Linda Mary Montano Interview with Kathy High : 2021; Death Notes 1988 Included
Kathy
Hi, how are you? I'm recording this call if that's okay with you.
Linda Mary Montano:
Before we start, I’d like to do a prayer. Holy Spirit, you're so wonderful. You are energy, you are light, you are love, you are electricity, you are invisible, you are space without time and please bless this opportunity to be with Kathy. Let us share in a way that is helpful to us and to all. That is, if it is to be public to all. Amen.
Kathy:
Amen. Thank you. That was beautiful.
Linda Mary Montano:
So, I'm all yours.
Kathy:
Thank you. I don't know if you got to see the email that I sent you about this. I'll give you a little bit of the story. There was an international group of people who I know, some from this country, some from Europe, some from other places. We are part of the Viral Culture: BioArt, COVID-19 and Society group (lead by Claire Nettleton, PhD, Academic Curator of the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, California) and we started meeting once a week online during the pandemic, to chat and talk about what was happening all around the world with the pandemic, comparing notes. Sometimes it was a big group, sometimes it was a little group. But one of the things I tried to bring up to them was to talk about death, because we were seeing more and more and more and more and more deaths. And, finally I invited a death doula friend of mine to the meeting. And so, she talked about her work dealing with death.
And then, they stopped the meetings finally about a month or two ago, and one of them one was really ambitious and said, "Let's just make a book." And they sent out a call and asked me if I would write something about death and dying.
And I said, "Well, okay," because, I had been thinking about death a lot. And then, as I was writing this little blurb on death for them, I was also trying to clean up my office because I'm here all the time stuck in front of the computer and because I had to get a bigger table and I had to get a better chair, I'm cleaning up, and I found this literally behind my desk, like sticking up from the heater (showing Linda the Death Notes card). This!!! The “Death Notes” card you wrote in 1988 when your mother died. ( Included below.) And, it completely gave me the inspiration and prompt as to how to take my writing forward. So this is the idea; I'm interviewing five people about death and I sent everybody a scanned copy of your card saying, "This is my inspiration and it is coming from Linda."
So now I would like to make a death toolkit that could help us in going forward in this atmosphere of these hundreds of 1000s of deaths form Covid. But it is also for myself as I'm getting older too.
My article is called “Death Tool Kit” and it is for the anthology Viral Culture: How Art-Science Collaborations from CRISPR Cas-9 to COVID-19 Transform Humanity and the Humanities co-edited by Louise Mackenzie and Claire Nettleton.
Everybody I'm interviewing is an artist. Some people are death doulas, some people are spiritual practitioners. There are two death doulas. One is Marne Lucas. And she's the one in New York City, and then the other one is in California and her name is Adriene Jenik. They are both artists. In fact, everyone that I'm interviewing is a really wonderful artist. You're from Saugerties, NY. Ione is from Kingston, NY. Kira O’Reilly, you might know, she’s in Finland.
Linda Mary Montano:
That sounds wonderful.
Kathy:
Yeah, I haven't interviewed everybody yet. But the ones I've done, have been super different from each other as to be expected, which is really great. And I'm just going to try to be like a beacon and call in these blessings.....They felt like lessons from each person that I've had so far. And just select some parts of their interview and put them together in some form that, makes sense somehow. And then, see if they like it. There's another group in Sweden called the Queer Death Studies. I went to one of their conferences about a year and a half ago. I know some of the people who are involved in that. And they're really great. And so, they're always looking for papers as well.
Linda Mary Montano:
This is so important.
Kathy:
I agree, and I just don't think we're talking about it enough.
That was my reason for doing this. And, I also just wanted to use it as an excuse because, I miss everybody and I just wanted to have conversations during the lockdown!
Linda Mary Montano:
Is your body comfortable now?
Kathy:
My body's comfortable. I'm not getting enough... Like you, I'm not getting enough exercise, especially in the winter-
Linda Mary Montano:
No, I mean like, like right now. Are you sitting? Or lying down?
Kathy:
Yeah, no. I'm sitting in my desk chair, it's warm in here. Hazel's here, my companion work cat. Hazel is my black cat. If you were here in person, she'd be on your lap. She's very friendly.
