BEING BOB DYLAN AT HIS 76TH BIRTHDAY PARTY IN WOODSTOCK NY

 

BEING BOB DYLAN AT HIS 76TH BIRTHDAY PARTY IN WOODSTOCK NY

CREATIVE DISSOCIATION
Since 1976 I have been practicing what I call " Creative Dissociation," a medicinal performance/theatrical character creating device that allows me to get out of my own skin safely and without the added burden of being institutionalized for public displays of difference that might offend the common good. It all started seven score years ago and was so noteworthy/bothersome that my father named me Sarah Bernhardt, commenting no doubt on my ability to feel and dramatize the atmosphere of our home, a gift I used later on as my performance modus operandi.

SEVEN PERSONAS
The seven fairy-tale-like female personas that came OUT of me in the late 1970's were from different countries and were totally fabulous: a French poet, a British neurosurgeon, a Karate Black Belt, a Jazz singer, a nun . You can see them for free on You Tube: Learning To Talk. At that time, for over a year I sat in front of a video camera and talked as them, interviewed myself as them, became them and escaped from being me which is admittedly a great Theological device but at the time was an indication of an untreated DSM's listing of  medical conditions with verifiable labels like: PTSD/Depression/Untreated Grief/Tragic Trauma/Dissociation/Suicidal Ideation. If I had been a seriously practicing and loyal Hindu Vedantist at that time I would have been content and silent, not touched a video camera and meditated on their salient, holy statement which warns: "I am not this body and mind," a mantra I could have murmured over and over,"I am not this body and mind, I am not this body and mind, I am not this body and mind." My Guru from India would have applauded and approved of my using his teachings to heal myself, but no, artist that I am, I resorted to video and MY WAY, creating a therapy that fits my rebellious nature. 

CATHOLICISM
And having grown up strict Roman Catholic and even going as far as entering a convent for 2 years so I could become a saint-in-training, I could have gone quietly into the depressed night, not made videos of myself as these successful, fabulous and professionally alluring women and instead, could have practiced a Christian mystical/Biblical version of inner persona morphing and also could have prayed mantra-like day and night: "It is not I that lives but Christ who lives in me. It is not I that lives but Christ who lives in me. It is not I that lives but Christ who lives in me." Again, art won out, I didn't do that but continued taking care of my mental business via video/performance/writing books and teaching my art-life methods all over the world and created my own " Linda's church of art." In this church, I made the rules and I was the live-in priest.

BECOMING OTHERS
Some thirty years later, the recipe of being fantasy people so I could learn how to like being me changed from my wanting to be fairy-tale people and I began wanting to become and act like REAL people. For example; Hillary Clinton, Jill Johnston, Paul McMahon, Mother Teresa and Bob Dylan were the one's I dopplegangered in the hopes of getting close to me, not to them. See Masks, you tube. The thought is, I love being Mother Teresa and all of these sundry wonderful people, can I love being me as much as I love being them? Little did I know that being them and loving them was a lube/prompt to liking me and that I was next in line. Sometime soon I would become a maskless ME!

BEING BOB
Just last night, May 27, 2017, Woodstock NY celebrated Bob Dylan's 76th birthday at the Bearsville Theatre. The organizer, Luann Bielawa, offered me a comp ticket because I had already performed a 7 hour Bob Dylan lip-synch event on a lift for 7 hours a few years ago and she knew of this performance and my belief that I looked like him and wanted everyone else to believe that as well. See Tobe Carey's  you tube, Linda As Bob. Actually my two brothers really do look like him and when I self-apply a thin moustache on my upper lip and wear the right hat, jacket, cowboyish pants and sunglasses, I pass for him a little. So last night I applied the moustache at home, drove to the theatre, drank my semi-cold Genesee beer in the car when I arrived there and then began my walk to the venue into invisibility because only twice that entire night did I "get" the reaction, get the applause, get the nod, get the "Oh look, it's really Bob," reaction that I expected. In fact, what I got was an interesting non-nod of "let's not notice this person because IT MIGHT BE BOB and we are Woodstockians and we are so cool and so used to illuminati and famous personages being in our town, in our midst, in our bars, in our restaurants, that it is actually RUDE to acknowledge them and spoil their need for privacy, anonymity and real time presence." So they didn't paparazzi me, didn't ask for an autograph, didn't smile, except for that one woman who flirted with/wanted me and the other woman friend who got that it was me/Bob but never came over to let me know that she knew.

