Linda Montano: 7 Hours Sounding the Chakras (1997)

7 Hours Sounding the Chakras

Performed by Linda M. Montano and Ellen Fullman

Sunday, April 27, 1997

The Candy Factory, Austin, Texas

Chakra 1: Sex Red Perineum Dutch

4:28: It has begun. Light drizzle outside. It seems there are fears of technical problems this year. One of Linda’s microphones keeps going dead. Yesterday Linda made the rubbing tears from her eyes gesture to show the technical people she was sad when there was trouble. I hope Ellen and the three guys who are making the sound have it all worked out today. I don’t see how Linda can do this kind of work if she can’t trust the electronic things. It’s hard enough without having to worry about that.

The long-string instrument sounds now are quiet, tentative and sporadic. Linda is also quiet, just a low hum at this point. It seems really relaxing right now. Just now a layer of processing came on and the technology involved in the piece this year becomes evident. It started off gently and low-tech. Now the first layers are building up – harmonic, but Linda like a low ghost outside. Now the first reverb on the reader. Ellen playing percussively like some kind of oriental instrument. I don’t feel like I’m here yet. I’m ready to be here and want to be here, but I’m still distracted by the logistics of getting everything set up. Always I’m afraid I’ll forget what to do next, or who or what comes next, although the instructions are so simple. This time we are changing chakras at seven minutes after the hour, not on the top of the hour, and that’s a little harder to keep track of. The Dutch is kind of choppy and percussive. I think I hear the names of people I almost recognize. Linda is very quiet and only a low melodic moan right now – like the wind outside on a cold winter night or the Theremin in a horror movie. Pleasant – opening now – vibrating – like peering into the center of a red poppy as it opens in time-lapse scientific films.

Now Linda is really quiet. I can’t tell if she is really into this yet. I feel like I am protecting her. I had the image of a nun who sits by the bedside of a patient in some turn-of-the-century hospital or asylum when I sat down. Maybe it’s because Linda’s in a baby bed this year – I somehow feel it is my job to protect her and watch over her during this meditation. I had a fear the baby bed might not support the weight of an adult – probably because I always had the desire to get into the baby bed myself when my children were small. I thought – or knew very well – it would break. I did get in the playpen, though. My children never liked baby beds or playpens – like jails. I remember the scary iron hospital baby bed when Alexander had pneumonia and they wouldn’t even let me pick him up due to his high fever and he held out his little arms to me through the bars.

She is sitting upright now – lotus position. Alton helped me get her to the bed. She is wearing a long wild-woman wig with x’s taped over her eyes, orange polka-dot sari, orange socks. I could turn and look at her if I wanted to, I suppose. She has a homemade pastel afghan with her in the crib – mainly yellow. Alton is high and vertical – very beautiful white courtly costume, like Casanova, powdered wig, high white heels, ruffles.

Now there’s a ghostly, almost celestial angelic singing, space-age hurtle, buzz of long-string instrument, Sputnik feedback. Linda’s voice treble and tentative, small sounds, intimate, random, like when you turn over in bed. Now she’s going into a repetitive tunnel-like sound that escalates and echoes in on itself – loud – drowns out the Dutch – ebbs and dissipates now in the distance – concentric circles like drops of rain in water puddles.

Ellen’s patterns emerging now. It got really intense for a moment, then tapered down. Echo of Henk’s voice. I keep thinking I hear words I understand: "outside," and, once, "hotel."

Space mice. A kind of chewing sound, like diddling with the strings on the end of the guitar that’s not made for playing – that part that can’t be tuned. I always wanted to play instruments the wrong way; I wanted to play the piano from the inside, rather than using the keyboard and felted mallets of the machinery. I always wanted to crawl inside a grand piano and play it like a harp, play the guitar upside down. Five or seven minutes to go in clearing this one – I’m starting to get here now.

Linda’s screaming as if being tortured on the longstring instrument. She’s screaming like someone falling off a cliff in a movie, falling into a well that goes on to Eternity.

