Oswaldo Pérez Cabrera
Vancouver is glass. Building colour Glass. Glass building colour. Vancouver is water, lots of water. Vancouver is mountain and endless forests. But it is also marihuana and solitude. Mainly solitude. And it is humid, a humid solitude that repossesses the city that lives under the shadow of a doubt. A humid metropolis, as if we were living between the legs of a nymphomaniac. The water comes, almost every time from above, in the shape of little cold caresses. A thousand slivers from a broken mirror that fall reflecting the nostalgia of the lost cities, exiles and abandoned lands or picture the dreams of future places. A thousand little pains. The alleys are filled with callous puddles that are stepped on without mercy. Vancouver is the freedom that balances the sense of distance. Freedom to smoke THC on the streets and freedom to legalize unions of same sex couples. The sex is multicultural; coitus in different languages and obtuse combinations. Freedom to be extravagant. Vancouver is the city that awaits destruction from its tectonic plates.
Drugs get stuck in the port city and are distributed on the abrupt corners of the east side of town where the shadows drip down the back doors between used preservatives and infected syringes with mortal diseases. Poverty peeps between social programs and political promises, but the sun enters tiny through the crevices of the sidewalk where the imaginary crack hides. Paranoia in D Minor. Schizophrenia in shrieking tones. Sometimes the inner voices mingle with the voices of the repressive authorities. Contradictions of freedom. Vancouver is the native land full of winds intoxicated with beers and moonshine; the opium of the ancestors; the land stolen from nature.
The last feminine smile is always accompanied by salty water. We are accumulating kilometers and stories, unfinished chapters, circles that are not perfect, lights that would not turn off, televisions that turn themselves on, fragments of life captured in mate paper, waves that circulate through the solitudes of Vancouver, my voice in an unknown speaker, el taste of the feminine vulva that leaves along with Mount Venus, grey with my drunken sperm; hotlines and psychics, the weed that always flows, hungry and thirsty in the waiting room of the apocalypse, the print letter that revolutionizes, the web that will unite us against the empire of evil. More or less that is how life is here. Live from the air. With the women of Vancouver that lick the wounds of solitude and the incapacity of forming an everlasting relationship with the stubborn men of the cold regions. And we are so dysfunctional. But I am still here, in my white cave with glossy illustrations, bars between the alley and the smoke from the joint until wine replaces blood. Until wine replaces blood. Until wine replaces blood
sábado, 28 de abril de 2007
viernes, 20 de abril de 2007
SuperSonic
Like that day that I boarded the supersonic jet 623 towards the spirals of dust from a splintered star and ended up in a brown-thick-wooden colour grotto with magic mushrooms everywhere; the good thing is that there was beer flowing from the moss in walls that were painting rust of iron virgins with faded colours.
I was being watched by winged beings whose only true thing was their condition of ethereal flyers; their wings were made of ectoplasmic feathers and their figures were almost indecipherable, due to the escapable condition inherent in the fantastic or supernatural beings. The problem was that, for my eyes their subatomic particles moved too fast and in long distances, so that they can appear and disappear whenever they want to and in blurred spectrums. Hertz waves of continental proportions were filtering through the pores of the washed and humid walls. Surrealism created on the walls by random and time.
The inducement was to feel the air breaking, literally slip through the aerial pores, between those plaits that exist between the molecule H and the molecule O and to throw a glimpse into the dimension that functions parallel to us, protected from all the pollution of the material worlds.
I wanted to climb grasping the black cracks of the universe attached firmly to some equipment of light constitution, almost imperceptibly to the scales that could serve me as a cane-radar through the invisible labyrinths of the macro spaces.
Something went wrong and I ended up in this dirty cave of schizo hues where animals that produce phobias become my principal food in this micro ecosystem where it seems that I am on top of the nourishing chain (unless the spiritual quasi-beings think of demonstrating their condition of destiny-changers and squash me like I squash the cockroaches and take me as an appetizer like I do with the insects in here or use me to satisfy their thirst of blood like I do with the rats).The religious stains sometimes are tri-dimensionalized mocking my eyes and deceiving my beliefs that are far away from being normal.
The worst punishment for a soul is to be trapped in a decrepit body and to be able to catch a glimpse of the disincarnate scopes that happen on the other side of the wind; however, mine would be happy to just walk your city streets and alleys.
OSWALDO PÉREZ CABRERA
I was being watched by winged beings whose only true thing was their condition of ethereal flyers; their wings were made of ectoplasmic feathers and their figures were almost indecipherable, due to the escapable condition inherent in the fantastic or supernatural beings. The problem was that, for my eyes their subatomic particles moved too fast and in long distances, so that they can appear and disappear whenever they want to and in blurred spectrums. Hertz waves of continental proportions were filtering through the pores of the washed and humid walls. Surrealism created on the walls by random and time.
The inducement was to feel the air breaking, literally slip through the aerial pores, between those plaits that exist between the molecule H and the molecule O and to throw a glimpse into the dimension that functions parallel to us, protected from all the pollution of the material worlds.
I wanted to climb grasping the black cracks of the universe attached firmly to some equipment of light constitution, almost imperceptibly to the scales that could serve me as a cane-radar through the invisible labyrinths of the macro spaces.
Something went wrong and I ended up in this dirty cave of schizo hues where animals that produce phobias become my principal food in this micro ecosystem where it seems that I am on top of the nourishing chain (unless the spiritual quasi-beings think of demonstrating their condition of destiny-changers and squash me like I squash the cockroaches and take me as an appetizer like I do with the insects in here or use me to satisfy their thirst of blood like I do with the rats).The religious stains sometimes are tri-dimensionalized mocking my eyes and deceiving my beliefs that are far away from being normal.
The worst punishment for a soul is to be trapped in a decrepit body and to be able to catch a glimpse of the disincarnate scopes that happen on the other side of the wind; however, mine would be happy to just walk your city streets and alleys.
OSWALDO PÉREZ CABRERA
SEX AND STATIC
YOU USED TO LIKE MY SMILE
YOU USED TO CALL ME AT NIGHT
YOU USED TO TAKE ME FOR A FLIGHT
YOU USED TO MAKE EVERYTHING ALRIGHT,ALRIGHT,RIGHT AL...
