, teaching, videos:
LINDA MARY MONTANO
THE ART/LIFE INSTITUTE
9 JOHN STREET
SAUGERTIES NEW YORK, 12477845-246-4482
WWW.LINDAMONTANO.COM ; www.vdb.org
HTTP://LINDAMARYMONTANO.BLOGSPOT.COM

Performing Oneself or Someone Else /An Interactive Interview Between Linda Mary Montano and Nicolas Dumit Estevez

2009-12-08T14:10:00.001-08:00

[Dear Reader: please insert your own questions or responses in all of the blank spaces following an L or an N. After filling in the blanks, you can perform Linda or Nicolas by inviting a friend to read the interview aloud. If you find yourself alone, you can perform both people. Create different voices for L and for N]

L: Linda
N: Nicolas

N: Linda, after attending your performance Mask On/Mask Off, at the Gershwin Hotel in Manhattan I was wondering if we should invite the reader to wear a wig, to tease his/her hair or to do his/her hair in a different style before engaging in this piece?

L: Great idea. Now everyone put on your extensions!!!!!!!!!!!

N: For nearly a lifetime you have been performing so many characters. Can you tell us where they come from?

L: I was a "silent selective mute" as a child. That term I made up ....but I remember staying in silence forever. My family was very quiet and silent, My Italian grandparents didn’t talk much because they didn’t know English or didn’t like America maybe? Not sure. And my other grandparents who did speak English were quiet also. So I watched everything very closely and when TV first came to the house and people were talking, I learned how to talk from all of those characters I imagine. Senor Wenslous...very difficult, very easy. Remember? And then there was the church where I spent hours in silence, very happily, dreaming of how to become a saint.

N: Can you give us some suggestions for allowing hidden aspects of our personas to come to the surface and to take on a physical shape? By this I mean to become a tangible character that can be explored privately or publicly?

L: Everybody does this already. We play around with friends and talk differently, fooling around, using accents and personas with them. I would say, the next time you get in a tough spot, have one of your personas work it out for you. Also see who is in your unconscious, lurking there, and give that persona a voice and task.

N:

L:

N: Why Masks? Mask on and off? Are you implying that we wear masks in our day to day?

L: We are always performing and sometimes a persona will take over and confront or stay too long inside us and the idea of seeing this dance as a mask dance is helpful to me. No mask is a bad mask. Each mask is take-on and take-offable. On our death bed, there is only a death mask.

N: Would you consider leaving a blank L for the reader to fill in or maybe asking him/her a question? You are welcome to choose.

L: What mask do you wear ? How does your spiritual practice help you play with your 902348309248 daily masks?

N: Unfortunately we are running out of space. Is there another place or dimension where the reader can continue this conversation with you? Perhaps electronically or astrally?

L: Of course. I give classes on the phone, I have workshops , I do skype, I have published books: (ART IN EVERYDAY LIFE, 1980; PERFORMANCE ARTISTS TALKING IN THE 80'S, 1997; LETTERS FROM LINDA M. MONTANO; 2005, YOU TOO ARE A PERFORMANCE ARTIST: THE ART/LIFE INSTITUTE INTERACTIVE BOOK, (pending) .These books have all of this information in them and then there is my blog (http://lindamarymontano.blogspot.com), which includes my MASKS essay....Or get a wig, a good CD and go for it by yourself but remember TO BE SAFE, BE CAREFULL and never hurt your body or mind or anyone else’s.

N: Thank you for your time. Would you like to add anything else?

L: Sometimes we have to practice being the persona we need to be in order to function more beneficially or we adopt a mask to help us empty the refuse from a subconscious persona who is living in the dark dungeon of our memory. Masks smooth that journey to knowledge..WHO ARE U????

LINDA MARY MONTANO, SAUGERTIES, NY DECEMBER 6, 2009

Photograph: Nicolas Dumit Estevez

MASKS:

2009-12-08T14:08:00.001-08:00

PART 1:INTRODUCTION
Thank you Neke Carson for hosting this event and thanks to Veronica Vera for asking Neke to host the event. In this season of gratitude I would like to thank my deceased friends who mentored, inspired and permissioned my being an artist.
1. My parents Mildred and Henry Montano,both artists who modeled that art was a good path.
2. My grandmother, Magdalena Becker Kelly,for her wild wisdom and singing sans false teeth on holidays
3. I thank Mitchell Payne, photograper and light giver.
4. I thank Barbara Lehmann, writer, performance art collaborator.
5. And I thank Dr Aruna Mehta, second mother, teacher and dispenser of blessings.
Although all of them have left this world, their invisible applause is always in my heart.
I invite you to bring to your memory someone who always supported your creativity, thank them and see them applaud and encourage you, even now.

And I thank you, my colleagues for choosing to hire a babysitter,buy a subway ticket, take a bus or taxi, thanks for eating a quick burritto, opting out of your Pilates class and coming here when you could be home wrapped in your leopard SNUGGIE,bathed in the comfort of reflected light: light from your flat screen TV,light from your laptop,light from your open refrigerator, watching re-runs of Wendy Williams, Dr Oz, Conan, Anthony Bourdain,Caesar Millan,Dr Drew's Celebrity Rehab, The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Bootcamp, ...You could be watching Bill Moyers interviewing Joseph Campbell,you could be watching your avatar float in second life, ...You could be arguing with Whoppie and Joy on The View, crying with Wife Swap,watching Prince sing to Travis Smiley or travel to a near east hotel with Anderson Cooper...I feel bad because I do admit that being face to face is a big sacrifice especially without technological access to control, alt, delete, off, hide and remove buttons, our new friends. Thank you, thank you for giving ME face and endured time.But no, lets digress and clear the air.Why am I so insistent on this? Why do I feel guilt and shame again? You see, I have the patience for only one minute max of Anne Sexton/Peggy Lee and Thomas Merton youtube posts on facebook.But wait, I cant feel guilty because we will do a group ice breaker performance and that will be a blast, and I give you permission to use your Blackberries, you can text,surf your apps, answer your ringing cell phones, you can twitter,iphone,create a new 2nd life persona, network,do facebook, email, take bathroom breaks without asking permission, and after my one hour 4 minute video,(edited by the inimitable Tobe Carey) you can share in the group wig performance. A certain resume boost.