THE REAL REASON
Thank God that a man scrambling to his seat in the theatre, rubbed past my legs and gave me at least an, "Excuse me sir," and that made my day but after two hours of listening to incredibly phenomenal Bob Dylan music played superbly by Woodstock musician artists, I was blown into such happiness and let-me-touch-your-feet appreciation of people who don't look like Bob but sound his words, his feelings, his poetry and his brilliance sans a faux moustache, Dylan hat or sunglasses that I realized, I'm closer to letting them honor Bob and letting me just be ME!
DSM begone. My mask is almost off.

ANOREXIA NERVOSA AND MY ART

 ANOREXIA NERVOSA AND MY ART

Do you think art in general can have a therapeutic effect? 

Absolutely. My art is medicine. My art is good drugs. My art is a hospital visit to cure me. My art is pure healing. My art is unbounded self care.

When i had access to video, I interviewed about 12 women with eating disorders. This is available on You Tube and is called  ANOREXIA NERVOSA. I also asked someone to interview me and it is also on You Tube. It is  called  the same.  

Has your art had a therapeutic effect on yourself?

 My art has given me tremendous occasions, for over 50 years, to invite others as audience to applaud me to see me, to give me good attention, to accept my messages, to approve of me, to re-parent me, TO LOVE ME!!!  

Is your art meant to have a therapeutic effect on the viewer? 

By osmosis and by appropriating me process, by nearness via appearing at  my performances, by reading about them, i have made my recipe available and others therefore can use my Path, my Way and find their own healing.  It is simple: If you hurt, make art.  If you are confused, make art. If you are emotionally damaged, make art. If you need love, make art!!!

If you feel that your art can't have a therapeutic effect, can you explain why? 

Art is a left and right brain activity. Ritually the artist also dips into the conscious, subconscious and SUPERCONSCIOUS to bring messages to THEMSELVES. Then we intuitively and REALLY via using stuff, by using any medium, to bring BIRTH to our dream/trauma/SELF.

Do you find suffering in your life a source of inspiration for your creations? 

Absolutely. Suffering made me an artist!!! I had no source for revealing my pain, nobody there because I was an INSIDE PERSON.  So clay/wood/video/endurance became my way to speak me!!!

Can you consider yourself an individual who has overcome an eating disorder or do you still struggle with this? 

Strangely, the covid incarceration has actually become a LIFE HEALING! I can't go out, i can't hide from my need to FACE FOOD!!! I have had to admit my embarrassment that I am EATING HAPPILY-COOKING HAPPILY-EATING HAPPILY!!!!!!!!!!!  I see now that I was truly ATTACHED to my disorder.  Covid unattached me and I now joke about it with my Foodie-Friend and when I call him I say, "Hello, Linda's Kitchen calling!!" S, so funny but I know that I still am attached to NOT EATING IN RESTAURANTS WITH PEOPLE.  At least I imagine that I have not broken that fear. I tremble thinking about restaurants! By the way, I am 78 years old, almost 79, so there is always hope. If seniors can do it younger people with eating disorders can do it also. Right?

MAY ALL OF US WHO HAVE FOOD AS ONE OF OUR "LIFE-EXPERIENCES" FIND HEALING IN OUR OWN UNIQUE WAYS. AND MAY ART BE ONE OF OUR HEALING MODALITIES.  LOVE, Linda.

Linda Mary Montano , answering Phaedra Vanneste's questions.

