|
|
Re: Chicano Art
Posted:
Sep 4, 2005 10:20 AM
|
|
> Don't talk down to me, Jaime - My collective life
> experience guarantees my ability to comprehend many
> cultural differences - regardless of your believing
> that or not. You are not that difficult to
> understand nor comprehend...and accusing others of
> racism is pretty gutless when your own racism is
> obvious. You wear your racial and cultural origins
> like a drag queen wears his same old rags. It would
> be nice to be able to relate to you without you
> constantly throwing your race card at others. AND
> NOW! That anger spent uselessly on you...here's a
> suggestion that at least I intend to follow: Why
> don't you and I both shut our fucking traps, keep our
> fingers off the keyboards, not log on here for
> awhile, and concentrate on how we - as individuals -
> NOT AS OUR ON-LINE PERSONAS - try to find some way we
> can help the victims of Hurrican Katrina. In the
> face of their immediate need...I am sickened by you
> and I paying more attention to this today rather than
> to them. I'm over and out. JML
I am not talking down to you, James. You called me out with your post of that article. You also sent the article to my personal e-mail. You honor me, by taking me seriously enough to be concerned about Latino art in New York City. Jimmy Longoria, Chicano Artist de Minnesota, at the inception of identifying himself as an artist, gave in to the reality of indigenous art. My mentor, Yando Rios, whose mother said the name was a joke on her sons future, Wandering Rivers, insisted, in 1974, that I retreat within myself to find my spirit before I started my journey to identify myself as a Chicano muralist. At the time I thought it silly. I must admit that I was truly Western in thinking and believed it absurd nonsense to search for a spirit identity. I went to Yando and gave him a fabricated idea. Some nonsense that I made up about going into the mountains and fasting, staying awake all night long watching the stars morph and hearing the stars sing, the trees talk, having a mystical experience. He laughed at me. He said that it was a nice story, but that it was not the way it happens. He sent me out to the backyard of his house in Placentia, CA to talk with his mother. She was sitting on a stool holding a chicken on her lap, quietly soothing the chicken by stroking its neck. She was wearing a god-awful polyester lime green leisure suit, with her black and white hair braided and tied off with a red and white ribbon. She was wearing Dorothy Lamour sunglasses and she said, "Why did he send you out here?" I said I didn't know. She laughed and - in one swift movement - broke the neck of the chicken. She held on to the body until the chicken carcass stopped moving. Then she said, "What are the real answers to the questions my son asked you?" I found myself answering uncousciously. I said to her that my color was iridescent black. That my item was a black feather, like that of a crow, and that the only sound that I could remember was the howl of a coyote. She asked me where I was in my head, and I said it was inside a museum. She asked me to peel the skin off the chicken with the feathers on. She showed me how to insert my fingers where she had twisted off the neck. And she showed me how to pull back the skin and feathers like a pelt. The entire chicken became naked in my hands with virtually no blood and the only thing we had to cut were the ends of the wings and the feet. She then wadded up newspaper and put it inside the skin and put it underneath her seat. I held the warm chicken in my hands and she said that I needed to massage the breast because this was a rooster and that we had killed the angry male spirit in my heart and she had a name for me. That name, James, is El Perdido. It means the lost one. She then told me that no matter what I was going to do, I would wind up lost. She said as soon as I accepted being lost, I would find myself. Yando came out and invited me back in the house and out to his garage studio. He said that from that moment on I was his spirit son, but more importantly, I was his mother's grandson. He asked me my name. I told him and he laughed uncontrollably. I asked what was so funny. He said his mother never would give names to people seeking a way, and the kiling of the rooster was about taking away my ego. He said for an artist to not have the ego of being the source of truth is to be lost in America. That I would be so odd an artist in the American art community that I would constantly be like a wandering river taking the wrong turn. That was in 1974. I was a very rational human being. I thought everything I was exposed to was nonsense. But my life journey from that moment has been a series of wrong turns. My home at the furthest extent of the United States in South Texas is bracketed by two important rivers, the Rio Grande, formerly known as the Rio Bravo, and the Mississippi. It is, for me, very poetic that you should mention the Mississippi disaster in the same bracket of thought of your fear of Coyote. Understand, James, Coyote is a spiritual aspect of art. You will note that I am back in my own signature and voice. Ray must have taken my socks off. Understand what that means. There is a rational explanation for my signing on here through Ray's identity. But for my grandmother's sake, there is no rationality to it except that it is cosmic. You are right, we do need to figure out what to do about the disaster in the South. Certainly, art groups will organize another art auction, and you and I will both participate. I would put this to you, James, join me and invite everyone who has posted here to go to Colin and ask the staff of the Walker to host the mnartists.org forum artists auction to raise money to support relief efforts.
On the matter of the article that you sent via my personal e-mail. I can only comment on the article as I have not seen the show. But I will tell you what Coyote says, the desire of art critics and art professionals to dismiss Latino/Hispanic/Chicano art as just another fashion or fad of the New York art scene is a tragic example of the same kind of Minnesota Nice racism that I am fighting. Remember this, James, my birth certificate officially identifies me as a White person. My grandfathers are likewise identified as white people, as are my grandmothers. It is not an oversight of the documentarians of the time because we find Mexican as a race of that time in the same records. The race card that you and others claim I am playing that you and others keep reminding me of, is not what you think it is. It is the race of people who are true to themselves. I think that is what irritates you and Fallon and others. I am a white man who is truly making himself not white. And that is very challenging to all those artists in New York who are trying to make art that white people accept and then appending Latino/Hispanic/Chicano to their names because they believe, as you do, that it is the trend or fashion of the time. Please understand, James, I am the only Chicano artist in Minnesota because I am the only one here willing to openly identify myself as a Chicano artist. And through rational examination of budgets, James, I can make the claim that Chicano art is being discriminated against by the art funding community. The rational reality speaks for itself, James. But my approach is a spiritual one. Do the art institutions have it within their spirit to solve the rational problem of discrimination against Chicano art? It is a scary proposition, James, because there are over 60,000 Hmong here. Hispanics keep growing by the hundreds per day. African-Americans from the disaster site will be coming here - 3,000 according to the papers. The cultural diversity of Minnesota will explode in the next 20 years, James. The lost one does not champion the cause of himself as much as you all would like it to be that way. The truth is, Coyote is part of the waking up of your spiritual conscience. Mysole purpose, James, is to allow you to vent your deep seated anger and rage so that i can invite you to walk with me in peacefully changing the structure of Minnesota Nice racism. That is the jewel - and a hint here, James - indigenous people rarely polished jewels. They knew the strength of the stone in its natural form. There are some of my brothers that do not study history, do not tap into their culture. They unfortunately make themsleves cigar store Indians.
With much affection and respect, James,
Coyote
New York bound
You are not that difficult to
> understand nor comprehend...and accusing others of
> racism is pretty gutless when your own racism is
> obvious. You wear your racial and cultural origins
> like a drag queen wears his same old rags. It would
> be nice to be able to relate to you without you
> constantly throwing your race card at others. AND
|
|