SO, THE GIRL CAME UP TO MY ROOM, SWEAT AND JEANS, DARK HAIR AND LIQUOR BREATH. ALCOHOLIC KISS, SIZZLING TONGUE, BIZARRE FEELING OF JUST BEING WOKEN UP WITH BOOZE AND WEED FLUSHING IN MY BRAINS. YES I DO MISS HER. BUT SHE WAS OFFERING A PRESENT; NOT THE LUST LOST PAST THAT NOW IS IN MY MEMORY. MY WICKED MEMORY. HAPINESS IS THE SEED OF NOSTALGIA. SOME MORE DRINKS BEFORE THE CORPORAL FLUIDS COLLAPSE. DESIRE FOR FLESH, DESIRE TO GET LOST IN A RIVER OF FORGETNESS. SIMPLY CONCORDANCE, DANGEROUS DANCE. TONIGHT, TOTALLY NIGHT, LABERYNTIC DARKNESS IN MY BRAIN. MUDDY KISSES, SCARY MINDSCAPES. THE SKY HAS A HOLE. THE GIRL APPROCHES HER HAND TO MY PLEASURE-CENTER. I CORRESPOND WITH MY FINGERS. DIZZY AUTOMATS CARESSING THEIR WET BODIES FOR THE SAKE OF BEING. HALLUCINATE. I CAN'T STOP. IMAGES PARADING THROUGH THE NEURONS, WHILE ALL THE STORIES HAD BEEN TOLD AND RELIVING OVER AND OVER AGAIN. MY CONSCIENCE DRIVES A LIMO IN THE HIGHWAY OF PSHYCHEDELIA RUNNING OVER A MILITARY CONVOY. MANDELA STARTS THINKING OF MARRYING THE TOP MODEL OF THE MOMENT. BUSH PISSES ON A STREET CALLED REVOLUTION WITH A JOINT IN HIS MOUTH STANDING ON A GAS TANK. MALDOROR RISES FROM FANTASYLAND TO HORRORLAND CLAIMING FOR HIS BARENAKED CHILDREN. HUSSEIN PLAYS MONOPOLY WITH A HUNDRED SHADOWS OF HIMSELF WAITING TO BE EXECUTED; THE SOLDIERS WONDER WHICH IS THE RIGHT ONE. A BESTIAL PRESIDENT FINISHES WITH THE CATTLE OF HIS COUNTRY, THE BIGGEST COCAINE DEALER JOINS THE CHOROUS OF HIS LOCAL CHURCH, FIDEL CASTRO'S LATEST FASHION IS TO DYE HIS BEARD WITH THE COLOURS OF THE RAINBOW. THERE IS NOT A PLACE WHERE IT DOESN'T EXIST A PRISIONER. PRISIONER OF YOUR OWN HEAD. LEAVE THE DRUGS READER. THE POPE IS A TRANVESTITE DRESSED IN A BRILLIANT MONOCHROMATIC NIGHTGOWN. THE MOON IS MADE OF LATEX AND THE SUN OF PROPANE. ZEUS IS STILL ORGANIZATING ORGIES WITH OTHER GODS FROM DIFFERENT BOOKS. YOUR GOD IS REALLY A WOMAN. HER SON WAS THE FIRST HIPPIE. BAKUNIN IS TELLING THE ANARCHISTS TO WEAR DAFFODILS IN THEIR HAIR. THE RIVER RUNS UPSIDE DOWN. I FEEL THE HUMIDITY OF HER BODY, MOANING AND WHISPHERING IN MY EAR. MORE MORE!, MORE!, TELL ME I'M A WHORE, TREAT ME LIKE A STUPID BITCH. A BLACK HOLE IS SWALLOWING THE WORLD'S ARMY. YOU HAVE BEEN PROGRAMMED. AN ARTIFICIAL VIRUS SINS WITH GLOTONY. Humankind DESTROYING MANKIND. THE DEAD PEOPLE ARE FORMING A LIBERAL PARTY. DAMNATION. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THE DEVIL DANCING IN A FANCY SUIT? SELL, SELL, SELL, MONEY, MONEY. KEEP ON WALKING ON THE RIGHT SIDE. STOP BEING A REBEL. EVEN YOUR PREACHER WAS A REBEL, NOW HE FUCKS EXPENSIVE WOMAN WITH YOUR MONEY. JUST GET THE BEAT UP AND DOWN, IN AND OUT. SADE WAS A NUN MASTURBATING OTHER NUNS WITH HIS CRUCIFIX. UNDER THE GROUND, THERE'S A CITY WHERE WRITERS LIKE POE, LOVECRAFT, DUNSANY, MACHEN AND WELLS LIVE WAITING FOR THEIR MAGGOT SALAD. WRITERS ARE IN DANGER. INMORTALITY IN WORDS WRITEN IN A WHITE PAPER, I'LL LIVE AS LONG AS SOMEONE READS ME. WE WERE NOTHING BUT BODIES FOR EACH OTHER, HEDONISTIC BEINGS IN SEARCH OF WELLNESS. BLOOD PUMPING. FRICTION AND HOT. SALTY FLAVOUR. THE SOUND OF STARS. BUKOWSKI THINKS I AM COOL CAUSE I HAVE MADE PEACE WITH ALCOHOL, HE'S STILL THREE FEET UNDER. YOU WOULD DRINK PISS IF I TELL YOU IS THE LATEST DRUG. IN A FAR ISLAND THE CORRUPT PRESIDENTS SWIM IN A MONEY POOL TOUCHING THEMSELVES WITH THIER GREEDY HANDS. THE OCEAN AGLOWS WITH NOISES. THE FISH CRY THEIR PAIN. FADING OUT. EVEN IN YOUR HAPPY PLACE THERE’S A WAR GOING ON. THINK OF A HAPPY PLACE, YOU CAN'T EVERYTHING IS GONE. AN INCREDIBLE SPRINKLE LIGHTS UP THE SKY. SET THE AIR ON FIRE, EXHAUST YOUR JAIL BODY WITH DESIRE, BABY SET THE EARTH ON FIRE. SO, THE GIRL LEFT AFTER A LOUD ORGASM SERVED WITH ANIMAL SCENT AND A SEMEN COCKTAIL. THE SUN WAS GOING UP. MAYBE ANOTHER BEER WILL CALM MY BODY. LYING IN BED STARING AT THE ENDLESS FIGURES IN THE CEILING. NOT ANOTHER PARADE. RELAXATION WILL ALWAYS COME TO LEND A HAND. TORMENTOUS NIGHT, MY EX-GIRL...YES, YOU USED TO LIKE MY SMILE.IS IT ANYTHING SIMPLER THAN THAT?THAN LIFE?
OSWALDO PEREZ CABRERA
Mexico Distrito Federal
YOU USED TO CALL ME AT NIGHT
YOU USED TO TAKE ME FOR A FLIGHT
YOU USED TO MAKE EVERYTHING ALRIGHT,ALRIGHT,RIGHT AL...
SO, THE GIRL CAME UP TO MY ROOM, SWEAT AND JEANS, DARK HAIR AND LIQUOR BREATH. ALCOHOLIC KISS, SIZZLING TONGUE, BIZARRE FEELING OF JUST BEING WOKEN UP WITH BOOZE AND WEED FLUSHING IN MY BRAINS. YES I DO MISS HER. BUT SHE WAS OFFERING A PRESENT; NOT THE LUST LOST PAST THAT NOW IS IN MY MEMORY. MY WICKED MEMORY. HAPINESS IS THE SEED OF NOSTALGIA. SOME MORE DRINKS BEFORE THE CORPORAL FLUIDS COLLAPSE. DESIRE FOR FLESH, DESIRE TO GET LOST IN A RIVER OF FORGETNESS. SIMPLY CONCORDANCE, DANGEROUS DANCE. TONIGHT, TOTALLY NIGHT, LABERYNTIC DARKNESS IN MY BRAIN. MUDDY KISSES, SCARY MINDSCAPES. THE SKY HAS A HOLE. THE GIRL APPROCHES HER HAND TO MY PLEASURE-CENTER. I CORRESPOND WITH MY FINGERS. DIZZY AUTOMATS CARESSING THEIR WET BODIES FOR THE SAKE OF BEING. HALLUCINATE. I CAN'T STOP. IMAGES PARADING THROUGH THE NEURONS, WHILE ALL THE STORIES HAD BEEN TOLD AND RELIVING OVER AND OVER AGAIN. MY CONSCIENCE DRIVES A LIMO IN THE HIGHWAY OF PSHYCHEDELIA RUNNING OVER A MILITARY CONVOY. MANDELA STARTS THINKING OF MARRYING THE TOP MODEL OF THE MOMENT. BUSH PISSES ON A STREET CALLED REVOLUTION WITH A JOINT IN HIS MOUTH STANDING ON A GAS TANK. MALDOROR RISES FROM FANTASYLAND TO HORRORLAND CLAIMING FOR HIS BARENAKED CHILDREN. HUSSEIN PLAYS MONOPOLY WITH A HUNDRED SHADOWS OF HIMSELF WAITING TO BE EXECUTED; THE SOLDIERS WONDER WHICH IS THE RIGHT ONE. A BESTIAL PRESIDENT FINISHES WITH THE CATTLE OF HIS COUNTRY, THE BIGGEST COCAINE DEALER JOINS THE CHOROUS OF HIS LOCAL CHURCH, FIDEL CASTRO'S LATEST FASHION IS TO DYE HIS BEARD WITH THE COLOURS OF THE RAINBOW. THERE IS NOT A PLACE WHERE IT DOESN'T EXIST A PRISIONER. PRISIONER OF YOUR OWN HEAD. LEAVE THE DRUGS READER. THE POPE IS A TRANVESTITE DRESSED IN A BRILLIANT MONOCHROMATIC NIGHTGOWN. THE MOON IS MADE OF LATEX AND THE SUN OF PROPANE. ZEUS IS STILL ORGANIZATING ORGIES WITH OTHER GODS FROM DIFFERENT BOOKS. YOUR GOD IS REALLY A WOMAN. HER SON WAS THE FIRST HIPPIE. BAKUNIN IS TELLING THE ANARCHISTS TO WEAR DAFFODILS IN THEIR HAIR. THE RIVER RUNS UPSIDE DOWN. I FEEL THE HUMIDITY OF HER BODY, MOANING AND WHISPHERING IN MY EAR. MORE MORE!, MORE!, TELL ME I'M A WHORE, TREAT ME LIKE A STUPID BITCH. A BLACK HOLE IS SWALLOWING THE WORLD'S ARMY. YOU HAVE BEEN PROGRAMMED. AN ARTIFICIAL VIRUS SINS WITH GLOTONY. Humankind DESTROYING MANKIND. THE DEAD PEOPLE ARE FORMING A LIBERAL PARTY. DAMNATION. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THE DEVIL DANCING IN A FANCY SUIT? SELL, SELL, SELL, MONEY, MONEY. KEEP ON WALKING ON THE RIGHT SIDE. STOP BEING A REBEL. EVEN YOUR PREACHER WAS A REBEL, NOW HE FUCKS EXPENSIVE WOMAN WITH YOUR MONEY. JUST GET THE BEAT UP AND DOWN, IN AND OUT. SADE WAS A NUN MASTURBATING OTHER NUNS WITH HIS CRUCIFIX. UNDER THE GROUND, THERE'S A CITY WHERE WRITERS LIKE POE, LOVECRAFT, DUNSANY, MACHEN AND WELLS LIVE WAITING FOR THEIR MAGGOT SALAD. WRITERS ARE IN DANGER. INMORTALITY IN WORDS WRITEN IN A WHITE PAPER, I'LL LIVE AS LONG AS SOMEONE READS ME. WE WERE NOTHING BUT BODIES FOR EACH OTHER, HEDONISTIC BEINGS IN SEARCH OF WELLNESS. BLOOD PUMPING. FRICTION AND HOT. SALTY FLAVOUR. THE SOUND OF STARS. BUKOWSKI THINKS I AM COOL CAUSE I HAVE MADE PEACE WITH ALCOHOL, HE'S STILL THREE FEET UNDER. YOU WOULD DRINK PISS IF I TELL YOU IS THE LATEST DRUG. IN A FAR ISLAND THE CORRUPT PRESIDENTS SWIM IN A MONEY POOL TOUCHING THEMSELVES WITH THIER GREEDY HANDS. THE OCEAN AGLOWS WITH NOISES. THE FISH CRY THEIR PAIN. FADING OUT. EVEN IN YOUR HAPPY PLACE THERE’S A WAR GOING ON. THINK OF A HAPPY PLACE, YOU CAN'T EVERYTHING IS GONE. AN INCREDIBLE SPRINKLE LIGHTS UP THE SKY. SET THE AIR ON FIRE, EXHAUST YOUR JAIL BODY WITH DESIRE, BABY SET THE EARTH ON FIRE. SO, THE GIRL LEFT AFTER A LOUD ORGASM SERVED WITH ANIMAL SCENT AND A SEMEN COCKTAIL. THE SUN WAS GOING UP. MAYBE ANOTHER BEER WILL CALM MY BODY. LYING IN BED STARING AT THE ENDLESS FIGURES IN THE CEILING. NOT ANOTHER PARADE. RELAXATION WILL ALWAYS COME TO LEND A HAND. TORMENTOUS NIGHT, MY EX-GIRL...YES, YOU USED TO LIKE MY SMILE.IS IT ANYTHING SIMPLER THAN THAT?THAN LIFE?
