TIBETAN LAMA : TO BE READ TO THE DYING

TO BE READ TO THE DYING: TIBETAN LAMA

Liberation Through Hearing in the Bardo:From the Six Wonderful Methods for Enlightenment Without Cultivation.

Here I [Padmasambhava] shall explain the profound meaning of liberation through hearing
for the ones who have arrived at the time of death.
Among the three kinds of bardos, the first is the time of the bardo of dying.

Fortunate one of noble family, listen one-point­edly. Pay heed. Do not wander.
Every experience in this world is Mara’s dream-like illusion.
Everything is impermanent, everyone is subject to death.
Noble one, turn away from further painful states.

The experiences of whiteness, redness and blackness are all the magical display of your mind.
These experiences are nothing other than yourself.
Do not be afraid. Do not fear them.

Now it seems that you are losing consciousness.
Outer appearances resemble the sky at dawn.
Inner experience resembles a the flame of a butter lamp in a vase.
Remain one-pointedly in the clarity of non­thought.

This luminosity of death is buddha mind itself.
Rest naturally. Do not try to fabricate or change anything.
Noble one, in this way you are liberated into dharmakaya.

Give this advice in a pleasant and clear manner.
Those of the highest capacity will be liberated through this.
Now comes the second bardo of dharmata.

Fortunate noble one, listen one-pointedly. Pay heed. Do not wander.
Earlier, you did not recognize awareness.
For the next seven days, all of your experience unfolds as rainbows and lights,
as rays and spheres and as the bodily forms of deities.
All are sublime displays of means and knowledge of the five buddha families.
Do not be afraid, do not be terrified by the brilliant colors and lights.
They are your natural expressions. Decide on that.

Together with these lights, there will also come dull colored lights and they may attract your mind.
Do not be attached to them.
They are the self-display of the five poisons, the pathways of samsara.
Your experience will arise as both true and untrue paths.
Do not mistake. Chose the right path.

From the heart centers of the male and female buddhas of the five families, shafts of light reach your eyes.
This is Vajra­sattva’s vast and direct path.
While remaining quietly and aware, form this thought, Be kind, help!
Call out with intense yearning.
Do not approve or reject anything.
Do not ward off anything; do not hold on to anything.
Be the continuous state in which the divine forms are indivisible from yourself.
Right here, as one deity dissolves into another, you are liberated into sam­bhogakaya.

Listen fortunate one!
If you are not liberated now, know that time does not change though the displays do.
Everywhere in the four cardinal and four intermediate directions,
above and below, appear a roaring mass of flames and rainbow colors.
In the middle of this appears is the Great Glorious Heruka.
His retinue of deities and terrifying attendants shower cascades of sharp weapons.
They shout hung, phat and roar with laughter.
This fiery spectacle of immense variety makes one billion world systems tremble.
Do not be afraid, do not be terrified.
Acknowledge that everything is the display of awareness.
Remain firm in this knowing.
Settle indivisibly mingled with the natural state.
Having entered this pathway, you are liberated.

In this way, those of the middle capacity are liberated.
Thirdly, during the bardo of becoming, say to the dead person:

Listen, child of noble family. Pay heed. Do not wander.
Your body is now comprised of energy-currents and mind.
Around it unfolds the displays belonging to the bardo of becoming.
Recognize that you have died, and that you long to be alive.

You may be caught by the fierce servants of the Lord of the Dead.
There may be horrible sounds.
A steep abyss may open up before you.
There may be many definite and indefinite signs.
They are all your mind’s displays.
This mind is ultimately open like the sky.
Space cannot be harmed by space.
So reclaim your unconditional confidence.

When consecrated substances are burnt and given to you, enjoy it as an inexhaustible feast.
Enjoy this the sublime food of liberation through smell.
Do not yearn for a new life.
Direct instead your longing to your yidam deity and master.

To the west of here is the Blissful Realm where Lord Amitabha dwells.
Whoever recalls his name will be born there.
You, too, recall his name, make prayers.
Generate devotion and think, Lokesh­vara and Guru Rin­poche, help me!
Have no doubt.
Fly there with the spontaneous vajra leap.
And within the hollow of a lotus bud, in that same buddha realm,
you will be swiftly and miracu­lously born.
Therefore, noble one, trust in this with deepest joy.

Those of the lowest capacity are liberated like this.If not, now comes the way of liberation once one has passed through to rebirth.

Listen, child of noble family.
Since you have not closed the door to the womb, you may now see a log or a hollow space,
a dark place, a forest or a palace.
Cast away all desire and clinging.
Make up your mind to be born on Earth;
specifically in Tibet [a land with Dharma teachings] in the presence of your teacher.
Visualize your future parents, from a virtuous family, to be Guru Rinpoche and his consort.
Do not yearn for or resent them.
Have trust and settle in the state of equanimity.
You will become a vessel for the profound Dharma.
And then you will swiftly realize timeless wakefulness.

Through these gradual instructions,
no matter how low one’s capacity may be,
one will certainly be liberated within seven rebirths.

Draw the session to a close with the dedication and aspiration prayers.
Then settle in the natural state that is the sublime nature of all experience.

This immensely profound instruction is not dependent on cultivation;
it liberates through hearing.

DAD ART PERFORMANCE FOR MUSEUMS/GALLERIES OTHER SITES

DAD ART PERFORMANCE FOR MUSEUMS/GALLERIES/OTHER SITES

 an excerpt from the video  DAD  ART

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9hExtdYLls

 

                                                  DAD ART  PERFORMANCE

 

A  THREE HOUR COLLAGUED/INTERACTIVE   MEDITATION ON LIFE AND DEATH

 

                                                LINDA  MARY MONTANO

 

 

STATEMENT: In 1998, I began a video collaboration with my father, Henry Montano. After his stroke, I continued documenting us.

 

This collagued and  interactive experience, DAD ART, is an opportunity for those present to bring creative attention via video/performance/dialogue to the Great Matter, Death.

 

 

COMPONENTS:

 

1.  A full screen video projection of DAD ART, DVD. Length, two hours.

 

2. Montano, singing a song from the 40's, every 20 minutes.

 

3.  A Master of Ceremonies who invites audience members' participation and articulates shamanically , the feeling of the performance.

 

4. Three interactive actions, collaged into the performance and happening simultaneously:

 

      A. An artist/lifeist, sitting at a table, onstage,  handing out glasses of water to audience members who come onstage to receive water.

 

      B. An artist/lifeist, sitting at a table, onstage, writing the spoken words of audience members who dictate a letter to death.

 

      C. One or two artists/lifeists, sitting on a chair onstage,  talking with an audience member about death.

 

 5.  At the end  of the performance,  artists/lifeists from the community will process into the performance space , with sounds, flags, ceremony and will gather the letters to death. They will then lead the audience to an appropriate space outside or inside where the letters will be burned.

 

6. Questions and answers.

 

TECHNOLOGY:

 

1. Video-Sound projector for DVD.

 

2. Mixer, speakers, playback, wireless microphone for  Master of Ceremonies, wireless microphone for Montano. And all other sound equipment as needed. Microphone for musician when present.

 

3. Cd player with auto pause.

 

4. Lights and colored gels for the 3 interactive action sites, Light for the  Master of Ceremonies and light for Montano. 

 And other lighting as needed.