PART 2:THE CONCEPT BEHIND THE FILM MASKS;
Over the last 40 years I have periodically played with persona and gender as an art material, becoming imagined and real people. I call this work, Creative Schizophrenia, that is, I choose to leave my personality for aesthetic purposes and for medical research.Some have no chopice and that is called Life.
In the 70's in the middle of a life trauma I sat in front of a TV camera on a daily basis for a year and talked to it resulting in the film: LEARNING TO TALK(VDB).A medical note: I suggest that this would be a wonderfull cure for other selective mutes with PTSD.The seven women who came out of me at that time seemed competent, verbally secure, but culturally limited, vapid, complicit and secretly competitive.I was in my late 30's.I call them the MASK ON people,
IN the 90"s, as a reaction to menopause, a tenure dilemma and countless other personal tsunamis, I made the film, SEVEN STAGES OF INTOXICATION. The seven women I became acted as if they were marginalized terrorists, abused addicts, dangerous alcoholics and furious narcissists.But actually,I use the alcholic persona as a metaphor for the meditator in spiritual rapture,the meditator Divinely Intoxicated, in unspeakable ecstasy. See Teresa of Avila, St Francis of Assissi. I call them the MASK OFF people.
In the year 2003 I began to see myself as a puppett and I also wanted to become real and not imagined people.Real, like Hillary Clinton, Bob Dylan,,etc. One of the tragedies of this category is that when I asked another real person if I cold be/duplicate her she rejected my offer. Very dishartening and a reason to retreat to SECOND LIFE, I suppose.The real people I have become have real imperfections and private hells that are exposed by TMZ, People Magazine, The Huffington Post, Wolf Blitzer and Oprah. I call them the MASK ON AND OFF people.
2005 THE LAST MASK was put on, the death mask, the last straw. Not so bad when my teacher Dr.RS Mishra talked so easily about death, "You are already Dead." and "Die Daily" via meditation and I add, via our art . Why die daily? To quiet the other masks because he also said, "You have a daily choiceof heaven or hell..." and another great one..."We all have a MOTHER TERESA AND HITLER inside us...." And Lama Tarchin said 20 years ago to me In the Quashas' kitchen while looking at masks on the wall,"Take off your mask." Now I understand what he was saying and I call this fourth mask research performance, THE LAST MASK.

PART 3: WHY THE NUMBER 4?
For the sake of order and structure I am using the number 4 to talk about these 4 masks that we all share. Maybe these following lists can be templated over the concept of mask to see similarites, make associations, compare information. Please imagine a spread sheet and for each category mentioned, there is a correspondence between the mask and the "category".

1.Psychology says there are four levels of consciousness:
unconscious... located in the midbrain...MASK OFF
subconscious.....located in the diencephalon...MASK ON
conscious...all parts of the brain above the midbrain i.e. the diencephalon and cerebral cortex...MASK OFF AND ON
superconscious...all parts of the brain...NO MASK
now we must find a psychiatrist and neurosurgeon to explain this.
2.Hindus say there are definately 4 Chakras but more like 7(use the same MASK analogy as above)
Muladhara
Svadhistana
Manipura
Anahat
associated with the colors Red,Orange,Yellow,Green
Corresponding with
love and affection
security and safety
power and control
compassion
And the 4 chakras are locted in the first 4 glands:
ovaries/testes
pancreas
adrenals
thymus
But we must find a Brahmin to explain this meditation model.
3.Then there is the medical world which says we have four brain waves:
Beta: 3-35 oscillations, normal thinking
Alpha: 8-13 oscillations , rest
Theta: 4-8 oscillations ,children, adults, dreams, strong emotions
Delta: 3-5 oscillations, sleeping newborns
Where is the doctor?
4.And there is:
Hell
Purgatory
Limbo
Heaven...
BAPTISM
COMMUNION
CONFIRMATION
MARRIAGE
Where is the priest?
All I know is that on a minute to minute basis, I move in and out of gehanna then paradise, in and out of terror then spa , in and out of leaving then staying.....A mask dance without end.

PART 4: MY INTENTION IN MAKING THIS FILM:
1.I love structure . Number and form are important focuses and a reliable foundation and grounding that give me pleasure even when there is no content. I could make a film about numbers, structure and concept alone and be very happy.
2.But also, the message of hope is important ...that is, that we all share this condition of going in and out of mental waves but that there is a way out. And so the film,MASKS, has an instructional value and my nun self likes that especially when I translate and see addictions as misguided ecstasy and really spirituality gone amuck.
3.The tape is a study in time because there is really boring footage from the 70s in this film. Then,time was long and cheap and it is so hard to endure it now . We get to see how our attention has changed in the last 30 years.More instruction.
4. My intention is always to point to death in my work, either formally MITCHELLS DEATH or as metaphor, LYING DEAD CHICKEN LIVE ANGEL, where I lay on a CHICKEN BED for 3 hours...resting? preparing? motionless? meditating?
5. My last intention is to look at secrets as art....my own secrets, secrets I've seen or heard about, political secrets, cosmic secrets...They have to get out and get unwound from our organs our brains our minds and once we Hiermonyous Bosch them out, we feel better,the viewer feels better,purified and cleansed. Art is so generous and we artists are chosen to do this job for all. Art lets us spew the dark out,laugh with and at it and Mother Art then transforms the puke so it is no longer small t-truth. Mother stirs and cooks it, feeding our hunger and turns our stuff into big T-Truth .Mounting this TRUTH, we ride BEAUTY GOLD into the sky.