Chakra 2: Security Orange Pelvis Polish

5:07: It’s weird hearing Bogdan in Polish – knowing him for ten years now, but never having heard him speak in his own language. There’s a giggling coming from Linda, and also the sound of something going noisily down the drain – like a whirlpool of water, very moist and slippery. One of the sound men came to check the level of Linda’s microphone. I can hear her, but I don’t know if others can. I keep thinking I hear Bogdan saying things I understand: "I believe," "Possible." It seems as if he’s either reading a book about theology, or refuting theology. Again I seem to hear names in English that I recognize. Now Linda is taking off, swooping, coming back down, like a bird taking flight in stages – housetop, treetop, powerline, sky. Transitions. Now Bogdan seemed to say, "If you are even here," and Linda’s sound is very small circles, like colored pebbles in a stream. Small sounds, encapsulated, then bursting into more tortured cries – the needing sound – like you need water, or for the dentist to stop hurting you – now dying down and very small again, but repetitive, like the links in a chain, primarily breathing that rises to clarify into a treble tone. I’m starting to feel all here now. Delay happening and echo of voice, very dramatic. Strings clang like the percussion in a movie underscoring some horror. Now the instrument sounds like a violin – definitive, authoritative, now a shimmer. I turned to look at Linda; she’s holding the bars of the crib and rocking back and forth like a child who’s waiting for you to come get him/her out of the bed. Just waiting, not howling yet, making small sounds to comfort herself – now widening into a louder and more melancholy sound. "Find me." Now some kind of guttural, threatening sounds. "It’s elusive." Halfway through this chakra now, Bogdan sounds very patient and understanding. Linda is quieting down, just "Hmm?" or "Um-hmm." Ellen just broke a string on the instrument, and that was dramatic – a heavy clamp fell on the floor – then she moved over to the middle register which sounds the most like strings. I feel another layer of voices in the electronic mix at the far end of the room – spaceman talk, not Linda, jabbering like the voices of workmen heard down a sewage pipe when you’re a child and playing hide-and-seek. Linda’s voice constant and brown now, like an earthly grounding. Wide strip going harmonic. I don’t know who the spacemen are – like they are part of an intercepted transmission – space party line. Linda celestial and falling from time to time, then high up, like someone climbing a tree or going out onto the balcony of a high building. Maybe it’s Bogdan who’s the spaceman. Maybe somehow it’s his own delay they’ve made so scratchy and metallic. Something else just flew off the instrument – very exciting when that happens. She restrung the broken string and now the pattern we hear is tuning. "Distance." "Poco-poco." People are coming and going from the space. I see Gloria is here. So far, all the train connections are working. I have so little "business" to do this year. I feel remarkably empty and feel no need. I like the feeling this year of being "in service" or "of service." I like to show the icons when it’s time. I like the feeling of serving and then disappearing; that’s possible with strangers, but impossible with family members. With family, resentment sometimes rises. With strangers, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event and you can easily extend yourself charitably. With family, it’s twenty-four hours, seven days a week – harder work. Some roaring sounds from Linda – getting fiercer, resolving on same note instrument plays.

Chakra 3: Courage Yellow Solar Plexus Chinese

6:18: Linda had to go to the bathroom, and Alton was nowhere to be found, so I took her. Luckily Hud was in a mental state where he could help me. Scary, trying to get her out of the baby bed when I wasn’t expecting it. What will coming out of the piece do to her torque?