 

BUDGET:

 

1. Transportation for Montano. Per diem. Lodging. Honorarium.Same for Musician when present.

 

2. Video rental.

 

3. Honorarium for performers.

 

CONTACT:

 

LINDAMONTANO@HOTMAIL.COM

 

845-399 -2502,  9-5PM

 

WWW.LINDAMONTANO.COM

 

LINDAMARYMONTANO.BLOGSPOT.COM

 

 SEVEN SONGS  SUNG THROUGHOUT THE PERFORMANCE:  WITH DVD OR MUSICIAN PRESENT1. MY FUNNY VALENTINE  A MINOR C FLAT
2. TIME ON MY HANDS  B  FLAT
3. DANCING IN THE DARK   A
4. IM IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE  A
5. IVE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN B FLAT
6. I'LL BE SEEING YOU  F
7. THE MAN I LOVE   G
7 SONGS ABOUT THE GLANDS, KEY OF  C

ART/LIE COUNSELING: UNIV OF WISCONSIN MADISON: 7 HOURS SEEING PEOPLE FOR ART/LIFE COUNSELING

ART/LIFE COUNSELING:  UNIV OF WISCONSIN  MADISON

CHICKEN WIGS

CHICKEN WIGS  VIA ED WOODHAM....A  MUST 

ARE YOU WELL?

THE STORY OF "ARE YOU WELL?" Linda Mary Montano, Saugerties NY, 2015
 
 
I preach art is life and life is art and a few years ago I actually practiced it. Here is how my attempt to eliminate the boundaries between the two imploded on me, exposing and exploring my theory . Notice how I didn't really pass the art/life test of seamless, pleasant, transparent union of the two. Here is the story: One afternoon I was standing on the front of the line at the Port of Authority, NYC, waiting to board the NY to Kingston Adirondack Trailways bus. Usually people are still in city mode and keep to themselves unless they have to go to the bathroom and then they might break silence and ask the person in front or back of them to watch their stuff. So when I heard a voice from way in back  call out in a friendly and cute way, "Hello Linda, are you well?" I bolted, blanched, bleated and barfed a spontaneous spoken word intervention and answer from deep in my bowels and in not so good  performance artist in action fashion, literally sounded, shouted and not so happily addressed the question with the following rude answer to the said female actress I hardly knew. It went like this: "Am I well? Am I well. What do you mean am I well.  I have alzheimers (a fear); dementia (a fear); leaky gut (a fear); urinary incontinence (a fear)."  And maybe I said more. I don't remember. And then I said,  "Shelly, are you well?" I  am forgetting what happened next because it was all so traumatic, the appearance of my performance artist persona off the stage, that is. And what is notable is that it was dementia-like of me to respond that way which totally complicates the entire scenario. Fabulous art/not so fabulous life.
 
Stuffing the event deep into my unanalyzed and therapeutically untreated back brain, it recently got triggered again. You see,  Shelly was a few years ahead of herself using the are you well greeting because NOW, everybody is saying it or emailing their endings, "Be well. Or, hope you are well." I'm obviously not over the big, pulsing need to correct them when they say the "well" stuff but  the worst part is that the performance artist is over it, but Linda the non performance artist is addressing the situation in a way that is completely embarrassing and out of order. The wreckage is  much more personally damaging than my Port of authority slippage because NOW, I'm  correcting friends, acquaintances and non-friends when the words are heard in my presence or written in emails. And it is not pretty. I don't know Linda the corrector as well as I do, Linda the performer and as an uncertified stop-wellness officer, I am becoming scary to myself and a persona non grata to those who might want to say Hi to me but are afraid that I might bark a correction. This is not good and it is taking me soon, I promise, to a therapist who I hope will help me trace the trigger to the source. Ooopps, trigger is a bad word too!! And by the way Shelly, if I ever see you again, I will say, " Remember that day at the Port of Authority? I'm SO sorry. I was wrong, wrong, wrong!"

  But meanwhile, (notice the word mean), I went to my Facebook community and email community and  posed the question. 
 

I am collecting 1-2 sentence responses that you FB me to my question, "Why r people saying "ARE U WELL when they greet each other?" And why do they end emails, "Be well. Hope you are well!!" Will include  your responses in an essay. Thanks, Linda

Here are their answers:

SUZANNE HELLMUTH: Well,well,well I had to find the entomology. The word comes from Latin vele to wish, & earlier proto-Indo-European that evolved to Germanic, old English, Welsh having double meanings of good/fair/kind/health & related meanings to that group AND drawing/springing forth as water from a spring... tears from the eyes.

    Would a spring or well of water be good as in a fulfillment of wish --thus a water source or a well --& that water-wish word came to also mean for good/fair/kind/healthy...?  Or, having water...is well, is source of well-being-- ?  Etc. 

English have towns with Wells in their name for example, Turndote Wells, where there are natural springs. Wellington, etc. 
   But, really, what is wellness now? 

 

 

Margarat Nee I blame Garrison Keillor for "be well" because he closes his poetry segments on the radio with it. I've never been greeted with "are you well" but it seems like a very clunky substitute for the usual "how's it goin" "how ya doin'" etc.

(My complaint is that people shouldn't open with that unless they really want to know, otherwise dopes like me forget sometimes and answer the question)

 

Mary Disney good ? I wonder if people are trying to shorten their correspondence and at the same time heighten their meaning with the CAPS. I think people are saying in the emails when they sign off is that they hope their friend is doing all they can to be well. I often end my emails with "Bee well" because I am a beekeeper.

 

 

Abina Manning When I moved to the U.S. and people would ask me "Are you well?" I would answer them. Until I saw their eyes glaze over. smile emoticon.

 

Margarat Nee When I was in Ireland it took me awhile to understand that when when folks behind a shop/cafe counter asked "are you ok?" they meant did I want to buy/order something from them.

 

CAROL SACHAL  I learned a long time ago, 50 years or more, NEVER to ask my Ukrainian Grandmother, Nanny, "How are you?" when I went to visit her each week, 3 times a week as required in my family.  The reason:  she would tell me:  "This hoits, that hoits, oh my, the pain!"  (hoits=hurts)   If I didn't ask her, she wouldn't tell me and it was a much more uplifting visit, so I learned to not ask that question.

 

 

Linda Mary Montano im learning alot keep them coming.

 

Eileen Kane Here in Tucson, where lots of my neighbors are elderly, we don't ever ask that question!

 

Victoria Singh In New Zealand people tend to say "howzit goin?" no equivalent to "be well" springs to mind

 

 

Mary Puddycat Collins My friends and I started closing our letters with the Latin "Vale" - be well - that we learned in high school.

 Tobe Carey  Well...or when I ask my "older" friend how he is, he always answers, "Rotting away, thanks."

 

Paul W McMahon Humans need water to survive, even more than food but not air. so if you are well, you are also well and water of life flow thru you. if you are not a well you may be getting swampy so dig deeper in order to be well again! it's meta 4 4 minstrel psychical. i never met a 4 i didn't like.

 

Gene Loeb (Shinananda)  I think when they ask " Are you well, " they are asking u to say to yourself, "Why, do I look like shit?"

 

Lizbeth Rymland   ( I cant find her response but I remember she said something like, forget it when it happens or maybe she was saying , it isn't worth the energy, getting upset about someone saying, "ARE YOU WELL?"

 

RICH BRANDES: Research reveals that travelers in Merry Olde England visiting pubs and taverns in unfamiliar villages might ask an establishment if they served a favorite dish known as Beef Wellington.  The question “Are you serving any Beef Wellington?” was shortened to “Are You Beef Wellington?” and later to simply “Are You Well ington?” 
As meat eating has become less popular the phrase “Are you well” has fallen out of favor.

CONCLUSION: Thanks to all of the participants, I'm cooled down. I promise I will never correct WELL again when it is said or written because I have found the source of my trigger in Eileen Kane's response:  "Here in Tucson, where lots of my neighbors are elderly, we don't ever ask that question!"

  

 Be,

Linda

            

 

WIKIPEDIA ,...LINDA MARY MONTANO

 WIKIPEDIA: LINDA  MARY  MONTANO

 

 

 Linda Mary Montano has been performing her art-life since birth.　 Her mother's pregnancy never "showed" and when Linda　 was born her mother supposedly said, "Linda, you were a shock to everybody,"　 or something like that. Montano has　performed and shocked herself and others for　 many years and continues to this day in her upstate NY: SAUGERTIES ART/LIFE INSTITUTE　& TRANSFIGUARATION HOSPITAL where she is learning: HOW TO LOVE.　

