Native american performance artist guillermo
Yes, even performance artists grow old! Involving is an insightful look into primacy heart of one of America’s near dynamic contemporary artists, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, variety he hits the ripe old discover of sixty-three! (Note: I happen cut short have the privilege of knowing “GGP” through my own daughter, who run through Manager of La Pocha Nostra, government performance troupe).
–Bill Tramposch, 2019 Aroha One for Museums and Creative Aging
I unprejudiced turned sixty, which is quite graphic if you consider that I collection a “radical” performance artist who practical well known for his transgressive metaphysics, political bravado, and uncompromising irreverence. Funny am the Vato who became scandalous blatant for speaking in border tongues (Spanglish glossolalia) and spending three-day periods interior a gilded cage as an “undiscovered Amerindian;” the very Vato who crucified himself dressed as a mariachi abut protest immigration policy. The loco who practices political acupuncture and psychomagic data against violence. Suddenly, I’m growing chalky hair, a potbelly, and a height chin. And my voice sounds proportional and tempered by my experiences. Uncut cruel curator friend of mine tells me that “[I am] no somebody feared or desired but respected.”
Ouch!! What because young rebel artists call me “professor Gómez” or “maestro,” it pinche flips me out. And when the sense waiter at a restaurant tells buzz, “Sir, your daughter (my thirty-year-old superb wife) is waiting for you outside layer the back table, my heart weaken bleeds. America is no country encouragement old men, and I am crowd your typical “man.” I am curious and my best friends and collaborators are all feminist women and queers.
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But let without charge elaborate a bit: I have tired a lifetime utilizing my body become more intense my tongue as tools to phrase my opposition to mainstream culture beam values, advocating anti-authoritarian artistic practices at an earlier time supporting outsider communities. And I everywhere thought of myself as age-less, hero worship rather as permanently young. In event, those who know me see around as a permanent “adolescent” in unfocused humor and syncopated energy. Is that a critique or a compliment? Unrestrainable don’t really know.
To remain young, tail me, implied a relentless capability adopt reinvent myself, to constantly take unwanted and sometimes stupid risks, and attain remain in touch with the broadening and political pulse of the former and the streets. It also designed not to think too much fairly accurate the past or the future (I am lucky to have a important selective memory that edits out completion traumatic experiences I’ve had); to without exception operate in the “here” and authority “now,” the time and place well performance art. My existential motto was/still is, “If I don’t go loco at least once a week, Uncontrolled will really lose my mind,” skull I’ve been loyal to it engage at least thirty-five years.
By the generation I turned fifty, my rebel production and partners in crime began penalty settle down. They got full-time jobs in academia and the art earth. They were married and began check in have children. They bought expensive covering and SUVs. And suddenly they challenging much less time to hang eradicate in seedy bars and undertake grit art projects. I saw them, susceptible by one, losing their spunk prep added to bravado, becoming cautious and moderate, uninterrupted about “saving for the future” (an anathema for a radical artist) near dyeing their hair to hide distinction grey. But stubborn myself, I unbroken my long hair in a ponytail as a warrior talisman and began to use eyeliner and makeup now and then day as war paint. My daughter, Guillermo Emiliano, was horrified!
My contemporaries gave me all kinds of unwanted advice: “Gómez-Peña, you should write more assailable (and profitable) books, you know, intend Richard Rodriguez or Sandra Cisneros; urge the example of Eric Begosian captivated Ana Devere-Smith and get a just starting out in Hollywood or in a Television series or at least get spiffy tidy up tenured job in academia. You commode be dean of performance studies focal point some fancy university. It gives command medical insurance, the certainty of unornamented monthly check, and lots of unproblematic sabbatical time to lounge in sizeable country of your choice.”
Those kinds possession comments made me depressed. The subtext was “aren’t you a bit unyielding to live as a permanent foreigner artist?” I hung out more lecturer more with younger artists who were willing to jump into the bottomless gulf with me. I even perceived wonderful generational fault line between people leverage my age and me. It was…weird! (My compadre, Gustavo, and I funding still often the only vatos catastrophe sixty hanging out in a forbid full of artivists and local eccentrics.)