OSWALDO PEREZ CABRERA
Mexico Distrito Federal
miércoles, 11 de abril de 2007
Pornographic Story Under the Rain
The rain presaged an ending in red and gray. The rain produced a watery mirror whose slivers were incrustrated into the skin of the city.
They have been locked in like metropolis animals in a concrete cage, prisoners by their own will, wrapped in a human knot. Brains intoxicated by artificial and natural substances.
He extended a scorching candle like those of the churches. It was looking for the warmth of an open rose. She received him unfolding her extremities open wide. The red of passion spread on the gray sheets wetted by the sweat with salty flavor like the tears of joy that were raining from her eyes.
Time, damned dictator was repressing his feelings but was exalting hers as well.
He broke the spell and went looking for another destiny under the canille rain that kept punishing the pavement. Broken glass in her heart. Hate licked the wounds on her sad chest.
The noise is still recorded in the walls. They have filtered in form of frequencies by the pores. Before the departure they were screams of joy, after they were screams of desperation.
Of him, nobody knew anything. It is believed that he crossed some borders and an ocean.
She took a warmth bath with a cocktail of multicolor pills. Then she sank the Gillette in several parts of her skin.
The rain put the gray hue to the story with her monotonous melody. She put the red trying to kick out the gray inside of her soul. She just could take the carmine of her body.
The gray remains. Here still rains.
OSWALDO PEREZ CABRERA
They have been locked in like metropolis animals in a concrete cage, prisoners by their own will, wrapped in a human knot. Brains intoxicated by artificial and natural substances.
He extended a scorching candle like those of the churches. It was looking for the warmth of an open rose. She received him unfolding her extremities open wide. The red of passion spread on the gray sheets wetted by the sweat with salty flavor like the tears of joy that were raining from her eyes.
Time, damned dictator was repressing his feelings but was exalting hers as well.
He broke the spell and went looking for another destiny under the canille rain that kept punishing the pavement. Broken glass in her heart. Hate licked the wounds on her sad chest.
The noise is still recorded in the walls. They have filtered in form of frequencies by the pores. Before the departure they were screams of joy, after they were screams of desperation.
Of him, nobody knew anything. It is believed that he crossed some borders and an ocean.
She took a warmth bath with a cocktail of multicolor pills. Then she sank the Gillette in several parts of her skin.
The rain put the gray hue to the story with her monotonous melody. She put the red trying to kick out the gray inside of her soul. She just could take the carmine of her body.
The gray remains. Here still rains.
OSWALDO PEREZ CABRERA
Wandering Souls
Wandering souls
Maybe because I missed walking through the lightless back alleys, maybe because the puddles were barely reflecting the dusk in half hues. But mostly because I was looking for the world of candles, where a procession of perishable lives is formed waiting for the eternal blow. At the end, it is all because I am an imperial vagabond, I have a broken soul and I look for redemption in some crevice of the sweated city. It is also because I miss your breath and all the times that you were breathing the same air that was being expelled by my lungs and I could sniff the traces of alcohol and tobacco that remained in your interior. Simply because I am a hunter of souls that snoops like a spectator into the particular theatres. But I don’t know until which point I can differentiate if I am a participant or just a witness in the films of life?
In some corner I find the way to become ubiquitous and I can caress this city scribbled with technology and dressed in black leather with ornaments of graffiti colour. Then all the stories seem to converge inside my psyche and I feel like a semi-god that distracts himself with borrowed tales so he can disguise the lacking of his kingdom; then I justify my god.
Inside the ghetto I can see the walls stained with sticky auras, the speed of the mind reduces velocity below the permitted limits and I take advantage to blow some flames to see the results of the cocky actions inherent to the powerful beings. As I feel the tenuous fragility of the threads of life I am scared and I retreat to a more inoffensive place.
I don’t know why I always liked the food of the hospitals, maybe because I could see some ailing souls trying to decide if they should cross the wire or remain in their corporal repression. Then I could swallow them and absorb their stories like the smoke of a cigarette. Better said, I inhale the echo of the smoke that is left from their candles when they are extinguished. That last cleft that allows me to review the letters tattooed in the plaits of time. Then I fly at extravagant speed to aspire all the holy smokes.
In the caverns of the world there inhabit beings that guard us from invisible roofs like waiting for the catharsis. I have seen them while I slide through the sepia aisles that open silently between the lightest particles. They have a sick colour that does not correspond to any of the ones in here. Generally, I slip away through the dimension of the mirrors and from this side, the mirror in the washroom is not that cruel. I watch the pores of my shut face, like a lunar map full of black trees without vegetation. Like epic spikes rising to protect the territory of the inside, the one that is beyond the flesh in the last crevice of privacy. In the meantime, I can spend some time between the normality of the masks and try to mould it in the letters of time.
After that I will have time to invade those crevices of privacy belonging to strange people.
OSWALDO PÉREZ CABRERA
Maybe because I missed walking through the lightless back alleys, maybe because the puddles were barely reflecting the dusk in half hues. But mostly because I was looking for the world of candles, where a procession of perishable lives is formed waiting for the eternal blow. At the end, it is all because I am an imperial vagabond, I have a broken soul and I look for redemption in some crevice of the sweated city. It is also because I miss your breath and all the times that you were breathing the same air that was being expelled by my lungs and I could sniff the traces of alcohol and tobacco that remained in your interior. Simply because I am a hunter of souls that snoops like a spectator into the particular theatres. But I don’t know until which point I can differentiate if I am a participant or just a witness in the films of life?
In some corner I find the way to become ubiquitous and I can caress this city scribbled with technology and dressed in black leather with ornaments of graffiti colour. Then all the stories seem to converge inside my psyche and I feel like a semi-god that distracts himself with borrowed tales so he can disguise the lacking of his kingdom; then I justify my god.
Inside the ghetto I can see the walls stained with sticky auras, the speed of the mind reduces velocity below the permitted limits and I take advantage to blow some flames to see the results of the cocky actions inherent to the powerful beings. As I feel the tenuous fragility of the threads of life I am scared and I retreat to a more inoffensive place.
