Running Blind: The Tucson Border-Crossing Diaries
Day 10/Pt. 2: Saturday, August 11
Radical Democracy, Mass Creativity and Aftermath
About 8pm it is time for the jamming session part of the show
to begin so we all rendezvous back at the DJ room. I perform one
more costume change and come back as Death wearing a shoulderless,
long white dress (Denise’s maternity gown that she never wore).
I am late and the jamming session is in full swing when I arrive.
The space is crowded with people trying to get in from the hallway.
I walked through the crowd and people just get out of my way! Gómez-Peña
wears a brightly colored “Mexi-kilt” with fishnet stockings.
On his right foot is a black high heel shoe and on the left foot
is a motorcycle boot. He carries a walking stick.
I hop up on the stage. Things are just getting warmed up. After
a few minutes Gómez-Peña halts the action and addresses
the audience, “What is this? Is it a poem? Is it an installation?
Is it a performance? Is it a sculpture? Now what would you like
to see?” They are the exact same words we heard him say in
the workshop but now in the public arena they suddenly seem to have
a very different impact. A woman shouts, “How about something
happy?” Gómez-Peña isn’t interested in
“happy” and just throws the word back at her with disdain,
“Happy?” He is holding out for something more complex
and difficult. Finally he hears something to his liking –
War and Peace! We begin again, this time aiming for an image of
worthy of the theme.
The method behind Gomez-Pena’s madness is becoming clear
to me. Within these circuits of feedback and mass creativity that
present themselves spontaneously, he finds openings to make provocative
statements or ask rhetorical questions, of the audience.
“Is it possible to talk back to power? Can we talk back
to our politicians?”
“We are just here trying to practice a little radical democracy,
a little freedom, a little mass creativity...”
“Can we send a postcard to President Bush From Tucson, Arizona
to the White House? What will it say?”
By this time, the third wall has crumbled to the ground and the
audience are fully participating members of the performance. The
feed back ideas for the performances and many have started to join
us on stage.
Another time Gómez-Peña halts our image making,
turns to the audience and demands, “Shall we open up this
border?” I hear someone say, “Not again!” and
someone else groans, “Get real!” Gómez-Peña
turns on the audience vehemently and demands again, “Shall
we open up this border?!” He isn’t going to back down.
There is a pause while people tried to make sense of what he just
said. The room was electrified. Will the audience revolt or fall
in with us? After a pause that seems like an eternity even this
last boundary is overthrown and the audience members begin to shout
back, “Yeah, open it up!”
After that some one shouts out Death and someone else Fate. I
think, I am Death, I’ll just stand somewhere on the side and
not participate. That will be my performance. That was fine for
a while. Then I remembered our workshop training, to engage with
the other performers. I thought, I’ll be the Grim Reaper and
remove people from the stage. But before I can execute this plan,
Gómez-Peña grabs me and sits me down on the edge of
the riser. He takes both my hands and puts them on top of my head.
Then he puts his hands on each of my shoulders and sharply pushes
them back. I understand instantly. I have been placed under arrest.
Someone places an audience member next to me just as someone shouts
out, co-operation, friendliness, and harmony, as themes. With out
thinking I face my partner sitting cross-legged, pretend to light
a cigarette, take a drag and hand it to him. Without missing a beat
he takes a drag from it too and produces a fake a cough.
We knew the end is near when Gómez-Peña begins to
ask the audience if the image they were seeing at that moment is
an image they wanted to end with. Everyone is having too much fun
to quit, so we do two more rounds. For the very last round, one
audience member shouts out that we should do a fairy tale while
another shouts out a virgin sacrifice. Gómez-Peña
takes it in for a couple beats and pronounces, “OK, we’re
going to do an image of a fairy tale that ends with a virgin sacrifice!”
Several of us congeal around a an image that combined the famous
pose of the Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima with a nude Katy
as our virgin sacrifice. Gómez-Peña ends the show
on that wonderfully bizarre and contradictory note.
Sunday, August 11, 2007
Aftermath
Last night following the show there was a raucous after party.
All the enormous pressure of ten unrelenting days of concentrated
creative energy was exorcised in one last drunken ritual of friendship,
commemoration and farewell. Was the show as good as it seemed inside
my head or was it all just an orgy of bohemian hedonism? As I left
the party at 2 am I saw Larry weaving, bleary eyed towards the door
with Praba who seemed fine. It was hard to go while people were
still standing but I was already feeling nostalgic for the week.
I wanted to go to bed and swim in the mental swamp of my mood while
I still had a few brain waves left to call on.
This afternoon there was a farewell brunch at Denise’s house.
One last time to see Praba, Larry, Denise, Bruno, Gabriela, Jorge
P., Natalie, Erika and Kelly before hitting the road for San Diego.
Larry was so hung over he couldn’t get up off the floor. From
time to time he raised his head and offered a weak smile our way.
He had partied to the max all week and now he had nothing left to
give of himself. It was funny and inspirational to seem him lying
on the floor like a pile of ashes after an all night bonfire, utterly
consumed.
It was over 110 degrees and the air conditioner in my car was
worthless. I stopped at a store to buy an ice chest, some ice and
drinks for the road. The sky was darkening and thunderheads crowded
the horizon. 90 miles west of Phoenix I saw a bolt of lightning
shoot down in a zigzag and strike in the distance. It seemed like
a sign so I stopped to take some pictures among the sand dunes along
Highway 8.
Back behind the wheel, it was business as usual. Mind buzzing
in harmony with the flies. I got caught in a traffic jam of all
the subliminal, liminal and primary images I’d seen and the
many pairs of eyes I had gazed into during the workshop. All the
compacted human sweat and the sounds and smells still alive and
moving around inside me. Every single confused, humiliating and
delirious memory refused to depart. Each psychotropic border-crossing
felt and tasted like it was pressed onto my tongue in a living network
of performance art acid drops.
After a seven-hour drive through tormenting heat I arrived back
home in San Diego. Time: 9:15 pm.
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