PART 5 DISCLAIMER:
1. In the final wig performance after the video:please use no blood , no urine, no semen, no phlem,no fire, no knives, no sputum, no physical harm to self or others, no bombs, no guns ,no tazer guns.See my archive for how I incorporated a similar list of no's when I taught performance at UT Austin.Now raise your hand and sign an invisible release form that says you will not sue me, send a lawyer after me, hold me accountable on any level for anything you see, hear, do or wear tonight.(sign the air)
2.I ask your pardon and absolution for using accents so freely in my film. I grew up in a family where my Italian grandparents spoke very little english and what they did speak , they did so with a very thick accent which I found fascinating and I use the accent now with all due respect and with honor for all immigrants facing language issues and cultural isolation.
3.WARNING: There are references to alcoholism, profanity, urine therapy, abuse, medical interventions in this tape so:
VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
4. I_________________________________________DO NOT HOLD LINDA MARY MONTANO ACCOUNTABLE FOR ANY THING.DATE.___________________________________.

LINDA MARY MONTANO
NOVEMBER 21, 2009
FEAST DAY OF THE PRESENTATION OF MOTHER MARY IN THE TEMPLE
SAUGERTIES NEW YORK:TRANSFIGURATION HOUSE

THE COLLECTED WORDS AND ADVICE OF DR. ARUNA MEHTA

2009-12-08T14:07:00.001-08:00

by Linda M. Montano

1. Always do the truth and tell the truth.

2 . No hurry, no worry.

3. Watch and wait.

4. Keep mum.

5. Smile. I had to teach myself to smile.

6. Life is life.

7.There is a little bit of bad and little bit of good in everyone.

8. Scorn the past, watch the present, dream the future.

9. Get up early and watch the sunrise.

10. Serve others.

11. Be positive and say(to your sick daddy), how can I help you?

12. Keep your spiritual life private.

13. Don't tell others,"I do this sadhana, I do that meditation", otherwise you get more ego.

14. Serve(your daddy) and others as if they are God.

15. Food is God.

16. Food is love.

17. The spiritual life is the highest life.

18. When you are suffering you are burning old karma.

19. In friendship, keep an open heart and tell what is on your mind.

20. When any problem comes, be quiet 5-10 minutes, then your mind will tell you what to do.

21. Every atman is the same, just like your atman.

22. Behave kindly, sweetly,politely.

23. Don't hurt anybody, don't hit anybody.

24. Nobody is bad but circumstances make people upset and angry so they talk bad or act bad toothers. But don't mind that. Think about the atman.

25. When you shop, buy the right color, the right size, pay the right price.

26. An ant has an atman, grass has an atman, bee has an atman,humans have an atman. The atman is the same , so don't hurt or kill. This is called sundrasti.

27. An angry person does not think what is good,what is bad.If angry you think I will do double trouble to you. But this is not good. After two days you will see the truth of the situation and feel better.

28. Help everyone. Treat them like you are helping God.

29. LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! You never know what will happen tomorrow.

30. Life is short so have a smile face.

31. Have trust. Let go of worry.

32. Say to yourself, a good day is coming. Today I will pray for a good
day.

33. It is good to do everything with love.

34. If you are angry, find ways to stop the mind immediately. Enjoy something else.Watch yourmind. Stop the bad thoughts and do something good.Don't think the bad thing.

35. Human beings have intelligence.They have knowledge of good and bad.So this human life is important.

36. Do many good works. Other living beings, like rocks, cannot do this. We should not waste a second.

37. We do not know how much time we have. A day, a week, a month, a year, two years. So don't worry.

38. Life is to enjoy.

39. When you have upset, take it off your mind or tell someone, or else inside it is moving more and more.

40. Time is money. Don't lose one minute.

41. When someone is sick, be positive, give consolation. Don't act sick also.

42. When we are suffering it is from our past karmas.So suffer and burn the karmas.

43. When people eat the food I make, I am happy. And if there is not enough food for me, that is OK, because I am full from happiness.

44. Write down all of your doctor visits, times, money spent and information. Keep that with you at all times. Be organized.

45. Let's go!

46. Change your mind.

47. Do one thing at a time.When I cook, I concentrate only on cooking.

48. Do everything slowly. Don't hurry!

49. When people say negative things, don't mind it.

50. Do japa-mala so you can have a happy life.That way bad karma can go away and you can have peace.

51. We don't know how long we live, but we do our spiritual life, and this knowledge always comes with you next birth.

52. Now, all I do is mala(japa-prayers), to make happy everybody in the world.

53. LOVE is HAPPINESS!!

A MODERN FAIRY TALE

2009-12-08T14:05:00.001-08:00

Once upon a time, in a small mountain village, there lived a person who was older and yet was still dreaming of life and flowers and flying birds and clean rivers and fresh vegetables and sunny days and moon lit nights.

One day this person who we will call Aunt Ganna, woke up in her sunny bedroom and she had a very sore neck....In fact she could not control her neck because it moved her whole face and head to the left and so when she wanted to look straight ahead, her head looked over her shoulder to the other side.

Aunt Ganna said to the sun, "Oh sun, you shine on me all the time. I promise, I am not turning my head away from your beauty, I am not turning from your warmth, or your light.Do you believe me?"

The sun responded, "I know Aunt Ganna, you always like me and I dont feel abandoned because you dont face me. I still like you."

Aunt Ganna was so happy and smiled and laughed and said ha ha ha ho ho ho hee hee hee.