Linda Mary Montano:
How sweet. I will make believe I have a cat too.
Kathy:
Okay, perfect. Well, she can come visit you. She will come visit you.
Linda Mary Montano:
Thank you for giving me a whole beautiful and careful story about your death research... So, I'm ready now, you can ask me questions?
Kathy:
Okay. Okay, cool. Well I made some questions for all five people that are pretty basic.
So, either answer them if you want, or talk around them or just say “next.”
Kathy:
This is January 31, Sunday, 2021. We're talking with Linda Mary Montano. We're starting this interview at this point. The first question I wanted to ask you is, would you briefly introduce yourself and talk about your own art practice.
Linda Mary Montano:
I'm born to perform. I took everything that ever happened to me and made art of it. I use art as medicine, I use art as therapy, I use art as spiritual practice. And art now uses me. I call it being a Lifeist. There are artists and lifeists and life asking me to become a lifeist, which is an artist who makes art of life. Before I was a 100% Artist, now my daily life minute to minute is my ART.
I've always taught that, I always tell people to do it, but now, because of the pandemic, I'm really, really being the nun I always wanted to be. I was a nun for two years. And, I didn't have the maturity or emotional stamina to stay in the convent. But now I am in the convent, I'm enclosed like everybody in the monastery of my home and, learning how to make art of every second. Next?
Kathy:
That's great. That's really great. And with that work, what part of it has brought you to issues around death and dying?
Linda Mary Montano:
My guru always said so many wise things and, one of the things he said, or I thought he said, or I made up and I don't think my guru said this, but I'm making him say it.
"A surgeon transforms their need to kill by helping people with knives." He wouldn't have said it that way. But, he said something similar, which made me think about death and my interest in the subject and what is true for me is that I repressed so much trauma in my life. I'm not even going to begin to list them, I mean you'd be on your knees crying. So much trauma, and so much internalized rage that, I transferred the trauma and rage and suicidal ideation to the performance of death. And so, I became a deathaholic an artist fascinated with death. I wanted my audience to give applause for my rage and for my need to die because I just couldn't stand the trauma. Couldn’t deal with it alone, so I made lots of questionable attention-grabbing performances!
So, their attention, their applause, they are medicine to me, and also I got juice from getting written up in books. The rewards got me to the point where then I could bring death to life and start dealing with it therapeutically and start dealing with it spiritually, and start opening the cellar in the underground to my shadows.
My shadows began in infancy because I almost died then. I was allergic to cow's milk, not breastfed and my mother said once in an interview I did with her, "Linda, you were throwing up gobs of cheese after you had bottles of cow's milk."
So, my original imprint was I'm going to die. That was my original mantra. And I've carried that mantra, and also instead of bringing the rage of the result of trauma to the surface, and the rage at individuals who caused the trauma, which would be a natural response, I switched it around and thought about killing myself. They were all in the same queue: killing death, anger, hell, Catholicism, suffering, penance ….
Kathy:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Linda Mary Montano:
I grew up on the crucifixion. That's the second chapter of my life. At 9 years old, looking at the gory bloody crucifix in the Catholic Church next to my catholic grade school, I talked to Jesus and told him, “You are suffering, You are dying on the cross.” And I started this competitive dance with him and said, "I want to be a saint just like you! To do that, I'm going to suffer more." Back then, I didn't know about love. I didn't know about the resurrection, I didn't know about how to celebrate life. I knew none of those things. So, I carried the crucifix ideation, the crucifix thought, the crucifix theme, the crucifix prompt my whole life. And that was fine. You know, death was fine. Because I mean, I was suffocating natural angers when I was wanting to die, so I grew up, saying and performing "I'm dying" instead of enjoying the natural expression of all of my feelings. I was able to find a container for the shadow in performance. I mean, not that death is a shadow, death spiritually speaking is, a reverse birth. It's just going into the other womb of spaciousness. But we've made it this hellish, horrible hellish terror. Okay, what's next?
