Linda Montano: 7 Hours Sounding the Chakras (1996)

7 Hours Sounding the Chakras

Performed by Linda M. Montano and Ellen Fullman

Sunday, February 11, 1996

The Candy Factory, Austin, Texas

Chakra 1: Sex Red Perineum

4:15: Kerthy is telling her sexual history and the meditation has begun. When Linda is really moaning, it shakes the platform like winds outside the window during a thunderstorm -- Wuthering Heights ghosts while you try to sleep in a bed. There are about twelve people here watching right now; most of them are young, college-age, one older, sterling-haired woman smiling -- a devotee of Linda's perhaps? Kerthy is topless with a big red costume like the Birth of Venus clamshell. The long string instrument makes a drone that is really beautiful and soothing at this point -- wonder how it will sound to me in eight hours? I realized the wires remind me of the overhead wires in the train stations when you pull into Milan or Rome. It's like Ellen's playing power lines, like telephone wires down a highway, walking along like a tightrope walker, never looking down. When Linda coughs it sounds like a nineteenth century tuberculosis asylum, clearing, clearing, clearing. Now she is howling again like a wolf outside a cabin in the forest -- fire burning and safe and cozy inside. These sounds are terrifying and it reminds me of that 1950's horror movie where the scientists are inside a kind of metal igloo and the abominable snowman is outside in the arctic cold.

I don't know any of the people here. I can't see Kerthy except for her red hood. I can only see Linda's back, draped in lace, and one of her feet in a yellow sock. This would be a good chakra from which to write my valentines. Too bad I already finished. Luke -- this passing thought is for you -- great sex last night, hope I don't bleed all over myself up here -- I am your mushy bloody-hearted valentine. If they autopsy me they'll find a combo heart/uterus organ, my mythical organ, sacred heart of uterus. My babies came from in there -- that's why I don't want a hysterectomy, ever. The pace calmed down now, stilled. Kerthy's talking about menstruation now, about her mother's repressed sexuality. Can't think who I should write to during this chakra -- probably this is the least subtle one.

4:45: Kerthy's been talking about people who prey on children sexually. I can't get comfortable, still feel kind of theatrical. I feel like adjusting my bra straps. It feels like I'm on a train or a transatlantic fight -- the way you feel like nobody's watching you, yet somebody could be. You will be known to the stewardess for an instant when she brings the drinks -- you can squirm all you want because you're unknown to everyone so it doesn't make any difference, but it's possible someone could be looking at you at any given minute. Maybe you sense a glance directed at you, or did you imagine it, or did you wish for it because you're bored?

Linda was making an apelike noise, like gorillas beating their chests and it got real intense for a while. Now more of the feral sounds and the storm raging outside the cabin door. It must be hard to sound or talk or read for an hour. The noise level in here rises and falls, there's a dynamic. There's a correlation between what Linda and Ellen do, and sometimes it feels like the noises Linda makes are in response to the reader, like she's illustrating. Now the reader, Kerthy, is so quiet I think the microphone went out, or else she's just radically changing her sound level in contrast to Linda and Ellen. If the microphone is broken, I guess I need to try to fix it when I go down there in ten minutes -- or will Ellen? I have no idea what Linda would want done. Now Kerthy sounds like someone talking on the telephone in another room and you don't know if you should listen any more. When it's amplified, you know you have permission. The loss of the mike is melodramatic -- makes me feel like an unwilling voyeur -- very tense about what Linda would want me to do about it. I have no idea, hope Ellen will come out and do something. Any second the alarm will go off and we will see what ...