The next day she woke up and her head still turned and she went outside that night and looked up at a beautifull full moon and a sky filled with stars and said, "Oh moon and stars, please know I still like you and I am still your friend and I look to the side when I see you because I just do that. Not on purpose, it just happens.It doesnt mean that I dont like you all. You are so bright and pretty and light my life and your stars twinkle and shine like a beautifull shining light show. Please know I like all of you."

The moon responded, "Aunt Ganna, we know you are our friend and we always shine on everyone so dont worry."

And then Aunt Ganna sat down to eat and she picked up her spoon filled with yogurt and granola, a delicious breakfast, and when she brought her spoon to her mouth, her head turned without her permission and the spoon of breakfast food landed right on her right cheek! What a mess it was but Aunt Ganna laughed ha ha ha ho ho ho hee hee hee and said, "Wow this is an interesting situation. All kinds of things are happening to me and I am learning how to find the whole thing entertaining and fun." And then she laughed again ha ha ha ho ho ho hee hee hee.

A small garden creature then said to her, "Aunt Ganna we know you are happy for our food and happy that we feed you and we are not disturbed when you place food on your cheek instead of your inside your mouth, so dont worry."

That night, Aunt Ganna went to sleep at 7o'clock as she usually did so that she could dream as long as possible, and when she was asleep, a dream message came to her. First she saw a beautifull , tiny little flying angel girl and this angel wore wonderfull flowing clothes and the angel was about 2 inches tall. The angel was spreading angel dust all over Aunt Ganna and whispered in her ear, " Aunt Ganna, you have passed the test. I am your smile teacher, your good mood guardian and I see that you are smiling with the sun and the moon and with the garden beings and that you are accepting everything with a laugh and having a good time. I am proud of you and now want to give you your reward. Here is a jar of angel dust, that is for you to remind yourself to smile inside your heart. Does that make you happy?"

Aunt Ganna was very very happy and told the smile angel that she appreciated the gift and from that time and forever, Aunt Ganna smiled the SMILE OF GRATITUDE and lived happily ever after.
The beginning and not the end.

ROMAN CATHOLIC PERFORMANCE ARTIST MANIFESTO:AN EMAIL SENT TO POPE BENEDICT

2009-12-08T14:03:00.001-08:00

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ROMAN CATHOLIC PERFORMANCE ARTIST MANIFESTO:AN EMAIL SENT TO POPE BENEDICT

Dear Pope Benedict:
It is with a heart filled with contradictions and paradox that I address this letter to you. It is a letter of public admission of my position as a Catholic Performance Artist. The title is almost a contestable oxymoron. How can they both co-exist....the vocation to be a performance artist and loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church?This is mystery.

I was raised strict/conservative Roman Catholic in a village in upstate NY in the 40's,50's and even entered a convent leaving as a novice after 2 years. It is important and imperative that I mention here that the order of nuns was Maryknoll;probably the most forward thinking, liberal , human/activist yet Christo-centered and ecumenical religious order ever founded. And as an aside, it is also interesting to note that Maryknoll priest-activist Father Roy Bourgeoise, is currently facing possible excommunication from you for having attended a ceremony of priesthood for a Catholic woman, who is called to that vocation and recieved the sacrament of Holy Orders outside the traditional Church.

After the convent I left the church and practiced eastern theologies; finding answers, comfort ansd spiritually usefull techniques in their mystical/conmtemplative practices.
And at that time, as an artist, I was able to personally/aesthetically respond creatively to anything I considered unfair/unjust/unwise/inhuman, by making art that was religiously irreverant but comically convincing of my secular position.

Everything changed when I began a full-time university teaching job and my students cloned my thinking/permission; becoming as wild, free and spontaneous as I was. But I smelled trouble because there were instances when literally fire/blood/their traumas became the raw material for their art---material that I never feared for myself but when my art-children became conversant with possible danger,I ran for cover and accountability and teachings;back to the church. First the Newman center, then counseling with a Catholic therapist-priest, daily Mass and gradually I turned 360 degrees around, no longer the feminist, no longer laughing at the Church's stumblings and sins with irony and pain, no more spoofing its moral un-accountability, no longer undressing my body,mind or spirit in public and calling any of it ART.

Why am I here today? I come to the steps of your Church, Pope Benedict, with trembling. I have returned home full time : home to Holy Mass,and the Sacraments but I return as a new Catholic, not knowing how to compassionately address my concerns as a Roman Catholic Performance Artist. Here are a few things on my mind:

1. BIRTH CONTROL:
I personally believe that using birth control should be a free choice for all Catholics. Sexual intimacy is sacred and life-giving when practiced consensually and is an expression of love with or without birth-control.
The Church believes in sexual abstinence before marriage and in birth control after marriage;deamanding that Catholics use only the rhythm method, a method impossible for those unable to learn the subtitles of when to have sex, taking temperatures to see when it is safe, etc. And what about those couples who have compromised health issues:(AIDS/HIV/STD'S).Are we asking them to not wear condoms and literally kill each other when they make love?
The paradox: I see my belief and your values as equally applaudable and correct but yours as impractical and unreasonable for "real" people .

2. PRE-MARITAL SEX:
Pope Benedict: I beleive that pre-marital sex and pre-marital habitation are natural and necessary pre-requisites for a future happy relationship and sensible way to become acquainted.
The Church teaches that abstinence before marriage is the law.
The paradox: I see both values as wonderfull. I am aware of the beauty of obedient and sexual waiting ;waiting and then allowing the Power of the Sacrament of Marriage to become the sacred cement to keep 2 people loyal and committed to each other. What an ideal!
But I also value my belief that having sexual relationships outside of marriage can be very sacred as well.