Kathy:
Yeah, exactly. So, when you're thinking about working with other people who are dying, or who are grieving, and maybe for yourself too, what are some of the therapies you practice - not for fixing things, but for acceptance or for transforming? How do you talk to people about this because I know so much of your work and you told me to go look at your Living Art/Dying Art video prior to this.
Linda Mary Montano:
It's on YouTube and was made in collaboration with my incredible collaborators: video Editor, Tobe Carey and sound Engineer, Jim Barbaro.
Kathy:
I know from all the other work you've done with the fourteen years of chakra experiences that
you have worked so hard around these death issues for yourself. But putting it out publicly is also a kind of way of extending it beyond yourself.
Linda Mary Montano:
I think about creating opportunities for myself and those attracted to my way of working. Many of us travel to the same places in our WORK that we would be in as we're dying. Which is that space and place of suspension of belief, suspension of …, basically said suspension. And that’s the performance of letting go, or surrender. And you can talk about changing consciousness via alpha, beta theta delta gamma and Pauline's work and vibrational frequency and electromagnetic vibrational frequency. All of these wonderful buzz words attract me.
And I think, as an infant I probably went there. And then through trauma I disassociated out of my body, and became 7 faux people in the video Learning To Talk . And then I became 3 real people: Mother Teresa, Bob Dylan, and Paul McMann. And NOW, I graduated to being nothing. My new work is now nothing, will be nothing. How can I be SOMETHING while MOTHER EARTH is calling for HELP??? So, getting out of this mortal coil, getting out of this pain body was something that as an infant I practiced. And then through trauma I practiced, but I mean, crazily, of course, it was not healthy. I'm surprised I'm walking, talking now. It wasn't a healthy path. And it wasn't the loving path. I don't know if you know the Aghoris? That's a sect of Indian Hindu practitioners, spiritual practitioners who practice awareness by embracing all that isn't positive. Like they eat shit, that kind of thing. They're very, very, very, very powerful, very powerful.
I think I've lived like an Aghori and, doing it certainly not via the Hindu methodologies but, just fumbling default. And in doing so, I created a mental institute hospital, my home which I named, THE TRANSFIGURATION HOSPITAL, that has a patient of one, which is me.
Linda Mary Montano:
Okay, next.
Kathy:
So, thank you for that. That was really, really amazing. And the next thing I want to ask you that was sort of the pandemic itself, and how COVID has affected your work and thinking about death. And what tools are you developing with thinking about trauma, inequity? All of it.
Linda Mary Montano:
It's leveled the playing field. I am not the only one hanging out in this death performance. For years, and I'm almost 80 , I felt like I was out there alone doing this personal research. But this is happening to EVERYBODY. So, it's really knocked my high hat off. Not that I was proud of myself for being in the deathorama game, but it's spiritually unempowered me, because now, I am one with everyone. And before I was kind of out there, not proud- I don't know if pride is one of my faults, I don't know. But I was out there, maybe in an artist world or a seeker world and there weren't many out that I could feel comfortable with. But now, it's like, "Linda, look at you. You are one of billions." I didn't realize I had pride, pride of singularity. And, all the spiritual teachings are, "We are one, we are the Mystical Body of Christ," which I felt once as a young girl. Now I'm getting the Mystical Body of Christ teachings, the suffering Christ, through this identification with everyone via Covid. The alarm goes off for a fire, can you hear it?
Kathy:
Yes. Oh, my God! (laughter)
Linda Mary Montano:
Next.
Kathy:
That's amazing. So, you sort of answered this, but maybe you have something to add. If you could change our cultural attitudes around death, and I guess I'm speaking most specifically around those in our country and the Western world, what kind of changes would you like to see because I think that there's a resistance.
Linda Mary Montano:
I would like to have everyone know that it’s ok to get off this realization or feeling that they have to do death correctly, or they have to be perfect at assisting others to die correctly. That is bogus. That's horrible, horrible pressure. Horrible pressure, "Oh, I have to hold the hand, oh, I have to touch the feet, I have to say this, I have to sing that, I have to use that essential oil, I have to tell them I'm sorry."