WAYS THAT BEING RAISED ROMAN CATHOLIC INFLUENCED MY PERFORMANCE ART-LIFE

 

 

 WAYS THAT BEING RAISED ROMAN CATHOLIC INFLUENCED MY PERFORMANCE ART-LIFE

1. THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE: Going to Confession as a child every Saturday and being taught in Catholic grade school that I was sinful and caused the death of Jesus, I consider my art as a duplication of this sacrament. For example, when I perform ART/LIFE COUNSELING, now I AM THE PRIEST, listening to people's issues, giving cures, helping and hopefully not scaring the collaborator. Confession was always frightening back in 1948, hopefully ART/LIFE COUNSELING is reassuring and  fun in that i pick up a salt shaker, pour salt in  their hands and say, "take what I say with a grain of salt." ART CURES FEAR.

2.  THE HOLY SPIRIT: When I was taught about the HOLY SPIRIT, I asked myself,  "Where are the women? There is only the Father, Son and Holy Spirit?"  Back then, women were silent, muzzled and unspoken but luckily I sensed a need to respond to my feelings of exclusion. So I became friends in  the 1940's with The Holy Spirit. And by the way, is this an internal and hidden reason why I began working really/conceptually and  physically with live chickens in my art? They were the stars of my MFA dissertation at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And later I became THE CHICKEN WOMAN, evolving from showing live chickens to being  one. A Holy One perchance?

3. THE MYSTICAL BODY.  At the age of 9 I had an experience of the Mystical Body, an experience of presence and oneness while visiting 2 elders who lived next door to us in a small village, upstate NY.  My performances and especially my endurances are always about asking for/creating and hoping that ONENESS and Unity Consciousness  come forth and are born from time-space dissolvings. 

4. THE CRUCIFIXION: When I was 9 years old, kneeling in Church, I told Jesus that if I was to be like him, I would suffer as much or competitively suffer even more!  Im sure thats why I pushed acupuncture needles in my body, pushed rubber cathedras down my nose, got tied to a man for a year with a rope, handcuffed myself to another artist for three days, blindfolded myself many times living alone in galleries. These were my personal  Crucifixions via Art!!

But I grew tired and aged and eventually  accepted Metta loving kindness suggestions . Plus, I stumbled on the rest of the Jesus story, that is  the Resurrection and Pentecost.  My art changed because my one upmanship with Jesus changed. We now collaborate.

5.THE EUCHARIST: My first Eucharist at 7, I fainted at the wonder of it. The BODY AND BLOOD OF JESUS  aspect of it. And it happened one more time when I was in  my 60's. I fainted after Communion then also. Have I truly found that that level of swoon and ecstasy and  alpha, beta, theta, delta brain wave transcending is possible to achieve via HOLY SPIRIT Infused endurances? Does my art reach that level of self-forgetfulness? For example, I experienced an EGO DEATH when I chanted the story of my ex-husband's murder during the video: MITCHELL'S DEATH. I know , that isnt like the Eucharist but it's a close second!!!!

6.RELIGIOUS STATUES: My whole art-life, I have been wanting to be an incorrupt Saint , a living  statue in the Church of my art.  Sometimes I succeed!!  My art is so generous in it's ability to give me the Spiritual medicine that I need to heal my ego self. The Crucifixes and Mary Magdalene sculptures that I made for my MA in Sculpture at Villa Schifanoia, Fiesole, 1966,  will hopefully find a home in a tiny Chapel to be made and placed outside at a museum or at an art collector's collection. BTW  is this a request that you find a way to make this happen?  If so, it includes a finder's fee!!!

7.  HOLY ORDERS:  It's obvious, given my art-life story,  that I would perform as a priest, as a priest impersonating a nun, as an officiant at my rituals, as a person high in the ranks of my own  art church.  But this priest confers the grace of open hearted compassion and wisdom to others,  hoping I am not  a priest/Clergy person who does harm. If I am a good art priest, what a wonderful job I have created for myself!  Art gives me what I need and want.

8. ANGELS:  I impersonate them, i dress like them, collaborators dress like them,   I invite them into my performance space so that they can do their angelic  job with and for me. I am never alone performatively or personally.