I don’t know why I always liked the food of the hospitals, maybe because I could see some ailing souls trying to decide if they should cross the wire or remain in their corporal repression. Then I could swallow them and absorb their stories like the smoke of a cigarette. Better said, I inhale the echo of the smoke that is left from their candles when they are extinguished. That last cleft that allows me to review the letters tattooed in the plaits of time. Then I fly at extravagant speed to aspire all the holy smokes.
In the caverns of the world there inhabit beings that guard us from invisible roofs like waiting for the catharsis. I have seen them while I slide through the sepia aisles that open silently between the lightest particles. They have a sick colour that does not correspond to any of the ones in here. Generally, I slip away through the dimension of the mirrors and from this side, the mirror in the washroom is not that cruel. I watch the pores of my shut face, like a lunar map full of black trees without vegetation. Like epic spikes rising to protect the territory of the inside, the one that is beyond the flesh in the last crevice of privacy. In the meantime, I can spend some time between the normality of the masks and try to mould it in the letters of time.
After that I will have time to invade those crevices of privacy belonging to strange people.
OSWALDO PÉREZ CABRERA
sábado, 31 de marzo de 2007
The End of Sex
THE END OF SEX
They had been sitting for two hours watching their faces reflecting in the cold cup of coffee, staring at each other with boredom drilling their bodies, their brains tired and a non-stop rain falling defying the patience of mortals.
(The coffee shop has a big window, beside it our heroes in a wooden table, the drops sliding down the crystal, all the other couples, and people in the small café have the same tiredness in their looks. Indifference.
Man.- I had it with sex. (Suddenly he broke the silence).
Woman. - Me too. (She agreed with the same tone of sickness).
Man.- I mean, I really had it.
Woman. - So, what’s your point?
Man.- What’s my point? What’s your wild sexual fantasy?
Woman.- I don’t know. Maybe make love while we are falling from the sky.
Man.- Be real. Besides, I think we did that.
Woman.- Well (doubtfully) you should know, I’ve told you many times.
Man.- Yeah, and we’ve fulfilled your fantasies so many times.
Woman.- Well…yes…so.
Man.- So that’s my point, we can’t go any further, and we have tried everything. It’s just so monotonous. We are loosing the sparkle.
Woman.- Yeah, you are right.
Man.- No fun. But we had great times.
Woman.- For sure, the greatest lovers on the face of the Earth.
Man.- Earth, I hate that. Like the time when we first met. You were sensuality and I was lust.
Woman.- Our first touch was lighting.
Man.- We looked in each other’s eyes.
Woman.- approaching wordless.
Man.- Your lips barely open, waiting to be kissed for the first time.
Woman.- We followed our instincts. We were made to love.
Man.- I kissed you softly, my tongue reached inside your mouth breathless, my hands searched for your exquisite breast, touched them doubtfully, then down your belly, your womb and to that wetness, the vortex of my imagination.
Woman.- you were shaking. I was sweating and feeling a delicious pain when your finger was exploring my inside.
Man.- I was astonished when your dress fell down to the ground, my erection was about to explode.
Woman.- (laughing) I was very much surprised when I saw your piece of meat. I couldn’t imagine it inside of me. It was enormous. I was so naïve.
Man.- I started kissing your neck and all your body inch by inch, your sweat tasted like strong liquor.
Woman.- Your tongue felt so right, your hard body pressing mine, so tender.
Man.- each drop like pearls and I left a wet path in your skin, a happy trail to your salty garden. That smell was like a drug. I thought I could die in there. Cunilingus: exquisite dish.
Woman.- (laughing) I was so ashamed, my body trembling. It felt so good.
Man.- I was exploring.
Woman.- I loved to be explored.
Man.- We unleashed something that day.
Woman.- Not until your penis was wandering around my thighs looking to get inside.
Man.- We invented something when I penetrated you. Ah! That feeling! We justified our existence.
Woman.- The flesh.
Man.- We almost fainted.
Woman.- We just couldn’t stop.
Man.- We must have invented a thousand positions.
Woman.- we became greedy.
Man.- The purpose of sex is reproduction.
Woman.- We ignored that.
Man.- Me on top, you on top, we standing. Oh! When we sucked our parts at the same time, you were sitting on my face, moaning, humid, you were licking, a puddle in my mouth.
Woman.- Oh yeah. Well your penis was gloaming with my saliva, it was beating like a heart. Felatio my dearest, a splendid dessert.
Man.- our bodies were throbbing.
Woman.- We were like a knot.
Man.- Then I discovered your anus. I think I touched your intestines with my sizzling tongue.
Woman.- And your dick. We invented sodomy.
Man.- your ass was tight. That smell used to keep me alive.
Woman.- The flavour of your semen. I must have drunk litres of it, dripping on my chin. I was inside of you too, with my finger remember? You rocking and I caressing your prostate.
Man.- You really moved me woman.
Woman.- Then we met this guy. The alcoholic one bac something.
Man.- And he introduced us to the wine.
Woman.- A new experience, we made love under its influence.
Man.- I drank it from your body.
Woman.- Sticky love, you lick it.
Man.- Sweat and sweet
Woman.- you smeared me with all kinds of stuff.
Man.- Well, you cooked and eat on my naked body.
Woman.- Then the trios, the menage au trois, the threesome.
Man.- we have a guest of every race in our bed.
Woman.- Men, women and all kinds of drugs. We tried them as they invented them.
Man.- But we didn’t invent homosexuality.
Woman.- not really, you were sodomized though, screaming like a woman.
Man.- Well, you had four men at the same time, your two hole occupied, your mouth busy and trying to satisfy the other fellow with your breasts.
Woman.- I did satisfy the guy.
Man.- Those orgies were mythical.
Woman.- Human labyrinths.
Man,- With a lot of holes to be filled.
Woman.- I think it was France. Yes, the young virgins, the priest, the studs, the royalty, the slaves, sexual humiliation, I was THE dominatrix.
Man.- No masks, no clothes, no social status.
Woman.- Hedonism at the max. Did we invent that word?
Man.- every one looking for the same thing. Out of them.
Woman.- We didn’t know if it was day or night. Everyone naked, some crying, some screaming, white eyes, fat, skinny, blondes, I don’t know. No complexes and a lot of fetishes. Fetish (thinking) Oh those French.
Man.- We had the toys.
Woman.- You loved the whip.
Man.- I punished you, left maps on your skin. You loved the sensation of pain. Your body was on fire begging for more.
Woman.- Yes my man, but you had your share too. Handcuffed, dressed in leather, beaten until ejaculation. Crucified giving me your sacred fluids.
Man.- Fluids! That’s a good one. You were fascinated every time you felt my urine in your body, the golden shower splashing in your soft skin.
Woman.- I even took a shit in your stomach. Remember the warm sensation? And what about peeing on your face.
Man.- I loved to sprinkle our guests.
Woman.- yeah, we knew some kinky people.
Man.- Sick people! Remember the wanna-be vampires? They drank your blood. They wouldn’t have an orgasm if they didn’t have some blood.
Woman.- yes, I remember a guy that had a razor blade in his teeth and cut us and himself, he giving it to me and you to him. You liked men’s asses.
Man.- Twisted. Little streams of blood.
Woman.- We became voyeurs and bisexuality? I think we started that. Women odour a splendid gift to my senses.
Man.- We masturbated each other in public places.
Woman.- The time when we tied that priest, I sucked his erection until he cried. From both sides that is.
Man.- I rapped a nun while you were playing with that artificial device.
Woman.- technology helped us a lot.
Man.- yes, fucking in airplanes, in trains, in stadiums, in every new place and every corner of the world.
Woman.- We witnessed and recorded a lot of sexual stories.
Man.- Paedophile! We even practice that. Oh the little ones!
Woman.- The animals, honey, you made me do things beyond my capacity.
Man.- I was getting bored. Orgasm used to be the little Death, now it’s just a… We have gone too far.
Woman.- The couples don’t kiss anymore.
Man.- Love is just overrated
Woman.- We can’t do anything, people just lost interest.
Man.- Me too. I tell you. No more holding hands.
Woman.- No more love at first sight.
Man.- We had to experiment with all those things, because pure love just wasn’t there anymore.
Woman.- it wasn’t our fault
Man.- We had to keep the flame burning.
Woman.- Nobody cares anymore.
Man.- still, I don’t think we invented homosexuality.
Woman.- We were wrong.
Man.- I thought that was what people wanted. Variety.
Woman.- We lost love.
Man.- We failed. I’m tired. I don’t want to keep on.