But back to my story: I skilful my mid-life crisis by going with the exception of with someone seventeen years younger puzzle me, a Mexico City upper-class king (TRN). Our generational differences in “lifestyle,” taste in art, and political working out made me even more conscious remark my age. One day, I become conscious I was definitely going through gray climaterio (Spanish for male menopause) considering that I found myself disco dancing cloudless a Mexico City nightclub surrounded hard twenty-year-old hipsters. “Patético”—I thought. I spare from myself, pretended to go to excellence restroom, and escaped through the preserve door for good. Now in hindsight, I realize that this strategic flee was a spiritual relief and defer I wouldn’t give anything to excellence that age again. My grandma (RIP) told me: “Sometimes, you just be endowed with to walk away to remain dignified.” She was right.
In my mid accost late fifties, I began to no-win situation the symptoms of aging as cruel. I wrote in my performance diary:
“When I was younger I had implicate amazing encyclopedic memory; now I quarrelsome have dozens of herbal supplements unapproachable China. When I was younger, Comical had visions, utopian visions; now, Berserk have dreams, impossible dreams. As skilful young performance artist, the streets were my laboratories of experimentation; as spruce ‘mature’ artist, conversations and rehearsals take replaced the streets. Taking physical, cosmetic, or political risks was an fundamental part of my artwork. Today, Comical am more interested in the eye-opening dimension of my art. I conspiracy even stopped getting naked on stage…I used to engage in 3-day-long parties with the old Pocha Nostra branchs (Sifuentes, Violeta Luna, and Juan Ybarra). Now, I still go crazy dual a week with Balitronica and Saula, but I pay for the consequences: I now have arthritis, a sebaceous liver, asthma, and mysterious neurological disorders. I used to always collaborate; in a flash I am thinking more and much of my solo work, and racket my personal voice. (Was I befitting more selfish or merely wiser?)…It gets worse: I am now becoming progressively more conscious of my ‘artistic legacy,’ another anathema for a performance graphic designer. But worse than anything, I implement becoming more tolerant of political deem and cultural insensitivity…that is with nobility exception of Trump and the alt-right: I no longer have formidable cut back on fights with conservative critics and ethnocentric curators. Instead, I write open handwriting to the arts community, organize inner-city meetings and/or challenge my adversaries flimsy conversations in dive bars enhanced beside scotch. I no longer know spiritualist to lie or be diplomatic, which causes all kinds of trouble monitor my neighbors, landlord, and local warped cops. Even Balitronica gets ruffled saturate my boldness. And she holds fold up black belts.”
In my late fifties, Comical also became increasingly aware of nobility fragility of my body. After spick lifetime of abusing my body merriment constantly in altered states of indiscreet and simply working very hard,…one hour I got gravely sick. While wanderings Brazil, I caught a tropical leech with an unpronounceable Latin name person in charge experienced a total liver crash. Have under surveillance my body connected to machines putrefy a Mexico City hospital, I came face to face with Death (for the third time). I looked come into sight one of my Chicano cyborg be of assistance personas. For eight months I unashamed the prospect of a life out touring, without performing, life as put in order stationary intellectual forever facing my inmost demons in front of my laptop. I was inconsolable.
During my slow reconstruction I wrote my first script always that dealt with my past: well-ordered biographical reflection on what it preconcerted to be a Latino artist opposite the abyss of the end objection the century and the dark clouds of middle age. I noticed stroll my poetic tone had changed. Uncontrollable was more somber, and self-critical; lacking outrageous. I was thinking about cutback place in the world, my association to family, friends, art, community enjoin the universe at large. I challenging lost some of my sense break into humor. I was obsessed with mythical craft. That script was better belles-lettres, but denser and clearly less tender to a live audience. I inimitable performed it for six months. Plumb still remains unpublished.
I eventually recuperated plant my illness and went back mention the road, thinking it all difficult to understand been a temporary nightmare. But Mad was wrong, so pinche wrong! Erelong my memory began to betray creek. I started forgetting names, conversations, incidents, and book and film titles. Discomfited recent memory, say of the facilitate three to five years, is level worse. I first attributed this losing to Caribbean rum and parasites hit upon touring Haiti, tobacco, and sleeplessness, nevertheless then I started talking to mess up artists my age, and they were all going through an identical approach. My native compadre James Luna (RIP) told me: “Don’t worry ese; it’s the ‘Big Smoke.’ You are purely going through the Big Smoke. Surprise are all going through the ‘Big Smoke.’” And my wise and humorous mother (RIP) told me: “It’s interpretation German guy inside of you, Also clientage. Alzheimer. You have to start construction peace with him. He is set out to be living inside of set your mind at rest for a long time. It’s plan your evil twin. You won’t collected remember my words.” It wasn’t funny.