Linda Mary Montano is an inspiring figure in contemporary feminist performance art and her work since the mid 1960s has been critical in the development of performance and video by, for, and about women. Attempting to dissolve the boundaries between art and life, Montano continues to actively explore her art/life through shared experience, role adoption, and intricate life altering ceremonies, some of which last for fourteen or more years. Her artwork is starkly autobiographical and often concerned with personal and spiritual transformation. Montano’s influence is wide ranging – she has been featured at museums including The New Museum in New York, MOCA San Francisco, SITE Santa Fe and the ICA in London.

Montano's first major performance, Chicken Woman (1972) was based on her MFA sculpture show at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. There she exhibited nine live chickens in three 8-foot (2.4　m) by 16-foot-long (4.9　m) minimalist chicken wire cages on the roof of the art building. It was titled "The Chicken Show," 1969.

Linda had moved to San Francisco 1970 with her husband the photographer, Mitchell Payne, and it was there that she established herself with performances like "Handcuff" (1973 with Tom Marioni) where she was physically bound to Marioni, and "Three Day Blindfold" (1974), where she lived for three days blindfolded and had to find her way around via the help of others;  attempting to prepare for life in the future when she might need assistance. The murder of Mitchell Payne,  her ex-husband, led to further exploration of art as a healing modality ("Mitchells' Death", 1978) and she continued her art-theology dialogue by living in a Zen monastery for three years and also resided at Ananda Ashram in the 1980s where she studied with Dr. Ramamurti Mishra for over 30 years. His influence and appreciation of her vision encouraged both her art and life.　Upon meeting Taiwanese performance artist Tehching Hsieh who was looking for someone to be tied to him as art, they performed a collaboration whereby the two artists were bound to each other by a length of rope 24 hours a day for a whole year (from July 4, 1983 to July 3, 1984). They never touched during this endurance and audio taped every word they said and each worked at seperate jobs while tied.　

From 1984 onwards Montano performed another ambitious project titled "Seven Years of Living Art", 1984-1991 in which she lived in her home in Kingston wearing strictly monochromatic clothing, spent a portion of every day in a coloured room, and listened to a designated tone, all of which corresponded to the energetic qualities of a specific chakra.　She changed colour every year, and after the project was finished followed it up with "Another Seven Years of Living Art",1991-1998 in part to memorialize her mother, Mildred Montano, who died in 1988 of colon cancer.　This time she focused on the 7 Chakras, as taught by her Guru Dr. Mishra, she wore the colour clothes but let go of the many other imposed penances/disciplines, allowing nature to lead her to healing instead of her forced ego. In 1998, Montano inaugurated "Another 21 Years of Living Art " 1998-2019, a self designed "school" which inspired those attending to choose their own unique way to bring art and healing to the 7 energy centers of the body. Participants were: Betsea Caygill, Michelle Bush, Barbara Carrellas, SC Durkin, Koosil-Ja Hwang, Vernita N'Cognita, Esther K. Smith, Krista Kelly Walsh, with satellite projects by Victoria Singh & Kurtis Champion, Steven Reigns, Elizabeth Stephens, Annie Sprinkle, EK Smith and Nells Fasty.　　Montano has always freelance taught performance art, and was on the tenure tract at the University of texas, Austin for 7 years. She came back to upstate NY , 1998, to care for Henry Montano, her father and also collaborated with him on video before his stroke, continuing to tape the 3 years of managing and caring for him at home until his death , 2005. Montano;s interest in self-healing via art has allowed her to share her information with others via "Art/Life Counseling", a technique she used for seven years at The New Museum where curator Marcia Tucker had built a private room and allowed Montano to counsel people once a month in the window installation which was painted the same color that Montano wore for that year. At that time (1984–1991) Montano used tarot, palm and psychic readings as tools of discovery as well as attentive listening so that she could respond to the questions of her clients and she intended to find the most creative way to respond to their problems and difficulties. (Currently Montano still does "Art/Life/Laugher Counseling" but without the assistance of tarot, palm and psychic readings because they are forbidden by her current practice of Catholicism).

The influence of her father led Montano to return to Catholicism and ultimately to Church attendance,　and since 2005 she has taken gathered prayer requests to more than ten Catholic pilgrimage sites throughout the world. Montano also meets with others in Catholic Churches for 3 hours silent retreats, re-seeing the concept of endurance from new Catholic-eyes. Since returning to Catholicism, Montano has made numerous videos exploring the faith, including Father Lebar: Catholic Priest and Exorcist; Saint Teresa Of Avila By Linda Mary Montano, and she currently performs AS Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and endures, sometimes for 7 hours at a time suspended on a scissors lift, lipsynching as Bob Dylan and Paul McMahon, an upstate musician/songwriter. Since 1975, Montano has used video as a practice and for the last 20 years, her videos have been edited and animated by Tobe Carey of Willow Mixed Media. After Occupy Wall Street when Montano saw a sign that said, COMPASSION IS THE NEW CURRENCY, Montano has offered her videos for free viewing on You Tube, except for "Dad Art" a video-performance document of her father's last 7 years which is designed to be performed with Montano and 7 collaborators.

Her work investigates the relationship between art and life through intricate, life-altering ceremonies, some of which last for seven or more years. She is interested in the way artistic ritual, often staged as individual interactions or collaborative workshops, can be used to alter and enhance a person's life and to create the opportunity for focus on spiritual energy states, silence and the cessation of art/life boundaries.

Montano's archive is now at Fales Library and Special Collections at NYU since 2013.

Videos produced with Tobe Carey's editing and animation, can be seen online here, and more information is on her blog,lLinda Mary Montano Blogspot, as well as her website, WWW.LINDAMONTANO.COM


Her seven  published books can be located via her website.

MY RESPONSE TO C.S. FACEBOOK POST

MY RESPONSE TO CLARK STRANDS  POST ON FB:

 

CLARK STRAND:

THE ALTERNATIVE TO MEDIA...IS MAMA!

This past weekend I read an online article that cited the work of contemporary German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, suggesting that the only meaningful response to the SorroundSound sense of alarm that is now the driving force of all forms of media is to INTERRUPT it. This is accomplished by not passing our fear along to others through "shares," "posts" and "tweets," but rather sitting with it in a thoughtful, pondering frame of mind. Only in this way can we refuse to be a passive conveyor of fear from one person to the next in a game of hot potato that includes everyone on the planet with a smartphone.

 

LINDA MARY MONTANO:

PARAGRAPH 1:   U said: " Not passing our fears through shares.....passive conveyor of fear..."  The artist's raison d'etre is to do just that: vomit out the detritus of their subconscious which is their respected and sometimes only way of "talking", making sense of and reflecting the climate of their minds and the times.  The reader and audience is often disgusted by the taste of the artists mind-vomit  and  their need to talk a  language that triggers the readers'/viewers visceral negative reactions. Artists  thrust their wares  without discerning or caring who would like or not like their message; in fact not to be understood is grist for their inspiration mill and more reason to go deeper to another level of alpha wave and toxic memory and another reason to be  misunderstood, yet again. So thinking before sending might not be a popular  suggestion for those addicted to sharing their ucks and "please don't." Not for anything but narcissist that I am, I'm sure your don't pass fears  post is about my having sent u my Wagnerain death tape to view?

 

CLARK STRAND:

It's a "buck stops here" approach that invites us to sit with our fear and ponder it, and in most cases simply "ride it out." Which is a hard place for a buck that big to stop. Too hard for anyone but a philosopher to take seriously as the solution to a panic that is now basically borderless, because it is everywhere in the culture at once.