3.GAY/LESBIAN LOVE:
Pope Benedcit, love is love and when 2 men or 2 women love each other, and even want to express that love in marriage, it is in my estimation natual and correct.
The Church believes that M/F marriage is the law and that law has been traditonally practiced so long and is biblically documented as theologically correct.
The Paradox: I see the beauty of my belief and I see the beauty of the Church's teaching.

4. MASTURBATION:
Pope Benedict, as a Roman Catholc Performance Artist, I believe that the Church's teaching on masturbation is equally distrubing. Healers, feminists,medical professionals and radical thinkers agree that using masturbation as prayer and self-care, both chemically adjusts the body for health and spirtually elevates the soul.
The Church believes that masturbation is immature self-abuse, yes that is the word you use to describe masturbaiton! It is catechetically listed as a mortal sin, and that equals hell!
The Paradox: This conflict of beliefs leaves me mute and chained.

5.THE CLERGY:
Pope Benedict, as a Roman Catholic Performance Artist, I beleive that the Church's position on the clergy is totally unreasonable and debatable for many reasons. First, there are vocationally called holy/ready/willing women eager to become priests, deaconesses, bishops and Popes.The fact that the hierarchy holds tight reigns on the office of the male priesthood and celibate clergy, another contentious issue, is obviously not practical, wise and is blantantly unfair. Where is the justice here, Pope Benedict? Do you want to continue to see more churches closed and your people without leadership and priestly ministry? We women are waiting for an invitation. Call us.
The Church believes that only non-gay males can hold the office of priesthood.
The Paradox: I remain silent and prayerfull and only hopefull that rules from Rome change in my lifetime and as a Performance Artist, I vow never again to address this issue with cynicism as I have done in the past. Now,bruised by age and doubt, I take the position of aesthetic/poetic, private admission of my own pain at MY inability to be more public about this outrageous injustice against women amd men who can not enter the priesthood if admittedly gay and must remain celibate once there.

6.DYING:
The end of a Catholic's life, like the end of anyone's life, is a totally mysterious journey, unique to the traveller.I believe that it should be as natural and when appropriate, unassisted by medical interventions as possible.Otherwise, family and caregivers are fraught with even more sorrow, remorse, shame,and protracted grief if hydration/tube feeding is not clearly explained. Who can/should/would/will do this teaching?
The Church is so very strict and cryptic about care at the endgame that the family is often confused. Why even the most astute and practiced moral theologians would find it difficult to make correct judgments at the bedside of some of the dying Catholics I have observed attempting to leave their bodies.
Pope Benedict:Help us. Don't tell us we are sinning or killing our loved ones unnecessarily because we opted for no more interventions.I beg you to create conventions;conferences where translators of the Church's teachings on death and dying can talk with us;symposiums with eschatologists/ethicists/moral theologians who can not only re-think/translate the Cathechism's interpretations of this issue but help all of us struggling to make holy, discerned decisions about tubes/plugs/water and then when the decisions are once made,help us forgive ourselves for what we have decided for we will be faced with the horror of loss and guilt at possibly having made a mistaken choice.Be with us, Church, don't judge us!
The Paradox:Dying Eskimo elders supposedly used to leave their community and walk onto a chunk of floating ice, to courageoulsy choose death.How foreign and un-Roman Catholic that sounds and , OH , how right!

I end this manifesto with a prayer:
HOLY SPIRIT, guide my brain and thinking. Help me to respect the needs and values of this Church that I have re-joined.The Church that allows my soul to sing. The Church which feeds my hunger for spiritual ecstasy. The Catholic Church which sacramentally forgives my egregious mistakes, sins , omissions. But most important of all, the Church of the Real EUCHARISTIC PRESENCE!! These aspects of the Church are my life and hope. They help me overlook all of the issues I raised in the body of this letter.
HOLY SPIRIT: Help me! I see this Church and it's hierarchy as a reluctant and isolated great, great great grandfather. Venerable yes, hearing? Not sure. Seeing the need for compromise and other Truths? I wonder.
HOLY SPIRIT, I ask for a spirit of rigorous yet prayerfull respect for my own individaul sacred conscience and my "fundamental option" to obey my halting ,yet seen as correct beliefs, based on what I think are my right and pure intentions .
HOLY SPIRIT, in a spirit of research and study and dialogue and obedience, I remain a student of Real Presence cloaked under the mantle of Mary's kindness.

AND NOW, BEOFRE I END THIS LETTER, I MUST TELL YOU POPE BENEDICT: I AM NOT DOING ANY OF THE ABOVE; I AM NOT "SINNING" IN THOSE WAYS. I AM NOT MASTURBATING,I AM NOT CO-HABITATING,I AM NOT PRACTICING LESBIANISM, I AM NOT BECOMING A WOMAN-PRIEST,I AM GOING TO GET THE CHURCH'S ADVICE WHEN I AM ON MY DEATH BED REGARDING HYDRATION,I AM NOT USING BIRTH CONTROL BECAUSE I AM NOT HAVING SEX/AM NOT MARRIED AND IT IS A MOOT POINT BECAUSE I WILL BE 68 IN JANUARY 2010, NO LONGER IN NEED OF BIRTH CONTROL. WHAT AM I SAYING IN THIS LETTER? I AM ONLY EXPRESSING MY THINKING. IT IS ONLY NATURAL THAT I WISH YOUR THINKING WERE LIKE MINE AND THAT THE CHURCH'S WAY WAS MY WAY.BUT IT IS NOT. POPE BENEDICT.I OBEY. I AM ONLY WANTING CHANGE. BUT BE ALERTED THAT I AM LOYAL TO THE CHURCH'S BELEIFS.WHY THIS LOYALTY? I DO IT AS A PENANCE AND AS A WAY OF REPERATION FOR ALL OF THE MISTAKES OF MY PAST.BUT AGAIN, BEFORE I LEAVE, KNOW THAT I AM A FOUND SHEEP, LOST AND RETURNED, PRACTICING MY CATHOLICISM YOUR WAY.I AM NOT LIBERAL, I AM NOT A FEMINIST, I AM A STRICT CONSERVATIVE. I FOLLOW THE LETTER OF THE LAW BECAUSE FOLLOWING MY LAW LED TO TROUBLE FOR ME AND OTHERS. IF YOU MAKE ANY CHANGES I WILL APPLAUD AND BE HAPPY BUT IN THE MEANTIME, I SAY FIAT TO THE WORD OF THE CHRUCH , AS IT IS.