A big scream – first for a long time. She was bouncing up and down on the mattress, and now it’s getting serious. A screaming roar, enraged, filling the space, expanding, now a sort of resolution, a kind of heartbeat, then sonic reverberation. These are scary sounds, the kind of feral, demonic possession sounds that really rattled me last year. These sounds are excruciating, make your hair stand on end. Chinese sounds so polite – swishy and contained like reeds at the edge of water – sailboat at sunset gliding over a lake, like a see-saw negotiation, a pleasant give-and-take. Now Linda and the instrument more and more make call and response – instrument sounds, Linda growls at the tone, polite Chinese makes a falling pitter-patter pattern over all of it, like rain. But there’s static at the back of the room, a metallic rattle. Linda’s voice low, almost masculine and like the sound of a wheel, string shimmer. I feel like I hear voices outside, loud ones in the front room. Linda’s students performing? The most intense sounds so far – hacking, phlegmatic, the terminal smoker’s cough, now shrill and quieter, one tone. "Where are you?" The teasing, playful hide-and-seek question of a child, like a song suddenly remembered from childhood. I thought Gloria said, "Say how kind?" Starry planetary music ascending, twinkling high above. Linda very calm. Sounds loop a pattern and blink like little space signals, like red lights on a radio tower. "You shall teach." "Should be told." As with Bogdan, it’s odd to me to hear Gloria read Chinese, since I know her well and never heard her speak Chinese before. Linda is very quiet, only rocking slightly in her crib, saying "No, no," with her head, now nodding, "Yes," slight panting like breathing in labor or having sex, rhythmic, relaxing. I think I could go to sleep. Stereophonic-harmony-tone is split in two. She’s making the mattress bounce like slow repetitive sex. Can’t tell if the sound of the mattress itself is what’s being amplified. Victor is next – the only one I’m truly worried about showing up since he didn’t come to rehearsal yesterday. Linda said she talked to him and he will for sure be here. That was the bad chakra last year, when the woman was late and I was so angry at her. This sound is good, a slinging, as Linda makes "No, no" head. Locust-like incessant whisper fills the room – the "schwa" of Chinese and Ellen plays her response, wind picks her up and she sails. Very quiet now, only wind, laughter from somewhere, footsteps on floorboards, witnesses in loud shoes. It’s getting dark outside. Good – now I see Victor. Dark wind forest. When I sit back down, the piece of paper with the orange word "fabric" is always back in the chair when I come back. I don’t know what it means. I folded it up and put it in a bag, not mine – Gloria’s? – that appeared by chair and now it’s back. The performers out in the front room are very loud. "Woo-woo" -- they look like Marie-Antoinette sexy wig flower-festooned nymphs out of some kind of crazy Watteau painting.

Chakra 4: Compassion Green Chest Spanish

7:07: I think I am going to eat some bread. The sound has established a groove, dark blue, comforting. Linda’s rocking and singing a "la-la" song – or is it a Church chant? Reverberates like in stone cloisters and I almost think I hear a distant rock guitar. The tawdry girls are back with candles. There was a profoundly beautiful passage just a minute ago – Linda was in a rare place with her voice. I thought I heard "This is the lost boy. This is the lost man." There is too much frivolous noise going on out front in the performance room. It needs to be quieter, but maybe that’s the lesson for me to learn during "compassion." They are definitely putting themselves out there in a playful way, but it intrudes on the sacred space the meditation’s created. Alton’s standing up here at the front, tall, white, vertical, like some kind of authoritarian French clown. I don’t know if Linda’s aware of anyone’s presence or even what she hears, for that matter. Don’t know if she’s tranced out now, or what. I am definitely more aware of mundane details this year – no profound thoughts coming to me. I guess I’m emptied out from all I’ve recently been through, and therapy. My left shoulder has been itching all through this chakra. Now a procession of Alton and the girls and a guy with a video camera. "Is it enough?" I understand Victor to say. It sounds like part of a recognizable composition on the instrument right now – like something for the cello, with a classical meter. Linda floats on top of it all, spacey and celestial. The strings have laid down a basketweave rhythm and Linda weaves in and out of the spaces. The tortured, quivering voice of an old lady joins in sometimes. The sound men are able to keep the sound in the room for a long time, filling the space, stretching it out until it fills up the entire area, like pulling on the edges of something to stretch it. Linda now singing a sweet, high, childish Ave Maria on top of everything. This is really a beautiful moment, the most transcendently beautiful so far. She answers herself with a few notes in a low register, low and sustained, like monks. It’s like monks and nuns singing back and forth between hillside monasteries and convents with a valley in between them. I hear the sound of a tinny transistor radio, and here come the girls again.