 

LMM:

PARAGRAPH 2: .... you say,  "the buck stops here..." Yes the buck stops here has become the mantra of now. Our fingers and eyes are exhausted from hitting, "delete", "pause," "alt"  and "hide!"  Our daily and more than once  daily  fear-share facebook and media dance has made editors of us all and quick minded purveyors of what we do and don't want to know about, see or want to continue to be  associated with. Not a bad  thing. To be exposed to all kinds of untruths and vileness and clown acts is a kind of transparency that many were deprived of who were the products of a closed family/church/educational system that hid the ugly.

 

 

CS

But is that strategy really meaningful as response to fear? Is "sitting with it" going to make a difference to a culture that has its foot to the floor on a highway leading nowhere but over a cliff? Riding it out would be fine if we weren't seated behind the wheel of a culture that is, metaphorically speaking, the biggest, most lethal moving vehicle the world has ever seen.

 

LMM

PARAGRAPH 3: ..." the most lethal moving vehicle..." Agreed, the demons of now have been sent into the proverbial pigs over cliff- sinkholes.  Violence and impermanence are waiting right around the corner of everyone's nightmare.

 

CS

It's my same criticism of the mindfulness movement: Unless we are mindful of the suicidal momentum of a consumer civilization in its death throes, what we call mindfulness is really just a blindfold in disguise. The flaw at the heart of that movement (which seems to have infected even German philosophy) is that it presumes that our societies and our planetary ecology remain intact and that the mind is therefore essentially "safe within itself." Mindfulness has no way of recognizing, much less metabolizing legitimate threat. But, then, that is the underlying point of it. KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON is the mantra of a very frightened and shaky status quo.

 

LMM

 

PARAGRAPH 4:  You say, " Mindfulness has no way of recognizing, much less metabolizing legitimate threat." I like that yours and Perdita's  minds are so brilliant and erudite and sharp and theologically radical that you both see through literally everything.  Like that a lot!!! And yes, it is hallmarkish at worst, mindfulness that is, and yet the villagers do eventually find out that Yoga at  Sunbeam Studio, is taught by an extraordinary teacher and they bring their beach towels, NYC street incense, imitation yoga matts and mispronunciation of "Namaste" to the class, thinking that their final mindfulness  has been WON!!!!  It is a cryable scene because so innocent and wrong but also a teachable moment because they become a marker of one's own place in the picture of now and they become an indicator of ones own place on ones proudly attained ladder of theology. It becomes spiritual us-vs.-oye vey them.

 

 

CS

So, IS there any meaningful alternative to fear?

One thing we know at this point is that there is no such thing as an "alternative media" where fear is concerned. There is no book or article we're going to read (online or off) that isn't to some extent infected by the grab-for-all-you-can-get panic that, whether we realize it or not, we are now in the grips of as a species. The one percenters aren't the cause of that panic. They are the symptom of it. We all know this deep in our hearts. We are not so far from our animal instincts that we can't sense a massive change coming in the global wind. The fear that gets flogged on FOX doesn't have its origin in the newsroom. They just channel it for their own political purposes. Gone are the days when fear needed to be manufactured. No one even needs to add to it. For the foreseeable future, fear is here to stay

 

LMM

PARAGRAPH 5; You say: " For the foreseeable future, fear is here to stay."  Absolutely. And it feels like 12 bad TV shows on regular TV being played at the same time inside a not-get-outable paper bag.  It is a freakish fear, a neurologically shuddering fear, a hide your fill in the blank fear.  A "you better smell the scams" fear. Thankfully there are some prophetic minds and hearts gyroscoping above the stench of it.

 

 

CS

Where can you go to escape from global warming? The question is its own answer. Nowhere. That's why we've agreed on the collective stupidity of calling it "climate change" instead...as if climate wasn't a global system and change didn't mean rising sea levels that will swallow many, if not most, of our coastal cities by century's end.

And so I will ask the question again: Is there any meaningful alternative to the fear that our media-saturated culture is constantly telling us to pass along?

 

LMM

PARAGRAPH 6: You say, " Where can you go to escape from global warming? " You cite avoiding ecological  truth as a way, an escape, an avoidance. Nothing to say here except all night Coast -to- Coast conspiracy radio does provide a call-in forum where chem trails and JFK's murder by his colleagues can at least be discussed and de-feared via dialogue with tired truckers viewing wish fulfilling escape routes via UFO's landing a few feet in front of them. An easy endgame and escape at best.

 

 

CS

I believe there is. But it certainly isn't 'blindfulness.'

In the Fall of 2011, not long after Our Lady woke me in the middle of the night to pray the rosary, I found myself entertaining the idea that the rosary might be that rare cultural phenomenon: a true alternative media. It conveyed a message...but not a written one. It had images...but they didn't come from outside of the mind. You formed the words of the rosary with your own lips using prayers you knew by heart and visualized its fifteen mysteries with nothing but your own imagination to draw from. The rosary wasn't "coming at you" or "through you" from the culture as a way of harnessing your opinion, your spending patterns, or your vote. It was an autonomous, self-directed form of spiritual devotion that came from within you instead.

 

 

LMM

PARAGRAPH 7: You say, "  the rosary might be that rare cultural phenomenon: a true alternative media. It conveyed a message...but not a written one. It had images...but they didn't come from outside of the mind. You formed the words of the rosary with your own lips using prayers you knew by heart and visualized its fifteen mysteries with nothing but your own imagination to draw from. The rosary wasn't "coming at you" or "through you" from the culture as a way of harnessing your opinion, your spending patterns, or your vote. It was an autonomous, self-directed form of spiritual devotion that came from within you instead."  Good to see the take back the power aspect of your take on the rosary.. The inner tv-ness of it.  The ability to make your own movie, be your own editor and write your own script  for the rosary.  And yes given the mind's need for story and narrative and prompt, the Rosary surely does provide material in an imposingly kind  manner. Just like an inner iPhone, it becomes an appreciated mystical app.

 

CS

Of course, that was before I'd read much about the history of the rosary. Not being Catholic, I learned only much later that the church had been using the rosary for centuries as a form of propaganda for channeling fear. First the rosary was suggested as a weapon for fighting witchcraft, heresy, or the devil. Later it was a defense against the Turks. Then it was used to battle the Enlightenment, and then (in collaboration with the American CIA) to fight communism.

 

LMM

PARAGRAPH 8: You say, " I learned only much later that the church had been using the rosary for centuries as a form of propaganda for channeling fear. First the rosary was suggested as a weapon for fighting witchcraft, heresy, or the devil. "  The rosary was the fear catcher of the past, you say. It seems to me that it was used in the past to CLEAR not channel fear, no? Historian that you are, you have found really important info about the way literally everything can be screwed around by whoever wants to screw around with whatever! That is, take the rosary and attach: witch, devil, heresy and communism to it and in so doing, you are being a great and wonderful and totally shivering and scared Catholic, back then!!!! But I have my own non-fear Rosary memory that goes like this:  all 7 of us in our family in Saugerties in the 50's,  are on our knees, with our faces buried into questionable smelling seats of overstuffed front room chairs, saying the rosary every night because Father Peton, not sure of his name, had said, "The family that prays together, stays together." And at  70, I must say, im really beginning to enjoy all 3 of my siblings, finally. Thank you, Rosary.  Your mission to resurrect the rosary as a Mister/Misses Clean, to counterattack the fear of now, gives it the cheerful weight of being historically  legacized. 

 

 

CS

In many areas of the Catholic world the rosary is now being used to battle abortion: hence the feminist placard that reads "Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries!" Anti-abortion phrases are inserted into the prayers, and at one meeting in New York City, the fear (along with the anger and moral outrage it is intended to generate) is passed along in the form of a fetus in a plastic bag that is literally handed around the room during the prayer. No, I'm not making this up.