If you would like to discuss any of this with me, my email is lindamontano@hotmail.com, or if you would like to view my work, www.lindamontano.com, or call me to Rome and we can meet, face-to-face.
In Art/Life/Laughter/Tabor-Light,

Linda Mary Montano, Roman Catholic Performance Artist

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(the following poem is optional reading)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

AN ARTIST TABORS HOME, by Linda Mary Montano, Roman Catholic Performance Artist

Now
my wounds, too egotistically putrid to share
are clutched close, neuroticized by time
dinasoured into fossil-eggs
sandblasted/etched/anorexiced
semi abstractly and so secretly
that they can only be admired in the gallery
of my own hungry mind.

Now
my wounds, loosened, colonic-ed
catapulted, ripped terminally
from DNA strands: poisoned, stiff-necked , sour
with the toxic waste of shame
placed on pedestals of pride
are self-viewed as one of a kind-mine

Now
my wounds , vomited, recycled,
birthed, breeched and torn
surgically from bloody scabs
are terroristically knifed into flesh
scarred with slime, a hostile brine

Now
my wounds are soft-coaxed
and angelically mid-wifed to infant dribble
nursing forth, arteried by transparent tubes
an operation of resuscitation, a visitation
performed at horizontal/vertical intersections
during autumn-like, golden light-nights
red to red
my wound to wed the ORIGINAL FIVE WOUNDS
until

Now
emptied, released,deprived of fight,
DIVINE FLIGHT
lovingly Tabors me home

Now

SHINE SHINE SHINE

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
September 21, 2008
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

September 21, 2008

Photographs: Nicolas Dumit Estevez. LINDA MARY MONTANO: reading THE CATHOLIC PERFORMANCE ARTIST MANIFESTO text, which was performed in front of St Patrick's Cathedral, by LINDA MARY MONTANO, Winter 2008, can be found/read at LINDA MARY MONTANO'S ARCHIVE. Present sites: THE ART/LIFE INSTITUTE, 185 ABEEL ST , KINGSTON NY 12401 (VISITATION HOUSE),THE ART/LIFE INSTITUTE, 9 JOHN ST, SAUGERTIES NY 12477 (TRANSFIGURATION HOUSE)..... pending sale to an Art Institution.

TEACHING

2009-12-08T13:56:00.000-08:00

THE THREE P'S: PERMISSION TO PERFORM , NOT PUNISH

A class that gives 100% PERMISSION for the participants to mentor my PERFORMANCES/films/writings but to also examine current laws addressing copyright/intellectual property/estate planning/legal accountability so as not to be PUNISHED by the art-legal system. Or, it is better to know than to be PUNISHED!!!!

Currently we are experiencing a climate of free use/open door internet unlimited PERMISSION(for awhile??) and concurrently are sometimes the recepient of litigious threats from high powered lawyers for making "publishing sins" or legal blunders/misconceptions in our art practice.(Name yours here___________________________________________________.)

This class will examine:

1. CALENDAR

2. COPYRIGHT & view MONTANO'S website.

3.IRS DEDUCTIONS & MONTANO'S WEBSITE, participants' class performances based on Montano's influences and one other influence.

4. COPYRIGHT LAWS & a film by Montano; participants' class performances.

5. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY & film by Montano; participants' class performances.

6. PUBLIC DOMAIN& MONTANOS BOOK: ART IN EVERYDAY LIFE; participants' class performances.

7. INFRINGEMENT & film by Montano ; participants' class performances.

8. CONTRACTS & BOOK BY MONTANO: PERFORMANCE ARTISTS TALKING IN THE 80'S ;participants' class performances.

9. INTERNET PROTECTION & film by Montano: class peresentations of INTERVIEWS OF A LAWYER OR ARTIST BY PARTICIPANTS.

10 DUPLICATING PEOPLE & film by Montano: continue class presentations of INTERVIEWS WITH A LAWYER OR ARTIST.

11.SALE OF ART; & book by Montano LETTERS FROM LINDA M MONTANO; participants' class performances.

12.SOURCE MATERIAL & film by Montano: class performances based on Montano's book.

13. CONSIGNMENT & final projects

14 Final projects, summary, ending.

(Presentations of performances can be by physical actions/video/dvd/cd/internet etc)

REFERENCES:

WEB INFO ON PERFORMANCE ARTISTS

MOTANOS BOOKS:

ART IN EVERYDAY LIFE

PERFORMANCE ARTISTS TALKING IN THE 80'S

LETTERS FROM LINDA M MONTANO

art law references ON INTERNET

ART LAW CONVERSATIONS by ELIZABETH T RUSSELL

lindamontano@hotmail.com

845 246 4482

TEACHING

2009-12-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

PERFORMANCE ART/THE BRAIN/YOUR LIFE

LINDA MARY MONTANO with guest: DOCTOR NETTLETON PAYNE, M.D.