I throw all that out. I throw it all out. I think that it's a pressure on the person who isn't at the bedside. It's a pressure on the person at the bedside. It's a pressure on the person dying. And the person dying has a pressure as to how to die. It's a mess! It's a big mess. And I think the more we unshadow, we've been doing it unshadow everything we've been doing, that's incorrect, we're going to understand the concept of “invisible presence.” We're going to understand the role of the angels. We're going to understand the value of nothing. We're going to understand the love of fear of dying. We're going to understand the terror, the love of the terror, we're going to understand the forgiveness of the people who are dying wrong, and the forgiveness for the people who are helping the people die and they're doing it wrong. So, they can forgive themselves. Please read the DEATH NOTES I wrote after my Mother died in 1988. They are included below.
I felt strongly then that there is a "right way" to die, a "right way" to assist at a death, a "right way" to say goodbye. Covid cured me of that feeling of right and wrong way and now i'm thankful that my Guardian Angel is better at handling all of this death caregiving, and dying than I am!!! Amen.
Kathy:
Amen. Wow!
Linda Mary Montano:
I feel very strongly about that.
Kathy:
Yeah, that's really great. That's it for the questions I have. If you want to add anything, please do so.
Linda Mary Montano:
No, nothing to add. Tell me your Aghori story.
Kathy:
I’ve written a story, and I'm also trying to do a film of it - it is about a group of people who become vultures. It's partly by accident that this happens. And then they figure out how to do it for themselves by altering their gut microbiome so that they can eat rotten food and dead things. They sort of clean up, help with a cleanup crew of the earth. And they become their own cult. I really am looking forward to looking into this more just to see some of the teachings of the Aghoris.
Linda Mary Montano:
Oh, yeah, yeah. You and them are talking the same language. And it's to again strip language of its right and wrong, strip belief of good and bad. It's a very high spiritual position because it's beyond culture, it's beyond belief system, it's beyond ethics.
Anyway, but the other contact I'd like you to make is with Greg Archer who wrote a book about his Polish family’s traumatic past. Tell him to send you the interview with his uncle that the Holocaust people did. His uncle and his mother and the other four kids in the family were taken to Siberia and then Africa by the Ukrainian or the Russian army. John tells stories of unbelievable trauma, unbelievable trauma but Greg’s uncle he's just radiant while telling how he jumped on dead bodies when they were in the cattle car where his sister fell out of the bunk and had a probably second degree cut in her head. Stories about they're eating horses. And before they got on the cattle car, the father said, " We're going to have to have food," and he said to one of his daughters, "Go in the barn and get some chickens. Just hack them or cut their heads off and put them in a bag." And they ate that uncooked meat on this cattle car going to Siberia. John's still alive and so is Greg’s mother but they have an INCREDIBLE life force and deep non-attachment to their traumas!!! I love Greg very much. We want to do a healing performance in Poland together.
Kathy:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Linda Mary Montano:
I'm excited about your project. It's wonderful.
Kathy:
Thank you.
Linda Mary Montano:
And I'm so thankful to you that you gave me a forum, opportunity to think about these ideas that have been in my mind, these questions, and I've never put them out into my voice. I see how strongly I feel about the dying issue and the HOW TO DO IT RIGHT ISSUE, and the people that are not there issue, and I see how I've translated these beliefs I have into another methodology which is about not-presence and the idea that there is no RIGHT WAY and that we have to forgive ourselves for how we mumble and bumble around the dying, and I think that's what I'm learning... One more thing, what we're learning from this pandemic is this graduation from presence, graduation from presence. There are people saying, "Oh, I couldn't get to see my mother, my father and my daughter, my son, my dog whatever. I couldn't go. They are dying in a hospital." And because we can’t attend the bodies of those close to us, we are being forced into a very, very high spiritual position of learning how to be present without the body. And learning how to work on telepathic channels, on angelic levels, on telepathic wavelengths on imaginative levels, on electromagnetic levels, on invisible levels. And we're being spanked by the pandemic into a new belief, "Let go, it's all dying, let go and just die. And, be invisible."
I love you, Kathy. ByeBye!!!
Kathy:
I love you, that is so amazing.
Linda Mary Montano:
I couldn't have said this if there is nobody to say it to. Which indicates that you pulled information up from my shadow world and my depths, my depth. And gave me PERMISSION to say it!!!!! Now that’s magic. Thank you.