 

LMM

PARAGRAPH 9:  You say: " In many areas of the Catholic world the rosary is now being used to battle abortion: hence the feminist placard that reads "Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries!"   This needs the delete button but the Bible says it in ditto fashion with it's reference to .."pearls before..."  Or rosaries.....

 

CS

Fortunately, the rosary didn't begin that way, and most of the millions of people who pray it around the world aren't suckered in by political ideologues masquerading as bishops and priests.

The rosary began as a form of devotion to the Goddess that recognized Her sovereignty over the seasonal cycles of growth, death, and regeneration that governed the lives of all beings on the planet -- including human beings. To pray the rosary was to unite with those climatological cycles and feel oneself as "belonging" to a Mother whose body was in wind and water; in animal, vegetable, and mineral; and, most of all, in the dirt beneath their feet. That is why so many ancient images of the Goddess were dark in color, often even black.

 

LMM

PARAGRAPH 10: You say: "The rosary began as a form of devotion to the Goddess that recognized Her sovereignty over the seasonal cycles of growth, death, and regeneration that governed the lives of all beings on the planet -- including human beings. " And, "That is why so many ancient images of the Goddess were dark in color, often even black." That's why it is so hard to drag Catholics trained in suffering from the 50's into a radical-feminist look at  Mary, now. For us she was pure white, impregnated by the Holy Spirit (a bird no less); she was good, never sinned, never felt anything but sorrow, never decided, never Kalied herself into swordplay or longtongued rage, never stomped on a Shiva-Catholic equivalencies body, never fixed everything like Durga of the many arms of possibilities, never touched money like Lakshmi, never had pleasurable sex like Radha or Sita,  never sang like Saraswati. Mary then was just  Mary. A medieval nice one to be Crusaded for. The one left out of the Trinity, the one who said not a word when she was riding the donkey to Egypt with a newborn still wearing a placenta, the one who cried without tears at the Crucifixion. So it takes incarnations of courage for me to open the door to a Now Mary who Mothers with Pampers and talks/locutes to EVERYONE and rings your doorbell and visits! This NEW  Mary is asking for the parents/caregivers of her to be patient with the viewers of Her in her new blackface, sitting in her stroller for mother-runners.

 

 

CS

What the world needs now is not more media but more Mother! In that respect the rosary is not the alternative media I once imagined it to be. It is an alternative TO media.

Where can you go to escape global warming? It's the wrong question. Pray the rosary and you will find yourself asking a much more powerful question: Where can you go to UNDERSTAND global warming?

And once you have that question, you discover that you are holding the answer in your hands. The rosary is a guidebook to the oldest, most durable rhythms of the planet...and a testament to the persistence of life in collaboration with those rhythms. The rosary will show you what to do.

The first teaching Our Lady offered to me about the rosary in 2011 was this:

"The rosary is My body,
And My body is the body of the world.
Your body is one with that body.
What cause could there be for fear?"

When I asked Her to explain those words, She told me that the complete wisdom of the rosary was contained within them, and all the wisdom of the planet, too. I would learn to trust that wisdom by praying the rosary and sharing it with others, She said. And that would release me from fear

 

LMM

PARAGRAPH 11: You say: "What the world needs now is not more media but more Mother! In that respect the rosary is not the alternative media I once imagined it to be. It is an alternative TO media." Leary's TURN ON...is reconfigured yet again and this time the show is on the MOTHER CHANNEL. Let's share the popcorn, her messages and remote control.

 

 Thanks Clark and Perdita for opening the mystery door. I'm ringing the bell as a new-to- thinking, radical, Charismatic practicing Catholic who is carrying 74 years of the OLD MARY; and although she did tell me that she is now my Mother, still, be patient with me when I first come in.

 

Linda Mary Montano, 2016

THE SAGA OF MY NOSE

 

 

THE SAGA OF MY NOSE AS OF 2016 LINDA MARY MONTANO

 

  1. CHILDHOOD The theme and focus of my childhood dreams was always MY NOSE! Nightly the nightmare was that a long, gooey, squidish and unending disgusting mass would unroll from and be able to be slow motion pulled from both nostrils. I was amazed, intrigued and the vision/dream continued for a long time. The only reference I was able to make was to the cultural history of Egyptian funerary rites which indicated that the mortuary people drained the brains from the nose of the dead before mummifying them. Did I dream this? Is it true? I must google the answer some fine day. Eventually the dream stopped.

 

  2. YOUNG ADULT During high school I was the outsider, having come from a small, Catholic grade school to a not that large high school in our village. Neurotic that I already was, it took this disrupt to activate my anxiety button and I expressed my upset by imagining and insisting that " I SMELLED!" The collection of and more than once daily use of cancer producing aluminum-infused underarm deodorants never allayed the supposed dispiriting attacks on my happiness so I conscripted a posse of friends to walk close to me and "smell" me and I would ask, " Do I stink?" They would always say, " You don't stink, Linda." Not appeased for long, I would ask again as we walked down the hall to our next class. That ended and I forget how my fear shifted to my next phobia. I don't remember asking people that question when I went to college but there was a smell issue in the convent when I "found" some wet/smelly  papers in the "nun-clothes" locker in my cell. Oooopss. Too much info.

 

3. ARTIST LIFE My teacher from India, Dr. Ramamurti Mishra, also later known as Shri Brahmananda Saraswati, was a phenomenal genius, radical doctor, McGill trained neurosurgeon, teacher, mystic and friend to all. His knowledge of Ayruveda was included in his tool bag of Cures That Shift Consciousness, and he brought this particular nose technique out as needed. It was called, NASAL NETI. Did he demonstrate the insertion of a snake-like male cathedra into his own nasal cavities so that it could clear the passages and eventually slither out of his mouth? I don't think so. Maybe he had one of us demo it, I don't remember. But I do know that I loved it, having spent my childhood focused inside my nose already in dreams and as was my wont, I began including Nasal Neti in my performances as a device that invited audiences to join me in viewing the ART OF SHOCK, a practice I always prefer, which allows the artist and viewer to move from everyday daily worry-hurry mind to the mind of NOW. Case in point, who can think about the insult the neighbor just hurled your way when there is a slimey male cathedra coming out of your nose or the nose of a performance artist trained to offend-as-art? So for years, I used Nasal Neti live, in performance, and in videos even as we speak, thanks to the 20 year collaboration with Tobe Carey video artist/editor who has helped me edit Nasal Neti into my current video: Endurance Then and Now.

 

4. CURRENT LIFEIST NOSE EVENTS As a child, my parents had left a medievalish, Nicola Tesla-looking "tanning" sunlamp someplace in the house. Of course I found it and burned myself/face to blisters many, many times and in fact, had almost permanently fused plastic buttons to my closed eyes because I had used button as "goggles," placing them over my closed eyes so the lamp's BIG C causing light would not burn my eyelids.( Eyes are the subject of another body modification post most probably forthcoming. A post just as problematic in detail.) Back to my nose. My nose: i've always loved it..... it's aquilineness; it's long, straight, haughtiness; it's almost Italian-ness. It is a nice friend of my face but as I age, it rears it's head, just as it did in childhood when my brains spilled out of it in dream-sleep. A year ago, I presented a bump-scab-raised on my nose something to the over 90 year old skin doctor who treated Nagasaki-Hiroshima WW11 survivors of after-bomb skin injuries and she put a liquid on my nose. For weeks, I walked around as if my nose literally survived Nagasaki because it festered, blew up, spit out gangerous green from both now bulbous external sides. I was a walking leper for awhile and went everywhere like that... a class fool, a pariah, a freak. This time, I wasn't USING my nose for Art, but my nose was life-performing without my permission and without my wanting to videotape the mess, a practice I always do; for to self-document is to cure, is my creed. This time I was not interested in sending my situation to you tube as a way that I cleverly fix my life via art via Tobe's collaboration. So it cured, it burned out the toxicities, it ate up the BIG C, the Esteemed and Saintly Dr-Healer said. And then more nose events began.