IMPETUS FOR THIS FOCUS:

Exact science has allowed for a clearer knowledge of what was once considered serendipitous myth, especially when defining creativity. Previously, terms like: depression, anorexia, bipolar, PTS , schizophrenia, OCD, alcoholism, sexual addiction, and neuroses were seen as reasons for artistic genius. But now ,because of better measuring devices; an advanced and computerized understanding of the chemistry and functioning of the brain; greater funding for brain research(because of a war); an aging population that demands more services; and a quickening of curiosity due to the recession and ecologic impetuses, we are invited to consider biologic causes of creativity which reference the scientific and some of the terms used are: temporal lobe,parietal cortex, hypergraphia, the Geschwind syndrone, aphasia,transcranial magnetic stimulation and the amygdala.

Our new trust in science helps explain why we create and the brain is relegated to the status of co-muse. But knowledge is not only power but sometimes surprise and upset. For example,will the new information that Blake's ecstacies might have been temporal lobe seizures, take away our breath and our fundamentalist faith or not! And how does this information effect our past beliefs and the future history of performance art?
Some other questions we will consider:
a.If art was once seen to have originated from divine inspiration but science suggests that it is the "fault" of the hippocampus,then perchance the brain itself is divine. Why not?

b.Are artists willing to concede that their practice is brain driven? What will that do to art?

c. Is art ascending toward mind/super brain? Will art be free of human intervention in the future?

d.Are artists becoming more comfortable and actually needing to include medical/biologic reasons for their genius as well as the muse's inspiration?

e.Are artists de=throned and not seen as willfully creative but more the puppett of their chemistry?

f. Can performance artists be categorized "medically" by the nature of their work: i.e. hypergraphia causes the desire to write...
frontal -lobe epilepsy causes Blake-like ecstatic visions..so instead of being an artist, one could be a hypergraphiaist?

THE CLASS:

PART 1:

We will study 1st generation (1960-1980) performance artists and their legacy as performance art pioneers, asking how their work contributed to an understanding of the issues of their times and how their creative practices helped re-define the brain and it's functions. Marina Abromovic;Tom Marioni;Paul McCarthy;Spaulding Grey;The Waitresses;Act-up;Annie Sprinkle;Franko-B;Bonnie Sherk; etc. Each week will feature a different artist and their work will inspire in-class performances.

PART 2:

We will become acquainted with medical experts/authors/internet sites researching current breakthroughs in brain functions:
stroke,autism,musicophilia,rightbrain teaching,tourettes,meditation,brain injury and compensations,dimentia etc.

A. Doctor Nettleton Payne, M.D. a neurosurgeon who taught at Emory University, will be invited to present a lecture on the brain and creativity. He will be available in person, skype or cell phone for Q&A half way through the semester. And he will attend the last class presentation of performances so he can witness the interface the class has made between creativity, the brain and their life.

PART 3:

Each class, the participants will demonstrate a positive/safe/intelligent/intuitive understanding of the value of re-contextualizing their everyday life as A WORK OF ART in a way that uses the brain as co-collaborator.This will be in some tangible form:performance,paper,DVD,CD.

PART 4: CLASSES:

CLASS 1: PRESENTATION OF THE CALENDAR FOR THE CLASSES

CLASS 2: PREPARATION; AUTISM; MARINA ABROMIVIC(artist); CLASS PERFORMANCES/PRESENTATIONS

CLASS 3: DR . NETTLETON PAYNE, MD, IN PERSON LECTURE: THE BRAIN AND CREATIVITY

CLASS 4: PREPARATION; TEMPLE GRANDIN(AUTISM); TOM MARIONI(artist);CLASS PRESENTATIONS

CLASS 5: PREPARATION; OLIVER SACKS(MUSICOPHILIA); SPAULDING GREY(artist); CLASS PRESENTATIONS

CLASS 6: PREPERATION; KRISNAMURTI ,THE BRAIN; LINDA MARY MONTANO(artist); CLASS PRESENTATIONS

CLASS 7:PREPERATION; EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE(BRAIN);PAUL MCCARTHY(artist); CLASS PRESENTATION

CLASS 8: PREPERATION; PRESENTATIONS OF INTERVIEWS WITH ARTISTS OR BRAIN EXPERTS

CLASS 9: PREPERATION: DAVID LYNCH:CONSCIOUSNESS,CREATIVITY AND THE BRAIN; GORILLA GIRLS(artist);CLASS PRESENTATION

CLASS 10: PREPERATION: SUPER BRAIN 1-8;FRANKO-B(artist), CLASS PRESENTATIONS

CLASS 11: PREPERATION: MUSIC THERAPY AND APHASIA; SUZANNE LACY(artist); CLASS PRESENTATIONS

CLASS 12: PREPERATION: ANATOMY OF THE BRAIN; ANNIE SPRINKLE(artist); CLASS PRESENTATIONS

CLASS 13:PREPERATION: CLASS PRESENTATIONS

CLASS 14: CLASS PRESENTATIONS, FINALS.

(Where "artist" is indicated, the artist will be studied and will not be present in the class, except for Montano.)

("Preperation" indicates that different physical exercises, sound exercises and theatre exercises will be practiced each class so that an atmosphere of trust and intuitive safety can be experienced.)

("Class presentations " indicates all aspects of class presentations made by participants including papers, dvds ,etc.)

REFERENCES:

BLACK SMOKE Margarite De Wys

MUSICOPHILIA Oliver Sacks

THE MIDNIGHT DISEASE, Alice Flaherty

ANATOMY OF THE BRAIN: Internet

THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF, Norman Doidge

THE LIFEIST/ARTIST CARE 4 LIFEIST/ARTIST CLUB

2009-12-08T13:53:00.000-08:00

THE LIFEIST/ARTIST CARE 4 LIFEIST/ARTIST CLUB

LAC4LAC

MISSION STATEMENT:

Founded September 15,2007, LAC4LAC is a club for Artists/Lifeists who FREELY CARE for themselves and others in beneficial ways.

HOW TO JOIN: Each year, send your name and how you FREELY CARED:i.e.