Chakra 5: Communication Blue Throat French

8:07: Linda is at a low, moaning spot, and Danielle’s voice sounds like two sometimes. Now Linda’s set up a pant, a sawing of breath. She’s all wrapped up in the afghan now, horrible cough again, clearing, clearing. Now quiet except for space laser sounds coming out of the processor. I think they need to punch up the reader’s microphone. There is a guy standing over my shoulder reading what I am writing. Strange – no one has ever come so close to the space where Linda is before. He is looking at everything and all the equipment. Linda is probably not even aware he is here. He smiled, not threatening, except he was a male presence and made me think weird thoughts about what would I do if he tried to do something to Linda, what would I do to protect her. Of course anything can happen! She’s using her hands over her mouth and screaming. The sound reverberates off the long wires. Sounds pretty scary right now. Linda dropped out – just the sound of French now, just a single, sporadic note from the instrument. Then an adrenaline high-pitched string like a fear reaction comes out of left field. Linda is really screaming now, a kind of strained, distant muffled scream, like screams heard through a pillow if someone’s trying to muffle them. It’s getting to be pretty hypnotic now. More childhood terror screams. This is really intense. She whistles, then screams. I think I smell Mentholatum as she’s screaming – why is that? Definitely a menthol smell. Is it really in the space, or is it a nervous system hallucination from the meditation? Sounds like there’s a train in the distance. I feel I am getting numb. Danielle was saying "blue" and "pink." My mind is wandering. I thought I might write to some people from inside the meditation this year, but it isn’t happening. Linda is very still, in yoga position, sound rolling out of her. What must it be like for her? I can’t imagine. Long string instrument again sounding like a violin – short, bowing gestures. Linda saying, "Oh, nonononono," it sounds like. It must be terribly hard to do this kind of work, so consummately private and the opposite of dramatic. Seems like it would be nearly impossible to share this work – needs witnesses, to honor her teacher? It’s sounding like ghosts in a haunted house now. Whatever the mint smell is – she’s coughing and screaming now, as if she’s in agony. I can taste the mint in my mouth. I thought I heard someone knocking outside the window. Someone comes in wearing very loud shoes. Linda is very quiet, reader’s voice doubled. Time is crawling for me now.

Chakra 6: Intuition Purple Forehead Japanese

9:07: Linda is up in a frequency only bats could hear. The Japanese is soothing, and there’s a drumming coming from somewhere – probably part of the processing. It keeps startling me because it sounds like someone’s knocking. I see Luke, but not Anastasia. Guess she decided to stay home. Probably tired. Linda was screaming, "What?" and it echoed dozens of times.

Chakra 7: Joy White Top of Head Spanish

10:07: The readers’ voices predominate now; the instrument is like quiet, sporadic bowing, like wind blowing against a rusty roof. Linda laughs and it gets picked up into echo and becomes a pained sobbing – so hard to tell if it’s laughing or crying – then screaming – more bowing instrument – then laughing so hard she has a coughing attack. I like it when the sound bounces up against itself, the echo and the sustained, real-time voice. "You people," "you women," "the rhumba," "the flowers," "the fruit." Spanish, like French, is bad because I just have to force my mind to agree not to try to figure out the words’ meanings, just let them wash over me instead. Hard to tell if the two readers are reading together, or separately. I see someone down on the floor in the long-string area: Ellen is lying on the floor playing on her side. I keep thinking I hear horns – maybe pre-recorded? Now celestial Linda voice like an orchestra tuning up to the violin. "The happy," "the kisses," "the house," "the dreams," "the shadows." Only a little over half an hour to go. I feel like I’m going mad now, not that I’m being cleared. My costume hurts me, my hair hurts me, my stomach hurts me, my brain hurts me. I hear the chanting quality again in Linda’s voice – sustaining a tone into what seems to be eternity. Funny that one of the last images I’ll see in this space is of a two-headed woman, since the two readers are wrapped and pinned together with one long scarf. Funny, because it was here in this space that the two-headed woman was born during the soap. Linda laughs breathlessly and the long-string instruments sounds strangely like a bandoneon playing a tango for an instant. Low hum from Linda like a diggerydoo – sounds like a man because the computer is dropping her pitch. Sounds like those ancient instruments you swing in a circle over your head – bull roarer? The voice of the gods? I could tell, when I walked the whole length of the instrument before that I’m nearly tripping now, feeling far, far from normal. Anti-gravity, buoyant, but also goofy. I can taste that my breath smells bad. I need coffee. I wonder what the weather is like now. Could it be raining? What will happen when this is over? Will it end up making a crescendo, or will it just end abruptly and in a random way? Linda laughs, trails off. The readers are amazing reading in unison. How do they know what they will say next? They can’t have rehearsed yet they seem to read in unison. Now Linda is soaring above the readers and the instrument sounds like sobbing. I want to close my eyes so badly and just let it wash over me, but I know I’ll go to sleep if I do. This final passage is just washing over everyone here – as if there’s a kind of unity. Hard to imagine how it will end. Ellen must have an eye on a clock, unless she’s just responding to Linda for seven hours and doesn’t know or care. It would be cheesy if there was a big, theatrical finish, a swell, a flourish. Maybe Fate will just take care of it quietly.

"Oh, yes, we can stop them."