Woman.- We even tried computers and sex with machines.
Man. Uh yep! There were accidents. Bloody ones.
Woman.- you drank my blood too, honey remember?
Man.- It gives me nausea now. Menstruation no fun anymore.
Woman.- are we senile?
Man.- No, we just have to have the ultimate experience. Super sex.
Woman.- I don’t get it. We tried everything, even donkeys, and geese.
Man.- No, no, forget about third parties, humans or animals or toys just you and me.
Woman.- Conventional love doesn’t work anymore remember? No more hugs and tenderness in the street, even bondage and sadomasochism are out of fashion. By the way, they stole that name, we should’ve registered that.
Man.- Fuck Venus! You don’t get it do you? I’m talking about the end. We finished our mission. It’s over, we are not needed anymore, and lust must be erased from the Bible, just six capital sins…
Woman.- I can’t believe it, even sex was sold. Prostitutes were our big help.
Man.- (Raising his voice) you are not listening. Remember how do we define orgasm?
Woman.- The climax? The ecstasy? The…
Man.- Little death honey, the little Death. How long since you had a good orgasm.
Woman.- I can’t quite remember?
Man.- See? There’s just no motivation. No horses, no orgies, no kids, virginities, no nothing. We are just missing one thing to experience.
Woman.- You mean…
Man.- Yes, we did all we could didn’t we?
Woman.- I guess you are right
Man.- the little Death within Death.
Woman.- And what’s going to happen?
Man.- That’s the beauty of it, we don’t know. We didn’t know what was going to happen when we screwed dead bodies did we?
Woman.- It was fun, cold dinner. Ne-cro-phile Nice word.
Man.- See what I mean? Just fuck until the end, the last orgasm, you and me, synchronised. We cum and we go. No more victims, nobody cares anyway.
Woman.- Do you think that souls have sex?
Man.- I don’t have a clue. Maybe. We just have to start exploring again. Invisible love. Fleshless lust and fluidless sensuality.
Woman.- Cupid you are a genius!
Man.- Venus, let’s go when we first started.
Woman.- When we lost our virginities and unleashed this chain reaction.
Man.- Arsenic? O>D> of heroin? A dagger? What would it be?
Woman.- We can just fuck our brains out.
Man.- A gun isn’t very romantic.
Woman.- A bomb! Wired to our heartbeats, when we reached climax. Kaboom!
Man.- Too insecure. The old fashion venom: Cicuta. We put a capsule in our mouths we feel the little Death, we kiss, we bite, fill our mouth with sweetness and...
Woman.- Darkness
Man.- Or light.
Woman.- Who knows?
Man.- Lets do it my coquettish and voluptuous princess of lust.
Woman.- Whatever you say my match-maker beloved prince.
Man.- Let us kiss.
Woman.- I love you.
Man.- I love you too.
(They kiss with tenderness)
That night the ocean stopped his tide, the Earth colded, the skies cried, the Gods in despair went to the stars searching for something they just don’t know what. The air carried a strange scent of aphrodisiac heat, but after two screams of pleasure all faded away. Two Gods were dead. The bodies lying on top of each other. That night love and sex ceased to exist. Misunderstood and misinterpreted. Beauty was mourning. Human kind was doomed.
OSWALDO PEREZ CABRERA.
They had been sitting for two hours watching their faces reflecting in the cold cup of coffee, staring at each other with boredom drilling their bodies, their brains tired and a non-stop rain falling defying the patience of mortals.
(The coffee shop has a big window, beside it our heroes in a wooden table, the drops sliding down the crystal, all the other couples, and people in the small café have the same tiredness in their looks. Indifference.
Man.- I had it with sex. (Suddenly he broke the silence).
Woman. - Me too. (She agreed with the same tone of sickness).
Man.- I mean, I really had it.
Woman. - So, what’s your point?
Man.- What’s my point? What’s your wild sexual fantasy?
Woman.- I don’t know. Maybe make love while we are falling from the sky.
Man.- Be real. Besides, I think we did that.
Woman.- Well (doubtfully) you should know, I’ve told you many times.
Man.- Yeah, and we’ve fulfilled your fantasies so many times.
Woman.- Well…yes…so.
Man.- So that’s my point, we can’t go any further, and we have tried everything. It’s just so monotonous. We are loosing the sparkle.
Woman.- Yeah, you are right.
Man.- No fun. But we had great times.
Woman.- For sure, the greatest lovers on the face of the Earth.
Man.- Earth, I hate that. Like the time when we first met. You were sensuality and I was lust.
Woman.- Our first touch was lighting.
Man.- We looked in each other’s eyes.
Woman.- approaching wordless.
Man.- Your lips barely open, waiting to be kissed for the first time.
Woman.- We followed our instincts. We were made to love.
Man.- I kissed you softly, my tongue reached inside your mouth breathless, my hands searched for your exquisite breast, touched them doubtfully, then down your belly, your womb and to that wetness, the vortex of my imagination.
Woman.- you were shaking. I was sweating and feeling a delicious pain when your finger was exploring my inside.
Man.- I was astonished when your dress fell down to the ground, my erection was about to explode.
Woman.- (laughing) I was very much surprised when I saw your piece of meat. I couldn’t imagine it inside of me. It was enormous. I was so naïve.
Man.- I started kissing your neck and all your body inch by inch, your sweat tasted like strong liquor.
Woman.- Your tongue felt so right, your hard body pressing mine, so tender.
Man.- each drop like pearls and I left a wet path in your skin, a happy trail to your salty garden. That smell was like a drug. I thought I could die in there. Cunilingus: exquisite dish.
Woman.- (laughing) I was so ashamed, my body trembling. It felt so good.
Man.- I was exploring.
Woman.- I loved to be explored.
Man.- We unleashed something that day.
Woman.- Not until your penis was wandering around my thighs looking to get inside.
Man.- We invented something when I penetrated you. Ah! That feeling! We justified our existence.
Woman.- The flesh.
Man.- We almost fainted.
Woman.- We just couldn’t stop.
Man.- We must have invented a thousand positions.
Woman.- we became greedy.
Man.- The purpose of sex is reproduction.
Woman.- We ignored that.
Man.- Me on top, you on top, we standing. Oh! When we sucked our parts at the same time, you were sitting on my face, moaning, humid, you were licking, a puddle in my mouth.
Woman.- Oh yeah. Well your penis was gloaming with my saliva, it was beating like a heart. Felatio my dearest, a splendid dessert.
Man.- our bodies were throbbing.
Woman.- We were like a knot.
Man.- Then I discovered your anus. I think I touched your intestines with my sizzling tongue.
Woman.- And your dick. We invented sodomy.
Man.- your ass was tight. That smell used to keep me alive.
Woman.- The flavour of your semen. I must have drunk litres of it, dripping on my chin. I was inside of you too, with my finger remember? You rocking and I caressing your prostate.
Man.- You really moved me woman.
Woman.- Then we met this guy. The alcoholic one bac something.
Man.- And he introduced us to the wine.
Woman.- A new experience, we made love under its influence.
Man.- I drank it from your body.
Woman.- Sticky love, you lick it.
Man.- Sweat and sweet
Woman.- you smeared me with all kinds of stuff.
Man.- Well, you cooked and eat on my naked body.
Woman.- Then the trios, the menage au trois, the threesome.
Man.- we have a guest of every race in our bed.
Woman.- Men, women and all kinds of drugs. We tried them as they invented them.
Man.- But we didn’t invent homosexuality.
Woman.- not really, you were sodomized though, screaming like a woman.
Man.- Well, you had four men at the same time, your two hole occupied, your mouth busy and trying to satisfy the other fellow with your breasts.
Woman.- I did satisfy the guy.
Man.- Those orgies were mythical.
Woman.- Human labyrinths.
Man,- With a lot of holes to be filled.
Woman.- I think it was France. Yes, the young virgins, the priest, the studs, the royalty, the slaves, sexual humiliation, I was THE dominatrix.
Man.- No masks, no clothes, no social status.
Woman.- Hedonism at the max. Did we invent that word?
Man.- every one looking for the same thing. Out of them.
Woman.- We didn’t know if it was day or night. Everyone naked, some crying, some screaming, white eyes, fat, skinny, blondes, I don’t know. No complexes and a lot of fetishes. Fetish (thinking) Oh those French.
Man.- We had the toys.
Woman.- You loved the whip.
Man.- I punished you, left maps on your skin. You loved the sensation of pain. Your body was on fire begging for more.
Woman.- Yes my man, but you had your share too. Handcuffed, dressed in leather, beaten until ejaculation. Crucified giving me your sacred fluids.