Chakra 2: Security Orange Pelvis

5:30: The microphone was broken. Linda had to stop the meditation and give us instructions about incense and lights. I feel guilty I couldn't psychically figure out what to do. Ellen had to do additional sound checks and it was disruptive. The reader, Steve, is talking about money and so I decided to clean out my purse and balance my check book. Not feeling anything now, really, like an airplane or bus ride, like getting started on a journey and being disrupted by road construction or the car breaking down. Again, the telephone line and power line analogy. Why do I feel like I'm on a train -- the sound? I can feel motion, vibration, through the platform and chair. This hour is really going slower. Stress about the breakdown of equipment, inability to intuit what Linda wanted and not knowing how to do what she asked. Also this chakra is money and security, obviously where a lot of my issues are. I can't get comfortable during this one; I was sneezing and my butt hurts even though this chair is great. I'm not feeling this chakra like the first. It's not as hypnotic. The reader is some kind of professional actor/writer, where as Kerthy was way more a real person "just talking" after the first few warm-up minutes. Seems like he prepared all of it, like a stand-up comedian, not like it's just moving through him. Now there is a nice hypnotic hum going on from Linda and the long-string instrument. For a few seconds it was like a hive, buzzing like flies or bees. Linda is doing things with her breath. Reader is saying the smell of green apples alleviates stress in men and I think of Luke; he buys green apples at the grocery store. Linda is hot now, riding a wave, surfing on top of the musical tones, like jazz on a long train ride. All the delay just dropped out and now it's really quiet, except for the reader's words. He has ten minutes left, he seems to be changing gears. I like this pen, I am acutely aware of the sound it makes, scratching against the paper, percussive to me -- no one else can hear it. Ellen is changing to a different register of the instrument -- more treble. Sounds like a harmonica now. The "music" is really beautiful at this moment, the combination of Linda's vocalizing and the strings.

Chakra 3: Courage Yellow Solar Plexus

6:30: Scott is the reader, talking about how people say he's courageous because he is living with AIDS, about how he feels fear and how he wants people to remember his body in face of the profound physical changes the illness may (will, his word) eventually bring. Talking about his show Tuesday and introducing a female alter-ego who is shameless. He said hard in describing this feminine persona. "Don't leave, don't leave," he says at intervals. When Scott did a performance with us for Minimum Wage two years ago it seemed at the end of the piece he was saying bye-bye, with a childlike hand gesture, receding into darkness. I did so much crying about Scott's death the afternoon of that dress rehearsal, in some ways I feel that I am already cried out. If he dies of AIDS, is he leaving us, or are we leaving him? He says he views death as a challenge, a change of venue. He's asked us not to look at him now. I was running my fingers through my hair, trying to detangle it; seems to be a movement that has something to do with the long-string instrument. He says he's afraid, he wants to walk out the back door. He says he's not sure how safe he feels, how much he trusts the audience. This is pretty tough. Lots of spaces between the words now, hard work moving through fear. He says just the affirmation that he feels fear makes the door swing open on it.

6:45: Dark outside now. Linda is panting. Now she is screaming, really drowning out Scott's talking. Ellen is making a Sergio Leone lost guitar sound down low on the strings. Scott says he wants to swear, he feels angry. Maybe it's the Clint Eastwood movie sounds -- he says he feels helpless. Should he tell ghost stories now? Sounds seem to be coming from the wall behind us, Mexican guitars in the storage area I know is hidden behind that door, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly -- feels like the close-up sequences when Sergio Leone shows the slits of the gunfighter's eyes. Scott says he is afraid of the audience's gaze and wishes we wouldn't listen to him either. I am hungry now. Should I eat potato chips, or will Scott feel it's disrespectful? If I just did what I needed to take care of myself, I would eat them. People will think I am just white trash and totally out of it, like a big ol' Anna Nicole Smith.

Chakra 4: Compassion Green Chest

Luke, I'm writing to you from within Linda's meditation. Do you think I'm hard-hearted? Do you think I'm heartless? Everyone else seems to think I'm tender-hearted, but you probably know better. I have been heart-sick and heart-broken both because of my love for you. This happened years ago. Do you really understand that you broke my heart? Maybe we shouldn't be together after that tragedy happened? What becomes of the broken-hearted? Nothing special. You just live until it's time for you to die someday.