 

A. Somewhere I heard that it is good to put Gas Treatment in your gas tank occasionally. Silly me, I never checked this out with my smart, smart siblings who know everything about everything, so I bought a container of it in Dollar General and left it in the car until I was ready to put it in my now-I like-you car and you can guess the rest. It opened in the car, just a little, BUT the fumes were over the top, fusing themselves into my long, aquiline 74 year old nose. I felt them immediately and now that I am compromised with a neurological chronic affliction called Dystonia, my nervous system said, " OYE WHATTTTTT DID YOU JUST DO TO ME? IM GOING TO TWIST YOUR NECK AND YOUR BRAIN AND YOUR HEAD IN RETRIBUTION." So the new medical chess game began...I slapped a Lidocane patch on my neck, called Poison Control whose female voice of reason said, "Don't worry, there is no poison in Gas Treatment," and not believing her, I went to my Irish PA who looked up my nose and said to use a gel to coat inside my nasal passage. I sniffed Cocoanut Oil into it instead. And although I was doing SO WELL with controlling neck spasms before this event, they re-appeared with a vengeance and as a result I have to drive my throbbing neck over across the river to get it injected with Botox so that I can fathom sitting on an overnight flight to Ireland in a month. There goes my let's get off the rat poison Botox injections and let's use alternative meds plan! I'm afraid to tell my siblings this story.

 

B. I wake throughout the night and Ayruveda says that remembering what time you wake, is an easy way to see if one of the organs of the body is asking for attention. That is , 3 am is the liver "calling." Whatever!!! Two mornings ago, at an hour that I will have to see if I can remember which organ was calling me, I smelled SKUNK. It wafted up the side of the house and into my bedroom window. When I told David and Jeanne this story, she said that skunks are kind and don't just squirt but warn first and I do recall a kind of scratching sound outside which I interpreted as someone trying to break into the house but no, it was not that, it was the skunk warning the dog next door to pull back, retreat and get out to the way. But no such luck because this beautiful, humongous, furry, gorgeous, smoky black, loving and perfectly behaved canine with 14 inch long fur got squirted. But so did the neighborhood or at least the inside of this house where I am sitting and smelling skunk smell as we speak. I'm a wreck. My nose is on overdrive. I've saged and squirted Holy Water in every room. And when I told a really close and dear and totally funny friend about this drama, he said, " Maybe you stink , Linda," and that's the closest that this issue will come to a deeper analysis of the dramas which are inviting  me to want to find out why I am up my nose so much? Too embarrassed to re-call the Poison Control because I might get the same woman, I went to The Church of Google, typed in skunk words, totem animal words, what does skunk smell indicate words and this is what I got:

 

"Who hasn’t run up against a lesson from this amazing creature-teacher at one time or another? The smell of Skunk Medicine is something that one doesn’t soon forget. Skunk Medicine brings the lessons of Reputation , Respect, Sensitivity, and Confidence.

 

Skunk says, “If your ego is not your amigo, you know it stinks!” When one learns to assert, without ego, what and who you are. Respect follows. Your self-respectful attitude will repel those who are not of like mind, and yet will attract those who choose the same pathway. As the odor of Skunk attracts others of its kind, it repels those who will not respect its space."

 

5. CONCLUSION Deep breath in, deep breath out. It is all medicine.

 

LINDA MARY MONTANO , SAUGERTIES NY 2016.

DEAR FILL IN THE BLANK;RELIGION

Dear (FILL IN THE BLANK...NOT YET PUBLISHED)
 
 Thank you for inviting me to consider these words. Instead of choosing one word, I have chosen them all and here is my response to your invitation:

Ceremony: My first ceremonies were Catholic Church inspired. There I got a taste of the patriarchy at it's best......incense, pomp, packaged ecstasy, males processing in vestments meant for kings and queens and nuns relegated to the sidelines of humble-tasked teaching and herding of feraled-upstate-NY-children.
 
Communion: What all of us want is to belong, to be nurtured in community and communion with each other as co-conspirators, co-warriors, co-workers, co-belongers. This is a Neanderthaled response to weather, stampeding musk ox, the need for 3 meals a day and the desire to be connected to other sentient beings going through the exact old age, sickness and death saga called life. In Catholicism, COMMUNION becomes the highest sacrament and the best of everything. When the nuns had convinced me that when I received COMMUNION, that I would be receiving Jesus's real BODY, BLOOD, SOUL and DIVINITY, I would faint in Church after receiving the HOST, and remember doing so when I was actually in my late 50's. And yes, I was post-menopausal then and it wasn't because of that! And at 7, it wasn't because I had been fasting since 6pm the night before and fainted from physical hunger. And believe me when I say that I've seen BLEEDING HOSTS in my travels so I guess fainting was not such an inappropriate response after all!

Ecumenical: This is the best way, the tolerant way, the understanding way to live with, endure, put up with the belief's, practices and acting out of all practitioners of the sacred but our tolerant good behavior only lasts until we stumble on a "religion" that does things we think abominable!

Holy: Holy is right brain ecstasy that is "produced" when the thinking mind is out of commission. See Jill Bolte Taylor's STROKE OF GOOD LUCK on You Tube.

Redemption: What is right is right until it is re-seen from an accepted authority as  lacking in wisdom or compassion. My therapist just last night re-deemed me from a family of origin belief about love that is no longer tenable for me. REDEMPTION lasts when the new belief is repeated until imbedded in one's blood.

Religion: A complex theory that keeps and gives. It keeps the believer from having to create a way. It gives a free ride to anyone buying the ticket it sells. Artists sometimes think they can start their own and often do because keeping and giving are understood differently by these zealots of the Sensitive.

Revelation: By cooling the left brain with considerable finesse, it is possible to hear, see, smell and taste the unseen, unheard, the untaste-able and stinky.
 
With all due respect and apologies for any heresies,
 
Linda Mary Montano
Performance Artist
June 2014"

ART/LIFE COUNSELING WITH LINDA AS BOB

ART/LIFE COUNSELING & CONFESSION WITH LINDA=BOB , 11-4 SATURDAY MARCH 12.BELFAST

 

1. DO YOU NEED TO FORGIVE YOURSELF? WRITE YOUR PRIVAATE CONFESSION ON  APIECE OF PAPER.

 

2. BRING THE PAPER TO LINDA=BOB.

 

3. ASK LINDA=BOB A QUESTION ABOUT YOUR ART=LIFE.

 

4. TEAR UP YOUR CONFESSION AND PLACE IN THE CONTAINER.

 

5. WE WILL PROCESS THROUGH THE MUSEUM WITH THE TORN UP  CONFESSIONS AT 4PM.  THEY WILL THEN  BE BURNED OUTSIDE THE MUSEUM.

 

NEED: 

 

1.WOODEN BENCH AS SEEN IN THE PHOTOS,  WITH A SOFT COVERING ON IT SO CAN LAY DOWN WHEN NEEDED

 

2. 2 CHAIRS, FACING EACH OTHER

 

3. A CD PLAYER SO CAN PLAY DYLAN TAPES, SOFTLY

 

4. A CONTAINER THAT CAN PUT THE TORN UP CONFESIONS IN

 

5. RECYCLED PAPER (START RECYCLING NOW) AND PENCILS SO MUSEUM GOERS CAN WRITE THEIR CONFESSIONS AND A TABLE TO PUT RECYCLED PAPER AND PENCILS ON.  PAPER CAN BE  ANY SIZE AS LONG AS IT LOOKS RECYCLED .....

 

6. ABOUT 6 CHAIRS SOME DISTANCE AWAY FOR THOSE WAITING TO SEE ME...

 

7. NOT NECESSARY TO HAVE SCREENS FOR PRIVACY OR CURTAIN, JUST  DISTANCE. EASY=GOOD.

 

LINDA MARY MONTANO, 2016 

 

LINDA AND TOBE MAKE A TAPE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm845isU5po

LINDA AND TOBE MAKE A TAPE

DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE INSPECTOR

DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE INSPECTOR:  From a Story Tobe Carey Told to Linda Mary Montano, Adjusted.