Man.- Fluids! That’s a good one. You were fascinated every time you felt my urine in your body, the golden shower splashing in your soft skin.
Woman.- I even took a shit in your stomach. Remember the warm sensation? And what about peeing on your face.
Man.- I loved to sprinkle our guests.
Woman.- yeah, we knew some kinky people.
Man.- Sick people! Remember the wanna-be vampires? They drank your blood. They wouldn’t have an orgasm if they didn’t have some blood.
Woman.- yes, I remember a guy that had a razor blade in his teeth and cut us and himself, he giving it to me and you to him. You liked men’s asses.
Man.- Twisted. Little streams of blood.
Woman.- We became voyeurs and bisexuality? I think we started that. Women odour a splendid gift to my senses.
Man.- We masturbated each other in public places.
Woman.- The time when we tied that priest, I sucked his erection until he cried. From both sides that is.
Man.- I rapped a nun while you were playing with that artificial device.
Woman.- technology helped us a lot.
Man.- yes, fucking in airplanes, in trains, in stadiums, in every new place and every corner of the world.
Woman.- We witnessed and recorded a lot of sexual stories.
Man.- Paedophile! We even practice that. Oh the little ones!
Woman.- The animals, honey, you made me do things beyond my capacity.
Man.- I was getting bored. Orgasm used to be the little Death, now it’s just a… We have gone too far.
Woman.- The couples don’t kiss anymore.
Man.- Love is just overrated
Woman.- We can’t do anything, people just lost interest.
Man.- Me too. I tell you. No more holding hands.
Woman.- No more love at first sight.
Man.- We had to experiment with all those things, because pure love just wasn’t there anymore.
Woman.- it wasn’t our fault
Man.- We had to keep the flame burning.
Woman.- Nobody cares anymore.
Man.- still, I don’t think we invented homosexuality.
Woman.- We were wrong.
Man.- I thought that was what people wanted. Variety.
Woman.- We lost love.
Man.- We failed. I’m tired. I don’t want to keep on.
Woman.- We even tried computers and sex with machines.
Man. Uh yep! There were accidents. Bloody ones.
Woman.- you drank my blood too, honey remember?
Man.- It gives me nausea now. Menstruation no fun anymore.
Woman.- are we senile?
Man.- No, we just have to have the ultimate experience. Super sex.
Woman.- I don’t get it. We tried everything, even donkeys, and geese.
Man.- No, no, forget about third parties, humans or animals or toys just you and me.
Woman.- Conventional love doesn’t work anymore remember? No more hugs and tenderness in the street, even bondage and sadomasochism are out of fashion. By the way, they stole that name, we should’ve registered that.
Man.- Fuck Venus! You don’t get it do you? I’m talking about the end. We finished our mission. It’s over, we are not needed anymore, and lust must be erased from the Bible, just six capital sins…
Woman.- I can’t believe it, even sex was sold. Prostitutes were our big help.
Man.- (Raising his voice) you are not listening. Remember how do we define orgasm?
Woman.- The climax? The ecstasy? The…
Man.- Little death honey, the little Death. How long since you had a good orgasm.
Woman.- I can’t quite remember?
Man.- See? There’s just no motivation. No horses, no orgies, no kids, virginities, no nothing. We are just missing one thing to experience.
Woman.- You mean…
Man.- Yes, we did all we could didn’t we?
Woman.- I guess you are right
Man.- the little Death within Death.
Woman.- And what’s going to happen?
Man.- That’s the beauty of it, we don’t know. We didn’t know what was going to happen when we screwed dead bodies did we?
Woman.- It was fun, cold dinner. Ne-cro-phile Nice word.
Man.- See what I mean? Just fuck until the end, the last orgasm, you and me, synchronised. We cum and we go. No more victims, nobody cares anyway.
Woman.- Do you think that souls have sex?
Man.- I don’t have a clue. Maybe. We just have to start exploring again. Invisible love. Fleshless lust and fluidless sensuality.
Woman.- Cupid you are a genius!
Man.- Venus, let’s go when we first started.
Woman.- When we lost our virginities and unleashed this chain reaction.
Man.- Arsenic? O>D> of heroin? A dagger? What would it be?
Woman.- We can just fuck our brains out.
Man.- A gun isn’t very romantic.
Woman.- A bomb! Wired to our heartbeats, when we reached climax. Kaboom!
Man.- Too insecure. The old fashion venom: Cicuta. We put a capsule in our mouths we feel the little Death, we kiss, we bite, fill our mouth with sweetness and...
Woman.- Darkness
Man.- Or light.
Woman.- Who knows?
Man.- Lets do it my coquettish and voluptuous princess of lust.
Woman.- Whatever you say my match-maker beloved prince.
Man.- Let us kiss.
Woman.- I love you.
Man.- I love you too.
(They kiss with tenderness)
That night the ocean stopped his tide, the Earth colded, the skies cried, the Gods in despair went to the stars searching for something they just don’t know what. The air carried a strange scent of aphrodisiac heat, but after two screams of pleasure all faded away. Two Gods were dead. The bodies lying on top of each other. That night love and sex ceased to exist. Misunderstood and misinterpreted. Beauty was mourning. Human kind was doomed.
OSWALDO PEREZ CABRERA.
viernes, 30 de marzo de 2007
Alejandro Jodorowski Revisited
Jodorowski Revisited.
“I AM NOT GOING SO FAST TO CATCH THE DEATH NOR TOO SLOW FOR THE DEATH TO CATCH ME, A FILM EVERY SEVEN ANNUAL CYCLES IS ENOUGH.”
“EVERY DAY THE NEWSPAPER INSULT ME, EVERY DAY I HAVE A NEW PROBLEM WITH SOCIETY”
ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKI.
Essay by Oswaldo Pérez Cabrera originally appeared in Cannibal Culture, Cine Muerte magazine in Vancouver.
Jesus walks naked through the streets of Mexico City followed by a horde of whores while the military police bastards dance with their gas masks after having their blood feast. An elephant spits blood from his hose-trunk only to have his mortuary service as food to hundred of homeless mud people. A nine-year-old child ends the misery of an agonizing man with his pistol surrounded by a pool of blood in a desert old western town. Old women bet the right to kiss a fat stud in his underwear in the middle of a deserted mountain. Parades of freaks marching almost imperially - war toys designed to be used by conditioned children - orgies, massacre, death, spiritual life, and twisted religions. Welcome to the bizarre world of Alejandro Jodorowski, the Chilean multi-artist who can be considered one of the few citizens of the world and other dimensions, a term that every one of us should hang on our chest.
A lot has been said about his movies, and a lot more has been said about his other artistic expressions: mime artist, performer, happenings artist, theatre, comic, founder of the panique movement (with Moebius and Fernando Arrabal) and the horror circus, tarot card master, Psycho Magic, collaborator of the magazine Heavy Metal, etc. Yet, it is hard to classify his movies. We know they are considered cult films, but are they gore? Horror? Surrealistic? Mystic? Religious? Grotesque? We can draw one conclusion: His movies are all of that and more. People bleed, religions are questioned and satirised, the human mind is deeply explored, art is carried to the limits of the fantastic, music is used to disturb us as well, surreal images and symbols are a constant. We are required to see his films several times and everytime a new element or symbol will pop in our mind. Animals are used to play with our psyche and emotions. Sex and nudity are exploited as a natural part of our twisted society. Basically, if you are dumb, or have an unnatural moral, a square mind, and are easily disturbed, then don’t waste your time, and continue with your boring, routine life. In fact, if that is the case then you should stop reading this article as well. This will leave us with approximately 20% of the world population - the ones who are really thinking beyond their routines. Maybe I am being generous with the human race.
Art, sex and human values are taken to the extremes, so now you know, you have been warned. At one time Jodorowski said about his warped movies: “I think that if you want to change the world, you must first change the actors in the picture. And before doing that you must change yourself right? This must be done… I must kill myself and I must be born again… The audiences must be assassinated, killed, destroyed, and they must leave the theatre as new people. This is a good picture.” 1971.