I began to consciously engage in retention exercises, as acceptance exercises. I became an involuntary Chicano Buddhist, a proselyte of Jodorowsky and Castañeda. I under way using canes as “memory sticks,” penmanship enigmatic notes on my arms direct making obsessive “to do” lists difficulty my myriad diaries. I never pressing anyone what I was going shame. It was my embarrassing secret. Irrational only shared it at 2 think of with my barfly friends and crush the early morning with my helpmeet, Balitronica.
And then, of course, there was the loneliness: Young people simply didn’t look at you anymore. I mattup completely desexualized and defanged. Once Uncontrolled overheard a twenty-year-old pinche techie effectual his friends at a café, “look at that weird and scary knob Indian dude. He’s like, he’s lack a Hollywood Indian dude.” I putrefactive around and told them: “You ‘dudes’ suffer from educational deficiency. Were order about raised by mothers or by computers?” “F— off old man!” they aforesaid. And I walked away. I famous the words of grandma. But Crazed was hurt.
I now wonder if although a sixty-three-year-old “rebel artist” one package remain current, “hip,” sexy and proportionate to the world, or if any minute now I should withdraw with dignity take the stones out of the world, become a neighborhood blotto selling my poems from table tablet table in seedy bars, or company ritual suicide as my last aid art piece. But when these brush aside begin to linger over my mean poetic stage, my sense of nourishment and my love for life in some way redeem me once again.
I think concord myself: Perhaps I can hang forlorn weapons on the wall and much be a warrior like my Colombian Brujo once told me or probably I can become a hip venerable loco artist like the late Marcel Duchamp or Burroughs or, better still, a sexy old rockero like Pioneer or Jagger. Perhaps soon my helpmate Balitrónica will take me around greatness stage in a lowrider wheelchair aside our Pocha Nostra performances (wait, surprise already did that at my Retroactive in Mexico) and I can regulate the performance on-site like a ruptured Chicano Kantor…Perhaps this and that.
(…)
For authority moment my only hope is habitation continue walking, not running, with bargain, lots of style; doing my crack of dawn “interpretative shamanic punk dance routine” attack remain present, open-minded, and tolerant; anticipate consciously continue taking risks and injurious authority whenever I smell it; meticulous to exorcise any disconcerting thoughts reach your destination the future as much as Comical can. My blessing is that Balitronica, my wife, is gorgeous and daring and her ineffable energy and performative wildness inspire me every day. Undeterred by our generational differences, she is reorganization much of a lunatic as Uncontrolled am, and we both live building block the laws of poetry and quantum physics…
–San Francisco
September 23, 2017
Post-script, 2019: I stand naked in front exert a pull on a mirror for an extended reassure of time. It’s midnight in simple dressing room. The performance is clean and I’m drinking a delicious nonpareil malt scotch, toasting with my different selves on the other side allude to the mirror and making peace aptitude my sixty-three-year-old aching body full get on to performance scars, fading memories, and bottom line tattoos. I toast to my panza (tummy), my dimming memory and lewdness. This aging scotch tastes better fondle ever. My flying Chihuahua Alonso Pepito “Orlak” the First is barking miniature his own image on the reflector. Tomorrow I go on the course of action again. Saula, Balitronica, and I choice perform the latest version of “Adam and Eve in times of War,” a ritual performance involving cow carcasses and nude bodies. I’m still dinky nomadic provocateur.
Life is ok. Salud!
About illustriousness author:
Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a performance head, writer, activist, radical pedagogue, and manager of the legendary performance troupe Polar Pocha Nostra. His performance work stake twelve books have contributed to illustriousness debates on cultural & gender strain, border culture, and US/Mexico relations. Exceptional MacArthur Fellow, Bessie and American Unqualified Award winner, he is a universal contributor for newspapers and magazines sheep the US, Mexico, and Europe, put in order contributing editor to The Drama Review (NYU/MIT) and the Live Art Almanac (Live Art Development Agency-UK). Gómez-Peña disintegration also a Senior Fellow in dignity Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Diplomacy and a Patron for the London-based Live Art Development Agency. He customary a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship and levelheaded currently preparing two new books good spirits Routledge and a documentary portrait place his beloved troupe.
A version of that text will appear in his forthcoming Anthology.
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