 

He was an inspector, the watcher outside the window person.  Yet again his inspectorness was needed because something suspicious came into view.  Oh good,  a mystery to be solved. He loves, loves mysteries.This time it was about two appliance repair trucks;  large, white, with lettering on the sides reading (fill in the blank).  He heard them and saw them from his upstairs studio window.  Hmmmmm,  what are they here for? Certainly not for a service call for us. Everything is working in the house. Must be for (fill in the blank) and (fill in the blank), our neighbors. Thank God I watch out for them and they watch out for us. Hmmmm both their cars are there, but wonder if they are home or out?  Shit, and look, both the workers are still sitting in their trucks with their lights on. What do they need lights for? Are they reading a book? Ordering chocolate covered strawberries for their lover for Valentine's Day? Talking on their phones? Smoking weed? Eating? Coffee? Texting haiku love poems? Taking selfies of their new wedding ring? Changing wet socks? What the fuck!  This is the same company I heard not so good stories about from another friend. They are THE BIGGEST rip off  appliance repair company ever.  They are known to  sit outside in their truck for half an hour, come in a house, do nothing, then present the homeowner with a big bill and leave a note that says they have to come back and REALLY fix what they have found to be an even bigger problem with the appliance. And that equals another bill!! Hmm, I'm going to google the bastards name and find out for sure if it's them, the same company. Yup, here they are and it says they have ziltch/zero ratings and only negative feedback from past customers. And they are in my neighborhood, across from MY house, and going into my friends' house. Hope they are home! Maybe I should call them and warn them about what Google said? Hmmmmm. Let me see if my friends are on speed dial. Oh shit, there goes the fox across the lawn! I hope it doesn't dig under the house and make a nest!  Should I call pest control or the wild animal Conservation Cornell Cooperative office. Honey!!! Are you downstairs and home from playing tennis? Hope so. Guess what???

 

ENDURANCE THEN AND NOW: 1998, LAST PRESENTATION AT UT AUSTIN

---

ENDURANCE:THEN AND NOW(FINAL VERSION)

 This presentation/paper is not only about my work; it is also designed to include you the listener/reader because I will be asking you endurance questions throughout. For example: What event in your life challenged you to endure? Take a minute and review the event. Where are you now with this event?

 Are you in the waiting stage, feeling the emotions?(Pause)

 Or are you in the anger stage, confronting the event? (Pause)

Or have you transformed the event, accepted it, made art with or about it?

 Wherever you are, the non-defined feeling stage, the anger stage or the transforming stage, is where you are and the place you need to be.

ENDURANCE :

 

DEAR LINDA,

STOP LINDA, STOP ENDURING! STOP SUFFERING. STOP BEING A VICTIM AND MARTYR AND GOOD CATHOLIC SAINT. STOP THIS IMMEDIATELY. YOU LOOK LIKE A MASOCHIST! AT 73 YOU ARE STILL PUTTING CATHEDRAS UP YOUR NOSE AND OUT YOUR MOUTH. UCK, UCK, DISGUSTING! AND THE ACCUPUNCTURE NEEDLES, YOU ARE STILL DOING THAT? DISGUSTING!

AND THE SLAPPING AND TAPPING! YOU SAY IT'S FOR HEALTH ? YOU ARE VERY HEALTHY AND DONT NEED TO PROVE IT. BUT MAYBE YOU ARENT HEALTHY, RIGHT?

IF YOU PROMISE TO GO AND SIT IN YOUR TIME-OUT CHAIR, I WILL PROCEED WITH THIS FILM AND TELL MY STORY OF ENDURANCE ART OF THE 60'S, 70'S AND 80'S.

GOODBYE OH SAINT OF SUFFERING, OH SUFFERING ADDICT. 

GOODBYE,

LOVE,

LINDA

 NOTE: The week before Christmas, I sat by my father's bed, 24 hours a day for 6 days and nights , in an upstate NY hospital, as he recovered from disc surgery. I listened as he hallucinated from the pain killers and observed visually the woman down the hall strapped to her chair, across from the nurses' station, sounding like the female comedians from the british TV sitcom, Absolutely Fabulous.
 Barbara was her name and she was raging, remembering past injustices from childhood, calling to God (This is not the only reason to be nice to people...they never forget any unkindness on a cellular level.) I was the observer, watching it all, choosing to be there. Who was waiting in this scenario? Who was enduring? Was it art or just a case of life waiting to be magically changed into art?

ENDURANCE:

 I have always been interested in enduring. As a young Catholic girl, I knelt before the bloody, gory, Crucifix in our upstate NY church and I waited, endured the discomfort that comes from kneeling, endured the isolation that comes from choosing church over play and "fun", endured the possibility that I might not be good enough or saintly enough to go to heaven or be like Jesus. I was definately linked to suffering , penance and the guilt fast track at a young age.
To do that, I remember how nuns would talk about Christ and how he endured the suffering of carrying the cross, how he fell down, how he was nailed to the cross,and died miserably, forgiving everyone. His endurance etched itself into my belief system and when I was seven years old, I wanted to be a saint and I thought I had to suffer just like Jesus. That became the plot and story line for my entire life quest.
To do that:
At twenty I entered a convent,"enduring " two years as a Catholic nun, living in silence those two years except for one hour a day when we all talked together in recreation. I loved the community and dedication to a higher good and absolutely pure goal, but I left anorexic, having lost nearly 50 pounds in six months, high as a kite on endorphins . Holy anorexia? Delusions? Endurance gone amuck?
When I was introduced to art soon after, I immediately found a way to transfer religious fervor and my prediliction for penance and suffering into my work, first as sculpture and then as performance art.

For example, I sat for hours, lay down for hours, danced for hours, in public, asking audiences to watch me endure, give me the attention I demanded, witness my long-term commitment. And in so doing, I felt more alive as I soaked in their curiosity. It was as if I couldn't exist without them. Their presence was like a bath of recognition and approval and I wanted them to delight in my actions. Without the other's gaze, I didn't feel at all, so I learned more intricate ways to raise my own energy and get others to view me doing unspeakable acts of courage and then there would be this synergistic marriage of static electricity going on. They were in this web of my mysteries as viewer and manipulated into the role of voyeur, mid-wife/husband  to my happiness and co-creator of my art.
Some visual images from that time:
1. Lying three hours in a bed surrounded by 12 paper mache chickens, dressed as a saint....enduring.
2. Sitting as a saint , in 9 places in Rochester, three hours each place, holding a home-made chicken sculpture....enduring.
3. Walking on a treadmill for three hours going uphill, telling my life story...enduring.
4. Lying in view three hours with accupuncture needles in my conception vessel.....enduring.
5. Standing outside ringing a bell as a Salvation Army bell ringer....enduring.
6. Living 3 days handcuffed to Tom Marioni....enduring.
7. Living blindfolded for a week, preparing for old age and potential blindness.... enduring.
8. Living in a gallery room as five different people, one a day...enduring.
9. Studying the martial arts so as to channell rage into good action...enduring.
10. Mourning the murder of my ex-husband for two years as art....enduring.
11. Singing a song for three hours to my husband after his death....enduring.
12. Camping out in many galleries, museums and art spaces, using everyday life as art....enduring.
13. Going to the New Museum once a month for seven years, offering  Art/Life Counseling...enduring.
14. Living for a year tied by a rope to Tehching Hsieh in his ONE YEAR PERFORMANCE..enduring.
15. Living for 14 years while wearing  seven differnt colors to honor the chakras and sacraments...enduring.

PAUSE
Now take sometime and imagine your own performance..Create an action in your imagination that would mirror one of your life issues and see yourself enduring.