He did what was stated above with his actors in “The Holy Mountain in 1972, as well as to himself in “El Topo” in 1969, and he was planning to do it in the movie that never was made, but promised to be a masterpiece of all arts combined: “Dunes”. Jodorowski was supposed to direct the project that was full of geniuses, such as Jean Girard (“Moebius”), a cartoon artist and designer with whom Jodorowski had collaborated before in the artistic comic world; H.R. Giger, who at the time was an unknown young artist, was supposed to design the … well that requires no further explanation and also Dan O’ Bannon, who later wrote the screenplay for Alien. The music was going to be composed by Pink Floyd and in the character of the Mad Professor (charging a fortune) the master of dimensions, the crazy genius, Salvador Dali. The project was abandoned after two years of work. In my personal opinion, I think that David Lynch (despite his artistic success with his films, Eraserhead and the Elephant Man) was not the right person to direct the film (which was adapted from the novel of Frank Herbert). This movie would have been a precursor to the Star Wars phenomenon but Hollywood didn’t believe in sci-fi movies and least of all a long expensive sci-fi movie. In the end, Jodorowski’s surrealistic vision will never be imitated.
I will give you a brief synopsis of four of his masterpieces, so you can go by yourself in this trip of mindscapes, gore, and dreamscapes.
“Fando y Lis” was considered to be lost for almost 30 years, a psychedelic trip that remains us of landscapes from Dante’s Inferno and weirder characters than those that Alice found in Wonderland. The movie had its premier, as strange as this sounds, in the Acapulco Film Festival in 1969; the outcome of the festival was as strange as it sounds as well, the cinema was destroyed and the director barely escaped. Mexico wasn’t prepared for this kind of surrealisms. Fando y Lis is a young couples that is looking for the mythic lost city of Tar where all their wishes should be granted. Lis can’t walk what makes Fando the head and the abusive part of the couple. In their trip they are descending into a mad world that makes Mad Max looks like a kids’ fair. The film is made in Mexico with Mexican actors. The film is based on a play by the multimediatic artist Fernando Arrabal and the two actors Sergio Kleiner and Silvia Mariscal are obliged to twist in a mime kind of way through the whole movie.
The trailer of that time which included a drawing of Fando standing on top of Lis who is pictured with six arachnid legs contains the next phrases which I believe will suit the description of the movie better. “An erotic odyssey…through the perverse…the phallic…the mystic…and the sadistic” “A trip into a Dantean inferno where no act is pagan or profane” or logical they might add, the movie is full with surrealistic allegories where everything it just could’ve been one of your nightmares. The film is a real mindbender trip of hallucinating nature.
El Topo, the film that catapulted the Chilean filmmaker to cult status, filmed in 1969 reminds us of a spaghetti western and opens when Jodorowski himself “El Topo” and his son are walking in a town where everybody has been murdered. We can see men women and children surrounded by pools of blood. The kid who is 9 years old has to finish off a dying man with his pistol. After that, father and son begin a quest to discover who has made this bloody parade. The next scenes include a showdown with three bandidos who are taken down by the guru-like Jodorowski. Women-like Catholic priests are humiliated and raped by brainless men under the orders of a sadist and meticulous colonel who also has a submissive woman. Everybody is saved from this hellish slavery by El Topo. The animals presented in these scenes are pigs. Why? It is the beginning of the journey (the first part of the movie called the Genesis) to achieve the Nirvana - the maximum knowledge. The castration of the church and the elimination of the military forces and dictatorships mark the Genesis. El Topo begins his quest joined by the submissive woman meanwhile leaving his son with the effeminate priests. He now has to find the true masters and kill them, sucking their knowledge. The first one is a fakir type who is served by two freaks that together make a grotesque symbiosis. He predicates meditation and at the end El Topo deceives the master and kills him along with the two- part human creature. The second master is deep in the desert. He and his companion look like Hungarian gypsies and predicate perfection, but one must kill vanity to trick perfection and at the end with the symbol of a lion El Topo cheats and kills them.
The second part is called “The prophets” and began with the quest to find the third master who is an Indian harvesting a horde of rabbits. All the rabbits died when El Topo arrives and because too much perfection is a mistake, he wins by lying again. The fourth master who lives in the centre of the desert is a maharishi, a guru type who taught the ultimate lesson and humbly kill himself before the eyes of El Topo who is now the deceive one.
El Topo finds another woman, a devilish lady who started introducing masochism and lesbianism into the trio. The women later planned to kill El Topo who is left in a comatose state and is rescued by a freak community that lives underground. The third part or the “psalms: began here when he adopts a Hare Krishna look after a revelation and became the Shaman and Messiah of the freaks, whose purpose was to emerge to the surface. It was written that El Topo was the chosen one to help the community to leave the depths, but in the surface a strange society rules, a combination of a western town full of Masons, Lutherans, Slaves, Aristocrats, and a political religious party. Then the last part of the movie or the Apocalypse began when the midgets and freaks came to the upper world after all the sacrifices of El Topo and his midget lover. There are more surprises and symbols (the symbols are used in the way we use them now; they stick into our minds in form of subliminal messages. He explores some of the weapons of manipulation) to come, but is not the intention here to give away the movie, but only to give glimpses of it. El Topo ignores all traditional approaches to narrative and characterisation to become an innovative film.
The next movie and more psychedelic is The Holy Mountain, filmed in Mexico City in 1972. It is about a Master who recruits 9 thieves and teaches them to kill themselves in order to seek the great masters in the Holy Mountain; of course the movie is again full of symbolisms. Animals are a constant, like in a scene where the conquest of Mexico is represented by iguanas and frogs in a model of Tenochtitlan; the scene becomes bloody when the Spaniards take the city. We can see the freaks as an important part of his filmography, the rediscovery of aesthetics, the occidental beauty is questioned, and our heroes are mostly ugly to our conception. One of the thieves is a representation of Christ who has a horde of whores following him. He is beaten up and used as a marketing device and finds himself surrounded with hundreds of images of himself. So after this new birth and beginning, he enters the world of the Hermetic, Alchemy and chromatic psychedelic contained in a concrete tower. The thieves, who will go on a quest for the ultimate truth, are represented by the planets and put in a fantastic, apocalyptic, doomed and even crueller world than the one we live in. The first thief is Venus, who represents beauty, sex, polygamy, appearance, masks, sex slavery, and other perversions. The industry is bizarre love. Then we have the thief represented by Mars, which as a god of war shows weapons, bombs, but also polygamy, sex slaves, religion and dogs. Klen is the next one and represents Jupiter and we see fish, hedonism, art, and sexual art like the giant electric vagina (which has orgasms). Sel comes from Saturn, and is the one in charge of conditioning the children to create war with other human races (in this specific time the Peruvians) to exterminate them and keep the economy rolling, the industry is the war toys and is linked directly to the government and politics. Uranus explores the Oedipus complex, communications, and is the bizarre advisor to the president. Neptune is the chief of police and is perverse, evil, foments a cult of killing and of course, bloody massacres can be seen. Pluto is the games, art nouveau, housing, the industry is the coffins. The last one of course is our Christ. So they are trained to join their powers as one and began their hallucinatory trip by burning their money and killing themselves to reborn as one being in their true essence. They take powerful drugs and go to places like the huge graveyard bar, where you can find all the people that were in search of the masters but preferred to stay in this crazy purgatory. Again, the end and the rest of the adventures are totally pshycotropic so I cannot go any further with the rest of the descriptions. This film is a strong critic of the modern societies and in particular de developed countries.
In the last movie of this article Santa Sangre filmed in Mexico City in 1989, Jodorowski teams with the Italian master of horror Dario Argento as a producer and cast his son (Adan Jodorowski) as the main character. The story is based on a serial killer that terrified Mexico City in the 50’s: Goyo Cardenas who murdered tens of women. Again Jodorowski plays with the animal symbols and the surrealistic that comes inherent with the most populated city in the world. The story is developed in the circus, and starts as a love story between the young killer and a young mime after the mother’s church is tear down by the government and the catholic religion. The story focuses also on the cults. The killer’s mother is defending her religion based on a woman who lost her arms when a couple of thieves rapped her. According to the faith, the blood left a pool where they built the temple. Later the mother will suffer the same fate as her idol. The picture depicts a bizarre and macabre life in the circus, however full of art, theatrical and mime expressions as well as music and dance. The movie is beautifully gory.
Then we see the killer escape from a mental institution and reunites with his armless mother and the killing begins along with the unique vision of Mexico’s low life scenarios and semi-cultural life. The love interest is played by Sabina Dennison and is a deaf mute girl with a white face. The acting of Blanca Guerra as the mother and the performances of Jodorowksi’s son are extraordinary. Some powerful shots are when Blanca Guerra losses her arms, when the female ghosts came back to haunt Felix in a graveyard in the back of his house in ruins or when a dead elephant is thrown to the homeless mud people. We can see that his influences include Buñuel, Fellini, Freud, Breton, Philip k. Dick, etc.