9. SAINTHOOD: With apparent hubris, I have acted in art bravely and brazenly, giving myself titles and jobs only the real saints have earned. For example I perform as Mother Teresa because i look like her bent over aged self. This way of performing helps me  to make peace with  my aging art-life body. Over the years, i have become over 12 different people via what I call trauma induced art-dissociation. I play with gender/persona/and the question, WHO AM I really. It is a question that I will continue to ask until there is no more personal I, just a marrying of my Source to Source, my big art Marriage. BTW,  all of  you are SAINTS  as well.

I end with the VISITATION, my favorite Rosary Mystery.  Sculpting it over and over , as art in the 70's, helped cure my inner HEART. In these times of no touch, may we all hug ourselves and perform THE VISITATION OF LIFE. 

 

Much ART=LIFE=LOVE to all of you,

Linda Mary Montano

Saugerties NY 2020

LETS CALL HIM JERRY

 

LETS  CALL HIM JERRY:  LINDA  MARY  MONTANO

Due to the fact that this happened, I will change the name, circumstances, place, time, and most likely the real reason I am even telling this story. Here it goes.

Once upon a time there was someone, me, needing to _______________ .  Jerry was found, via a friend, and "hired" to help me __________. Problem was, the last time i needed to ___________, the institution that hired me to  ______________ paid(hired) the person helping me to _______________  via their accounting office and business procedures and protocol.  And you know how business protocol is:  it can be lenghty and nosey and complicated. Here is the problem and tragic flaw. Jerry was small-business. Jerry did not want to do paperwork. I didnt know that Jerry wanted the cash upfront and since  the other time i did _______ with someone Not small business, like Jerry was, $$$$$ was never mentioned when I asked Jerry to  _________________ me.  The institution paid. I never touched a cent!!!! Why should i talk $$$$ with Jerry.

Plot thickens: But oh, oh,  oh, I was wrong!!! Institutional paperwork had been sent to Jerry before we________  and as a result, disgruntled Jerry,  the whole time we were together working/doing _____________, he, in not a happy fashion,  reminded me right at the beginning of  _____  that he wanted his  $$$$$$  and that the place sponsoring me had sent very complicated papers/requests for Jerry to find/fill out and send back to them so that Jerry could be paid. Small-time Jerry  wanted his  $$$$$$  upfront,  right away, NOW and so I had to sit through my time with Jerry, listening to his over 70 year old complaints about, "Will I ever get paid for  doing ______________  for you."  I was wishing I had never ever asked Jerry to assist me , given the fact that I really could have done _______________   alone and without his help.  What a mistake!!! I thought that asking Jerry to help me would leave me stress free and soothe my 78 year old bones. Oye!!!   NOT!!!!!

A few days later I saw Jerry again ( after having humongously tipped him for Part 1)  and his first words were , " They .....this and that"  translated:  NO MONEY HAD COME MY WAY FROM THEM!!! For just over an hour I sucked it up and forgot about the kudos/applause/honors bestowed on me at the institution's event that I attended. Oye, no glory here! Just evil comedown and a punishing litany of my mistakes thinking the Jerry event would be smooth, easy and enjoyable like I had previously enjoyed when X, Y and Z performed________for me.  No such luck. I said goodbye  and thrust another humongous tip in his unhappy hands and wished him luck. Hoping the $$$  saga would solve itself.

Then came the BIG PANDEMIC!  The game-changer!! The leveler!!  The killer!!  The time eater!! The money annihilator!! The family creator/destroyer!! The job taker!!  The medical armageddon!!  Some strange bonuses blossomed: friends called/siblings bonded/The Pope told Catholics they could go to Confession  BY THEMSELVES, without a priest! Prayer lines/meditaion zooms/ yoga skypes/you tube breathing videos from the 70's surfaced.  In fact it was a kind of  NEW  70'S, a re-seeing of a time when love, food, getting high were free and the only viable language.  In fact, sometimes once non-speaking neighbors left food for shut-in elders on their doorsteps!!! It was a transition into The New Way via Lady Death's Way.  