Jane Green: 2007, library user
Jane Green: 2008, nature lover
jane Green: 2009, speech tutor & bicycle user

You will be written into:

THE BOOK OF CARE

an ongoing document of your participation in LAC4LAC.

WHERE TO SEND YOUR NAME: Email your information to: lindamontano@hotmail.com.

FEES: No fees, no costs.

SOME EXAMPLES OF CARE:

ACTIVISTS
ADOPTERS
ALTERNATIVE ENERGY USERS
ARCHIVISTS
ART POVERA-ISTS
BARTERERS
BICYCLE USERS
BIG SISTERS/BIG BROTHERS
BODHISATVAAS
CARBON OFFSETTERS
CAR POOLERS
CAREGIVERS
COMPANION GIVERS
COMMUNICATORS
COMPOSTERS
CONFESSORS
CONSERVERS
CREATORS
DEEP BREATHERS
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS
DO IT YOURSELFERS
DONATORS
DUMPSTER DIVERS
ECO FRIENDLY PRACTICTIONERS
ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHERS
FARMERS
FARMERS MARKET SHOPPERS
FORAGERS
FORGIVERS
FOOD PANTRY WORKERS
GARDENERS
GIVERS
GOOD NEIGHBORS
GREEN PRACTITONERS
HAND HOLDERS
HEALERS
HERMITS
HOSPICE MUSIC THERAPISTS
HYBRID CAR USERS
INTENTIONILISTS
JUNK RESTORERS
KARMA YOGIS
LIBRARY USERS
LOW MAINTENACE PRACTITIONERS
LOW IMPACTORS
MEDIATORS
MEDICAL/TECHNICAL ADVISORS
MEDITATIORS
MENTORS
NATURE LOVERS
NON-BUYERS
NON-COLLECTORS
NON-POSSESORS
NON-WASTERS
ORGAN/BODY DONORS
PEACE MAKERS
PEACE ACTIVISTS
PHILANTROPISTS
PHONE COUNSELLORS
PROBLEM SOLVERS
READERS TO CHILDREN/ELDERS
RECYCLERS
RENEWERS
RESTORERS
REUSERS
SEARCHERS
SHARERS
SMALL SPACE DWELLERS
SOLAR PANEL USERS
TREE PLANTERS
TUTORS
UTOPIAN DREAMERS
UNPLUGGERS
USED CLOTHING/OBJECT DISTRIBUTORS
VISITORS TO THE SICK/LONELY
VOLUNTEERS
WALKERS
WATER SAVERS
WATER SAVERS
WATER SAVERS

MARY

2009-12-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

DEAR NICOLAS AND ALYSHIA, I AM ANSWERING THE REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ABOUT MARY AND TRAVEL AND IMAGES AND PILGRIIMAGES AND CATHOLICISM AND THE VERY INTENSE AND ALMOST NEW INTEREST IN HER POWER THESE DAYS.
I GREW UP VERY STRICT AND ORTHODOX ROMAN CATHOLIC AND ALWAYS HAD A DEVOTION TO MARY AND THANK GOD THAT IT WAS ENCOURAGED BY THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL I ATTENDED.

MY MIDDLE NAME IS MARY AND AT CONFIRMATION I WAS ABLE TO CHOOSE ANOTHER NAME AND I CHOSE BERNADETTE BUT MY DAD SAID, YOU HAVE THE NAME MARY AND THAT WILL BE YOUR CONFIRMATION NAME..HE SAID,"MARY IS ENOUGH."" I NOW SEE THE WISDOM OF HIS WORDS.

SO THAT IS MY JOURNEY, TO REALIZE THAT SHE IS ENOUGH AND IT HAS TAKEN ME SOME 50 YEARS TO REALLY GET THAT .SO HERE I AM NOW, A RETURNED ROMAN CATHOLIC WITH A VERY INTENSE DESIRE TO KNOW HER, HAVING DONE MY B.A. ART SCULPTURE SHOW TITLED:THE MYSTERY OF THE VISITATION, MARY AND ELIZABETH BOTH EMBRACING, BOTH PREGNANT.

LITTLE DID I KNOW THAT MARY WOULD LEAD ME TO PILGRIMAGES TO HER "SITES" OVER THE PAST 4 YEARS, THAT SHE WOULD LITERALLY "APPEAR" TO ME AS A GUIDE AND AS "ME", THAT SHE WOULD TALK TO ME AND TELL ME AS I SAT IN A CHURCH IN FRONT OF HER STATUE IN MEDGEGORGE THAT,"I WILL BE YOUR MOTHER WHEN MRS MEHTA(MY SECOND MOTHER) DIES." AND THAT I WOULD GO TO ONE AUCTION IN MY LIFE AND THERE AT THE AUCTION, I WOULD SEE A CARVED STATUE OF HER THAT WAS MAGNIFICENT AND... LONG STORY.... BUT WENT TO THE MAN WHO BID FOR HER(I DIDNT HAVE THE SKILL TO DO IT ALTHOUGH WAITED 3 HOURS SO I COULD) AND THAT NEXT DAY HER "PRICE" WENT FORM 400$ TO 1250$ AND I TRADED MY MOTHER'S TEACHER'S PAINTINGS FOR HER AND SHE WAS CARRIED THROUGH THE STREETS OF SAUGERTIES NY TO MY PARENTS' HOME WHERE I NOW LIVE AND SHE LIVES IN THE "CHAPEL" I HAVE MADE...
HER GLASS EYES AVOID ME WHEN I HAVE DISPLEASED MY "VOWS "OR FAILED TO KEEP THE 10 COMMANDMNETS.
WHAT A MOTHER, WHAT A TEACHER , WHAT A FRIEND MARY IS.

MAY SHE BE HONORED AND RESPECTED BY ALL,

LINDA MARY MONTANO