Certainly there is a psychological and freudian view that can be seen in my work but let's also suppose that the work is a very intuitive shamanic and ritualistic way that I invented to lead myself into altered states of consciousness while bringing the viewer along with me on this interior and mysterious journey?
Possibly there are many ways of viewing my intentions and I believe that sometimes there is a thin line between neurotic narcissism and tantric, shamanic soul travel.
Like Catherine of Siena,and many other Catholic saints and mystics, I was enamoured of endurance so I could tough it out, prepare myself for the hard knocks of life, so I could fight the good fight, bite the bullet, so I could keep it up, go the whole nine yards, get the job done and give my all.(For me?For God? That took a long time to decipher.)

Once I learned of Hindu yogis and their methods of achieving stillness ,concentration, equanimity and inner silence, I felt in the company of kindered spirits and brother-sister travellers.
 

Watch this Tibetan nun, lost/found in trance, endure rigorous/repetitive mantras, visualizations, penances, charnel ground watchings, all meant to make her impervious to Himalayan cold, pain, the mind and illusions of the relative world.
These practictioners are some of my guides, helpers, teachers mentors and inspirations on my path.

PAUSE
Who is your helper? See this person. Thank them. Vow to become a helper to someone else in the future.

We have lookedat my background. Let's now look at some universal reasons why we all endure. Endurance is built into our system because under this skin is a galaxy of networks, a mysterious world of muscles, bones, veins, and organs which endure our turbulent emotional states, endure our tortured thoughts, endure our various and punitive diets, endure the torture of climate changes and home-uprootings, endure our lovelessness, endure our fertile negative imaginings and paranoias, endure our lovellessness, endure our tortured memories and traumatic secrets, endure our disrespect for authorities and bitterness toward everyone's good intention .

PAUSE
See your body in great detail. Clear it of all past endurances that hurt.

We artists love to create solutions to all of the above and in the late 60's there came into the art stream a group of creators who made Body Art. Many of us used endurance as a primary material for our work. Some of the reasons might be:

1. That endurance was a reaction against the linearity and dogmatism of minimalart.
2. That endurance artists were interested in leaving the world of buying and selling art,making our work for each other, for ourselves, not for slick documents, mindless magazines, judging audiences or uncaring strangers.
3. That artists publically used the drugs of the day; marijuana, hashish, lsd, and peyote....drugs which allowed them to hang out , endure for long periods of time in trance and altered states, as art.
4. That the womens' movement and civil rights movements inspired artists to experiment with issues of sensitivity training and consciousness-raising, as art.
5. That artists of the 60's formed deep bonds with both eastern spiritual teachers and with American Indian elders who helped us see and feel new ways of honoring and appreciating our bodies and the earth. These wise teachers taught us self-initiatory and risk-taking rituals which could be used to mark important passages. They introduced us to death-defying actions, risk-taking attitudes and important maturity retreats. Later, once we learned from them, we translated the teachings into our performances. Now reality tv's souless translations of our experiments mirror our work but miss the inner meaning.

Then there was the division around gender. How did women "endure"? And men?

Performance art became the art of choice for women artists in the 70's since it offered a fluid, intuitive, healing, versatile, spontaneous and dynamic method akin to the physical waitings/endurings that women perform at childbirth and in the act/art of childraising.

Some women who endured:
1. Faith Wilding, transformed the pain of waiting into art.

2. Nancy Youdelman exaggerated our objectification as females.

3. The Womans Building and  Judy Chicago's group performed rites of healing and consciousness raising as art.

4. Carolee Schneemann made visceral and liberated the blood ritual women wait for, endure and transform each month.

5. Hannah Wilke satirized rites of scarification using bubble gum vaginas as metaphor and symbol.

6. Eleanor Antin endured a diet as art, photographing her body in time and sequence.

 7. Mierle Ukeles shook the hand of every NYC garbage collector, raising the status of female/male homemaker to the level of fine art.

 8. Annie Sprinkle endured audiences examining her cervix.

 9. Karen Finley raged into the night.

 10 Suzanne Lacy had a Hollywood makeover, simulating old age and  preparing herself for the time that will come thus practicing solidarity with theis forgotten population

All of these women used time and material in new ways and courageously forged ahead of the tired  painting  and sculpture of the 70's.

Men also played with time and initiated themselves via endurance but somewhat differently.  Do they wait as women do? Do men have that nine months gestational frequency encoded into their cells?

1. Joseph Beuys waited in a NY gallery in a room with a coyote while  wrapped in felt, echoing the way he was wrapped when shot down in the Crimea and was found by natives who smothered him in fat and wrapped him in felt, thus saving his life.

2. Tehching Hsieh deprived himself intensely.One of his one year waits was in a room-cell without TV, without talking, without a toilet. Then another year, punching a time clock every hour on the hour. Yet another year living on the streets of NYC , never going inside. SUPREME WAITING.

4. Chris Burden,  crucified , was nailed to a VW bug and waited, hurting.

5.Stelarc  was hung in imitation of  American Indian dancers who attach objects to their flesh and move until the flesh rips.

6. Terry Fox lay, tied to the elements, communicating a recognition of life, using hospitals images remembered from his cancer treatments.

7. Richard Long walked as art in Scotland, enduring a relationship with nature and time by creating patterns on the earth via natural actions.

8. Vito Acconci endured the pain of hair removal, questioning gender, body, male-female identity.

9. Stelarc endured in preparation for bionic, intelligent microchipped robotic uniformity.

10.Tom Marioni drinks beer with his friends every Wednesday evening as life-art .

And not to confuse the issue,what about couples who used the genre of body art as a metaphor ? As a fill in for the longevity of relationships!
1. Alex and Alison Grey endured public silence and meditation in a cross of apples, death and light , as art.

 2. Marina Abromovic and Ulay used a single braid of their hair and twin physiques to mark time and co-dependence , as art.

3.  Barbara Smith taught the techniques of tantric sex by practicing long-held positions so that sex could be witnessed  in a gallery setting and could be experienced as a mutual energy exchange and not a performance contest.

4.  Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh got roped into life tasks, holding jobs, traveling , never touching for a year, as art.

PAUSE
Can you imagine how you would initiate yourself into a life passage? Write it, sing it, perform it , keep it secret but by all means BE SAFE!!

 

And artists began addressing the invisibility of the internet, enduring without being present, preparing for the robots that we will someday be. There in an invisible internet community, travel, audience and applause are non-existent.

 

1. Linda Montano stands in for herself

2. Linda Montano sits in for herself at the New Museum.

 

My latest endurance ,(1998), is a 14 year Chakra event, inspired by my Guru, Shri Brahmananda Saraswati. In India, the land of magic, eroticism, excess color, delight, sensuality and spirituality there is an inner theology that posits that here are seven energy centers, symbolic magnets drawing intelligence and abundant energy into their centers. To activate the system a great yogi, Gopi Krishna sat breathing slowly and rhythmically, drawing his attention toward the crown of his head, contemplating an imaginary lotus in full bloom, radiating LIGHT.
 
CONCLUSION:
My father once told me when I was complaining about a life issue, I think it was insurance prices, He said to me, "Life is hard enough. Don't make hard things harder." And in his yearbook his legacy states, "Henry Montano is someone who makes difficult things seem easy."
By practicing endurance, possibly we can prepare in a strong way for times when we need to be even stronger.

 

CONCLUSION:

 

DEAR LINDA,

IT'S TIME TO STOP! THAT'S ENOUGH. STOP ENDURING LIFE. STOP CREATING SUFFERING. STOP, STOP, STOP IT.

LIGHT IS ENOUGH.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU,

LOVE,

LINDA

 
This paper was presented 1998 at my last performance  at UT Austin Texas as a good-bye. Currently, text for film: ENDURANCE THEN AND NOW.