So how does this have anything to do with Jerry and  $$$$$$$$$$$.  In my examen of conscience I thought, "Who have I harmed?" and thought again, hmmmmmmmmmmm,   if I were Jerry I would think that I was harmed by me. So I bit the bullet,  opened up the case again with an incredible, beyond incredible, beyond patient and beyond incredibly patient and incredible person from the institution that wanted "papiers" from Jerry, and this Mr Incredible took  8655 hours of his  time when he would rather be wearing his mask and gloves and finding food for himself in his  Trader Joe's in ____. YES!!! This Mr Incredible found a way to sort of make it , maybe make it, hopefully make it easy for me to cut Jerry out of my Current Karma Story so that I could focus on  writing my DNR DIRECTIVES for my brother and sister to follow when I called in the middle of Covir terrors some night in the future.  But no, NOT YET,   this same brother now had to walk me through  how to solve the  Linda and Jerry Make And Fix A Mess Story. And Jerry continued to be  scary-messy. 

Guess what LD ( Lady Death)?   $$$$$$$$$  doesn't  talk. 

Not The End.

 

PART 1:WHAT THE PANDEMIC MADE ME DO IN/TO MY 7 CHAKRAS & PART 2: NO GUILT WHEN I FIND MYSELF IN ANY ONE OF THEM

 

 

PART 1:WHAT THE PANDEMIC MADE ME DO IN/TO MY 7 CHAKRAS  & PART 2:  NO GUILT WHEN I FIND MYSELF IN ANY ONE OF THEM

1ST CHAKRA: MULADHARA:  I THINK ONLY OF MONEY/FOOD/MY CAR/MY BANKS/ THE STOCK MARKET/CASH/TIPS/WHO TO RE-IMBURSE/POPCORN/TOAST

2ND CHAKRA: SVADHISTHANA:  I THINK ONLY OF SEX/INTIMACY/MASSAGE/PAST GOOD LOVERS/PAST NOT GOOD LOVERS/ESSENTIAL OILS/LIPSTICK

3RD CHAKRA: MANIPURA: I REMEMBER HOW WONDERFUL I AM/ HOW POWERFULL I WAS/ HOW GREAT I WILL BE/HOW I WILL NEVER DIE/HOW PERFECTLY I DEAL WITH EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING/HOW STRONG MY MUSCLES ARE

4TH CHAKRA: ANAHATA:  I LOVE ME/ I LOVE EVERYONE/ I LOVE TREES/ I LOVE ANIMALS/ I LOVE ROCKS/ I LOVE THE UNLOVABLE/ I OOZZEE  WITH LOVE/I LOVE NETFLIX

5TH CHAKRA: VISHUDHA:  I SAY TRUTH TO EVERYTHING & EVERYONE/ I CREATE TO TRANSFORM THE UNTRANSFORMABLE/ I USE MY VOICE ALWAYS/I SCREAM 

6TH CHAKRA: AJNA:  I BEAM LIGHT OUT/ I STAY COMFORTABLE IN MY WONDERFUL MIND/ I DONT FEAR LOSING MY MIND/I NOTICE MY DANDRUFF

7TH CHAKRA: SVADHISTHANA:  I FIND ALL OF IT TOTALLY FINE AND DANCEABLE/I GIVE UP

Question: Where do we go in the heat of the night  when we are faced with armageddon?  How to honor that journey?

Chakra Joy to all of us. 

In art=life=love

Chicken Linda

PANDEMIC HAIKUS

PANDEMIC HAIKUS

handlessly  touching

unbroken penetrations

technically  ONE

2.  

BRANCHES STRIPPED NAKED

BLOSSOMS REFUSING TO BUD

UNMUTE THE LAND LINE

3.MEDIEVAL MASKS

STEALTHY PARIAHS

EXORCISMS  NOW!!!!!

4. GRIM REAPERS WORKING

OVERTIME AND EVERYWHERE

PLEASE  KNOCK BEFORE DAWN

5. NOW GALLOWS HUMOR

WHISPERED UNDER THE COVERS

CLEAN SHEETS BLESSED BY SUN