You will always be a very important person in my life because you broke my heart. You are the last I will ever allow to do that. I continued to love you past the heartbreak, but everything was changed. We have a lot of memories, both you and I and us together. All the hurt and trauma wiped out a lot, like boxes of irreplaceable photographs kept in an unsafe place, like that book of our wedding photos you let get ruined.

I had a terrible dream. Linda says I need to talk to you about it. My problem is, I feel that you haven't taken very good care of my love. I feel angry, just like I do when Anastasia leaves the hard-earned money clothes I buy for her lying crumpled on the bedroom floor where they get lost and dirty and trashed. I feel that, when we met, because you did not know me very well, you did not understand the value of my love, the purity, the intensity, that it was diamonds, not cubic zirconia. And eventually, because you were young, you left my love out in the weather, didn't take care of it, and it was damaged, rained-on, trashed (Annie) and your moving out of the Harris Avenue house when Anastasia was a baby.

What I have had since that time is a broken heart. The scar tissue, glue, whatever it was that put it all back together, is what makes my heart seem so hard to you now. It's not still broken, it's mended, repaired. My heart is just not any more made of one intact piece. It's no longer a single, intact unit, pure, in its original state. I feel I have not been taken care of, that I have been left mostly to fend for myself and have grown wild, not tame.

This chakra is green, compassion, and it seems to be releasing the most stuff in me so far. I feel terrible that I cannot be a silent martyr. I know what you want and need and it is usually within my power to give it to you. But because I feel that you have not taken care of my love properly, I won't, because the inequity of the situation would then be so vast. If I did that, I would have to be dishonest, to act like I was just living to give to others without any return, like a saint, when that isn't my true impulse. I just always wanted an equal romantic relationship. I have to keep my heart so closed, so shielded now, for my own survival.

Beverly is talking about what you have to do to keep your heart healthy. Where was I up to now and how did we suddenly get here? She is talking about weight loss and post-menopausal women. This is getting a little too pragmatic for me.

7:45: Over four hours into this meditation. I can definitely make it. It's not a problem being here. I don't need to pee and I am not even thinking about smoking. I guess I could read now. I have more than enough to do. I could definitely just sit here the whole time, with nothing to do, no water or writing. It is doing enough just to be here.

Chakra 5: Communication Blue Throat

8:20: Danielle is French and this is the most hypnotic section so far. Her words are usually incomprehensible to me, but then a random word will cross my airspace that I understand -- like free association. It's very beautiful, just the cadence of her language. Ellen was playing on a section of strings that sounded to me like an accordion. Maybe I'm hallucinating now, who knows, just the combination of French words and the melodic tones. I have so much respect for both Linda and Ellen. I don't know how they can go at it physically and spiritually, non-stop, with such energy, for seven hours.

I see someone I know, finally, after 8 p.m. I ate potato chips for a while during the third chakra and now I'm hungry again for real. I don't feel a real need to pee, and I don't seem to be bleeding all over myself. Linda really seems to have established a groove; Ellen, too. They are into a seamless rhythm now, barely interrupted by changes in readers. I hope Linda is content with the lights and that everything is non-disruptive for the duration. I felt so bad about the microphone breaking. Hope the lights are now the way she wanted them.

Sometimes, for a moment, I think Danielle is reading in English because I understand every word. But as soon as I formulate that thought, she's speaking in French again. Like when you dream you are falling and when you think of it, the thought jerks you awake. The French is moving me faster on this journey. It feels like when you are on the Paris metro going from one end of the line to the other at night, underground; you pull into many different stations, but you don't get off.