Kathy:
Thank you. Oh my God. Do you want to get off this and FaceTime for a second so I can see your face?
Linda Mary Montano:
Just a second. Let me put my lipstick on!! LOL.
Kathy:
Okay. Let me just close this, and I'll call you right back. Okay?
Linda Mary Montano:
Okay.
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DEATH NOTES: LINDA MARY MONTANO 1988
In 1988 my mother died. It was a five week hospital death. I was with her much of this time. These are some of the things which I learned.
1. Ask the dying person questions and wait for verbal/non-verbal responses i.e. "Should we stop the medicine? What do you need? I didn't always ask my mother questions and now wish that I did.
2. Listen, Listen Listen!!
3. See if they have unfinished business that they want to work with, i.e. unexpressed thoughts, feelings, wishes etc. (My mother said I wish that I had written a book" knowing that I would hear her and do it for her. I have.)
4. If they prefer let them leave consciously, alertly, with awareness. (Because one medicine was stopped she became comatose. I didn't know that would happen and I missed saying goodbye because of that.)
5.If they agree play nature tapes in the hospital room. It creates a no panic atmosphere. ( I played one and nurses used to come into the room because it 'felt good in here.")
6.Help the way they need to be helped not the way you need. ( Once I was chanting, praying , laying my hands on her abdomen, teaching her to breathe and my mother, always the comedienne, opened her dying eyes, looked at me with an Imogene Coco-look and said, "Linda, PLEASE!!)
7.Confess by their bedside. (Clear your heart but do it telepathically. Tell everything you need to tell. Do unfinished business without their hearing. Sotto voce.)
8. If the person is on heavy painkillers they might change their behavior toward yo, positively or negatively. Be ready! (My mother became a hippie on morphine. She pulled me close to her, tried to show me the rainbow colored aura on my face, touched the peach fuzz on my cheeks. We re-bonded.)
9. Get counseling yourself from either friends, 24-hour telephone hotlines, Hospice volunteers etc. I talked with a Hospice volunteer for 4 years on the phone while my mother was sick and dying. (Hurrah for Hospice.)
10. Know what "patients rights" means and use the information appropriately. ( I asked one nurse, "If this were your mother would you allow a nurse to take "vitals" and do blood work while your mother was comatose and had only a little time left? " The nurse said, "No." I said, Then please do not take blood and stop all orders at the desk."
11.Be prepared for each family member and close friend of the dying person to have a completely different response to everything. Emotions are close to the surface; everyone's death anxiety button is being pushed.
12.Use TV, VCR'S as teaching tools. ( When my mother wanted TV on I turned to cartoons. The flying horse image from MY LITTLE PONY did wonders for her attitude and actually kept her pain free.13.Inconspicuously breathe together(match your breathing pattern to theirs) and gently sound the exhalation. (Steven Levine teaches this technique. It's Tibetan and comforting for both patient and caretaker.)14.Whisper messages near an ear. Keep messages positive and in words they need to hear. ( When I said, "Relax Ma, Mitchell and Karl will take very good care of you," she responded positively. These were friends who were dead and whose company she loved when they were alive.)15. Go as far as you can go with the process at the end.( Those last 15 hours when she was comatose I felt a need to meditate, give her space, no touch her as much. Check out your own situation. It will be different.)16.After the death participate in the process as much as you can given circumstances etc. Help wash the body, close the eyes etc. ( I didn't see the spirit or the soul leave. Some people do.)17.Nevver ever judge how you or anyone else mourns or deals with a death. ( I demolished and rebuilt an abandoned building for two years after she died. I rarely cried but my body sweated.)18.Be watchful for messages, dreams, symbolic visits. (She came as a butterfly or sometimes a wave of feeling. I continue a dialogue with her.)19. Daily prepare for your death in your own way.20.Your comments?
For a video version of DEATH NOTES, go to MY MOTHER, ARTIST, TEACHERFRIEND by Linda Mary Montano on YOU TUBE. It was made in collaboration with Tobe Carey , editing/animation and Jim Barbaro, sound engineering. ================================================================================
