Running Blind: The Tucson Border-Crossing Diaries

Day 7: Wednesday, August 8, 2007

The Human Enigma Machine

The art form to which we will bring all the skills, methods and community-building exercises we’ve been practicing this week is what Guillermo calls a jamming session. A jamming session is a full on, freely improvisational group performance. But first there’s one more task to complete and that is the development of our performance personas. Each of us must construct an image onto ourselves using the props and makeup from our vast supply. This is a chaotic but very fun and creative task. Everyone runs around looking for the best combination of costumes and props they can find that will best define their concerns and interests as a person and as an artist.

Once we’ve found our images, then we have to define the characteristics of those images through a series of exercises. In full costume, with our eyes closed we begin activating the parts of our body with movements we think are apt. Our movements begin with our eyes, mouth, neck and then to our arms, hands, waist and finally down to our legs and feet. My character is a post-apocalyptic jester with a scepter made from doll parts and maracas that rattle noisily when I shake the scepter. We are asked to define three different actions or gestures and to practice them at different speeds using different energies like mechanical, military, compressed, amplified, fast, slow and etc. This takes about half an hour and is amazingly effective. The space becomes a bizarre and exotic array of clockwork characters performing movements for an audience of no one in particular.

A couple days ago, as part of our response to the heat, we relocated our “stage” to a new part of the space where it is a cooler and as it turns out also has more possibilities for interacting with the spatial architecture. There are possibilities for entry and exit, for getting higher and lower as well as two posts in the middle to play off against.

The music plays and the session begins when one person occupies the stage and starts to do their thing. After an appropriate pause another and then another joins in. We stop at three images (people) and let their rhythms and energies begin to take shape. Guillermo and La Pocha members, Michelle, Roberto and Violeta call out directions and guide the process. It’s like a painter composing the picture plane, looking for the foundation upon which to build the final composition. The session coughs and sputters at first like a cold engine but after a while it begins to hum. I always lay back at the beginning because I lack confidence. But there are some fearless, veteran performers among us who have the confidence and experience to add distinctive strokes of action in the early stages. They are usually the first ones to jump in. Watching our jamming session unfold I can’t help but be impressed by the transformative nature of the images we are collectively creating. The shifts in location and action on the part of the performers are simultaneous and continual so that the bigger picture is always evolving. Some move in isolation while others find partners to interact with. The grand effect is a paradoxical mix of harmony and conflict.

At some point a distinct and unmistakable unity emerges. When this happens Guillermo will remark with great conviction and passion, “This is so-o-o-o pinche beautiful!” After awhile though, the image inevitably begins to fall apart under the weight of its own success. When this happens La Pocha members intervene to alter our positions, or our movements or to remove some of us and replace us with others, with the goal of keeping the overall image alive.

Halfway through the session, I have discarded my jester persona in favor of a death mask and a long red dress. While I am observing in the wings, the center of the stage becomes vacant so Violeta pushes me forward to take the position. OK, here goes. The mask I’m wearing makes it difficult to see and breathe. It feels like a sauna underneath my costume. Sounds are muffled, too. I'm now the centerpiece of the action, but I feel very removed so I take up a classical pose with both my arms extended to the side and soon other images begin to coalesce around me. Katy, topless and wearing a George Bush mask, drapes herself at my feet. Someone else spreads a gold fabric around her while another crawls up to her and begins to nibble on her shoe. Jorgecito is standing on a pedestal next to me with a long walking stick with a plastic globe on the end. It’s filled with water and somehow when he shakes it in my direction it sprinkles me with drops of cool water. I can feel the tug and pull of other bodies all around me but I can’t see any of them because my eyes are riveted straight ahead and the mask is very restrictive. I have an irrational fear that if I look around, I'll break the spell. Occasionally someone crosses my field of vision like Larry, wearing a Fidel Castro mask, walking across the front of the stage area with a golf club he’s using like a metal detector to follow a path of rose buds spread on the floor. Elsewhere a ninja armed with antlers jousts with passersby before crawling in submission to a Las Vegas dancer. A fetish cowboy stands on a pedestal and simulates an autoerotic passage while a dancing Kachina figure duets with a cyborg priestess.

And so it goes for two hours, as one bizarre and fascinating image after another oozes out of our flesh and blood enigma machine.

When the evening comes to an end, we’re all excited at what we’ve been able to do. Our heads are bursting with obscure, unforgettable images, and even though we are tired and burnt, our feeling of accomplishment is real. Hard to imagine that two days ago we were on the verge of a collective crisis.

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