Chakra 6: Intuition Purple Forehead

9:20: The reader was nearly ten minutes late! I can't believe it. I was so angry I didn't know what to do, felt it was a terrible disrespect to the work Linda was doing. She is a young, beautiful Hispanic woman and she clicked her heels all the way over to the microphone like a flamenco dancer when she finally arrived, put her car keys down noisily, totally casual, like she was at a poetry spew in some smoke-filled bar. I wanted to deck her. Where did Linda find this woman? Unless I am sadly mistaken, this woman is reading off a list of food items in Spanish. I am sure she said tortillas, manteca, leche, bolitos. For all I know, she's reading a menu from a Mexican restaurant -- that's how mad I am! It seems painful to be here now. My anger is making me totally uninterested in this reader. I'm not nervous or anything at all now. Starting to want to go home and smoke and eat something. I don't think Linda is in the same trance-like space she was earlier -- probably she was conscious of the reader's absence and that may have brought her down to a more earthly space. Actually, she had said that after 9 p.m. she might be in the guru mode, so maybe that was the lesson of this reader being late, to create a conflict. I would be so angry, if it were me. I'd demand some kind of explanation, but really, there isn't one. What a dis. I asked Linda for some kind of contingency plan and she didn't give me one, said it wouldn't happen. I had an intuition something like this could happen, and this was the one reader unknown to me. I'm getting irritable. Only twenty more minutes, and then Alton, who has been here the whole time. Linda must be wiped out -- I cannot imagine where she is the day after these vocal feats and spiritual expenditures. I would definitely sleep all day the next day. Won't her throat be sore? The reader is getting quieter and quieter. I am not getting anything out of this chakra, except anger and frustration. Ellen came and stood by the staircase for a few minutes. She must be very tired from walking along the instrument. Aren't her fingertips sore? Linda's sound is much quieter on this reader -- more sporadic -- more silences between passages. Ellen now seems to be resetting the computer. Linda is doing high-pitched, almost silent screaming. I wonder if that helps clear? If so, I did a lot of that work as a girl growing up. God, I would love to go to sleep now. Fifteen minutes left of this reader. I am going to set the alarm and maybe I'll close my eyes.

Chakra 7: Joy White Top of Head

The next day. I didn't write at all during the last chakra. When I blew the whistle and came down, the reader, Angeles, who had been late in the first place, wouldn't stop. She turned her panther eyes on me but it had no effect. I touched her arm, and still she wouldn't stop, so I stood very, very close to her and stared at her and then said, "Thank you," once again. Alton had been there all day, and I couldn't believe she was going to go over after she had been late in the first place. But when Alton wafted in, all in white, he immediately seemed to take it all to another place. The last thing I remember is him talking about getting ice cream as a child, childhood memories of his grandmother. Then I was somewhere else, somewhere between waking and sleeping, not needing to pee or eat or smoke, and I just stayed there the whole hour. I was actually surprised that I got back to a hypnotic space after the disruption of the late reader and my anger. I had set the alarm, and I needed it to remind me the time was up at 11. During the last hour I had that feeling you get when you masturbate for a long time without stopping, alternately numbed out, but flipping over to extreme sensitivity and rawness every few minutes; that feeling that you can't possibly come again, but then you somehow recharge and the next orgasm almost startles you. That's very much the place I felt I was in during the last hour, and also I experienced a visual sensation like everything was haloed in white light, like when you are sleep-deprived or have been concentrating very hard for a long time on some pains-taking mechanical task.

When I helped Ellen take Linda down from the platform, Linda suddenly turned into Bisma from Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits for me. I had the impulse to get down on my hands and knees to help her into her shoes, like a religious devotee. Linda seemed weak and light and frail. I felt absolutely drunk once the performance was over, and I was even slurring my speech when I tried to speak to Linda or the others. That was the wildest sensation of the entire seven hours, and one I was not prepared for. I was actually afraid to get into my car and drive, for fear I would get stopped for drunk driving and be unable to explain.

The next day I was absolutely euphoric, feeling I had been blessed to be in the position I had been in during those seven hours. It was a great challenge for me not to do the easiest thing, which would have been just to be theatrical, to switch into drag queen mode. It was much, much harder just to be there, to fight my own impulse to perform. I felt I learned something about being an active watcher, something I always try very hard to do and put a lot of energy into, because it's something I believe in so much. I felt like I was a scapegoat or surrogate for the audience members, a symbol of them. I learned so much although it is difficult to put what I learned into words. I have such an abiding respect and devotion for Linda and Ellen and their work.