The rest is up to the viewer, but let me warn you that this dark movie is depressing, but beautifully obscure. These were some glimpses to a visionary and warp world of one of the most complicated minds of our time. Currently he is working with Fernando Arau in the second part of El Topo called “The Sons of El Topo” but you never know with the extravagant souls. My final recommendations, see the movies with extreme caution and expect anything, expect to be annoyed and disturbed, at the end that is the purpose: To kill the audience.
After reviewing the classical cult movies of this Chilean multi-artist, let’s proceed to give some information that you would not find on any web site. In my writing career I have found that when you are dealing with surrealist poetry or short stories, people tend to imagine and understand the contents according to the way each one of them has been living. Sometimes a reader that comments on a short story sees a symbolism or a metaphor that I didn’t intend to put there, nonetheless it works perfectly. I think when we are dealing with a complex mind like Jodorowski’s we can apply the same principle. It is very difficult to fully understand all that he is trying to show but you will have a lot of fun trying to understand his movies, especially because you will have to use your brain.
What it is clear to me is that he likes to mock the religions and the human race in general. But he takes this mockery and satire to the extreme, making it harsh for the viewer with a weak stomach due to some very graphic scenes. But the maximum mockery comes with the ending of Holy Mountain. If you saw it, you know what I am talking about. We humans generally go through a lot to try to achieve our goals. We even step on people and succumb to evilness to get what we want and at the end what is the point? At the end it is all just like a big game and the result that we were hoping to achieve is not as good as we thought it would be. Then we become greedy, obsessed, unsatisfied, like Oligarchs because we don’t know how to enjoy what we have - the parody of Jesus walking in the streets of Mexico City, the most surrealistic city in the world, searching for his salvation turning down his life with prostitutes and the potential marketing of his image. At the end, after he went through the teachings of the master he ends up with… nothing. In the same way the audience, that Jodorowski likes to involve so much, ends up wondering what it was all for. At the end the result doesn’t matter, we have to enjoy every moment of the process while it lasts and then be reborn to another process or into another movie.
In Santa Sangre he explores the Oedipus complex to the excessive levels of a hallucinatory trip caused by a very traumatic experience. In Jodorowski’s world everything is taken to the extreme. Another astonishing image is when in the corrupted environment of the circus, an elephant dies spitting blood from its trunk. Some say that an elephant represents wisdom. Then wisdom spits blood and dies and then it is thrown to a horde of hungry mud-people. The meaning of this symbolism here is that wisdom can only be used for a certain time, like food, eventually it will be devoured by the people and became useless like everything in the world, like every cycle of life. There is the eagle tattooed on the chest of the owner of the circus. The mighty eagle that represents the commercialism of the Yankees is a sort of dictatorship arranging the problems and disputes of the members of the circus. The owner does so with a raunchy oligarch and authoritarian attitude and is unable to solve his own problems, problems that end up killing him in a painful way. This metaphor is very interesting because the owner represents the authority (he is actually from the US). The authority (the Yankees) that wants to be the police of the world but at the same time they create wars so they can sell their weapons which is one of their major businesses. This topic is also explored by Jodorowski in Holy Mountain where kids are conditioned to kill and create more wars so that the economy keeps on flowing. He is a strong and merciless analyst of our twisted society.
The exploration of settings is a bonus in Jodorowski’s movies; from the gothic settings of Santa Sangre, especially when the victims rise to haunt the murderer, to the western and desolated setting in El Topo. I think his intention is to always create a parallel world full of nightmarish landscapes where anything can happen and only he is capable of taking us back from his personal dimension. The characters are also a little metaphysical, grotesque and above all, very interesting - all full of a bizarre psychology.
The love interest of the antihero in Santa Sangre is a deaf mute, abused child who resembles a harlequin and symbolizes purity in some sense because she escaped from evilness and is tries to do the same with the antihero, like the mythical bird the Phoenix which rises from the ashes.
She is a freak as well. The freaks are one of the most important characters in his movies. Freaks of all kinds: evil freaks, short freaks, disabled freaks, ugly freaks, beautiful freaks, etc. ‘The freak’ by definition is someone that is abnormal or subnormal, that because of his/her special condition is considered a curiosity or an oddity. But if we think deeper aren’t we all are freaks of some sort? Who is to say where to draw the line that separates normality from abnormality? We all are freaks in one sense or another. Isn’t society a freak entity that no longer lives in balance with nature? The president that executes somebody because of his-her political ideas - that president is a freak! The soldier that follows that order and kills - he is a freak too! The ones that fight in a war, those are freaks too. The priest that fucks expensive women and the next day ask for money to the church members, he is a freak, as well as all the parishioners that do exactly what he says; pedophiles, rapists, women beaters, etc. All freaks of nature. That is the point that I believe Jodorowski is trying to make. “Freakness” can be applied to everybody. You don’t have to be a midget or have three arms or have a tumor the size or a watermelon to be a freak. In the end we are a race of freaks. “We have to kill the audience” “We have to be born again”. The question is: Is the world that we live in as different as the chaotic world of Jodorowski? We have the same fanatics ruling countries, the same religious leaders, the same surrealistic environments, the same cruel killings or massacres. Genocides. Kids are inhaling cement on dirty streets and we become freaks because we just keep walking throwing them a coin or a piece of bread. We become insensitive which I believe is a quality of “Feakness” and then we cry with a stinking Julia Roberts film - pretty pathetic!
The prostitutes walking the dirty alleys looking to escape from reality at the beginning of Holy Mountain. The prostitutes are following a doubtful Jesus who represents a crumbling faith, but they follow him where? Nothing good results from following religion scams in his movies and in real life. It’s the same thing with the politicians. Jodorowski explores all religions sometimes combining them, sometimes being obvious, but always mocking them in one way or the other. He destroys all religions in El Topo and creates his own version of a martyr saving the new race (which is made of freaks) that seems more normal than the inhabitants of the surface.
So what Jodorowski is exposing is the destruction of ourselves as we know ourselves to be but not such a drastic destruction. It is more of a sardonic and ironic destruction of our inner selfish beings. In other words, we mock ourselves because of the way we are, the stupid things that we do, like kill another human being, and destroy all that by laughing and satirizing until we are disgusted by our ways then we can be reborn. We killed ourselves and we can start all over again, then the term freak will be erased from the dictionary because we will not consider anybody strange anymore.
That is the secret message of Jodorowski, but to get to it, you have to go through all the horrors that we have created.
OSWALDO PÉREZ CABRERA.
“I AM NOT GOING SO FAST TO CATCH THE DEATH NOR TOO SLOW FOR THE DEATH TO CATCH ME, A FILM EVERY SEVEN ANNUAL CYCLES IS ENOUGH.”
“EVERY DAY THE NEWSPAPER INSULT ME, EVERY DAY I HAVE A NEW PROBLEM WITH SOCIETY”
ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKI.
Essay by Oswaldo Pérez Cabrera originally appeared in Cannibal Culture, Cine Muerte magazine in Vancouver.
Jesus walks naked through the streets of Mexico City followed by a horde of whores while the military police bastards dance with their gas masks after having their blood feast. An elephant spits blood from his hose-trunk only to have his mortuary service as food to hundred of homeless mud people. A nine-year-old child ends the misery of an agonizing man with his pistol surrounded by a pool of blood in a desert old western town. Old women bet the right to kiss a fat stud in his underwear in the middle of a deserted mountain. Parades of freaks marching almost imperially - war toys designed to be used by conditioned children - orgies, massacre, death, spiritual life, and twisted religions. Welcome to the bizarre world of Alejandro Jodorowski, the Chilean multi-artist who can be considered one of the few citizens of the world and other dimensions, a term that every one of us should hang on our chest.
A lot has been said about his movies, and a lot more has been said about his other artistic expressions: mime artist, performer, happenings artist, theatre, comic, founder of the panique movement (with Moebius and Fernando Arrabal) and the horror circus, tarot card master, Psycho Magic, collaborator of the magazine Heavy Metal, etc. Yet, it is hard to classify his movies. We know they are considered cult films, but are they gore? Horror? Surrealistic? Mystic? Religious? Grotesque? We can draw one conclusion: His movies are all of that and more. People bleed, religions are questioned and satirised, the human mind is deeply explored, art is carried to the limits of the fantastic, music is used to disturb us as well, surreal images and symbols are a constant. We are required to see his films several times and everytime a new element or symbol will pop in our mind. Animals are used to play with our psyche and emotions. Sex and nudity are exploited as a natural part of our twisted society. Basically, if you are dumb, or have an unnatural moral, a square mind, and are easily disturbed, then don’t waste your time, and continue with your boring, routine life. In fact, if that is the case then you should stop reading this article as well. This will leave us with approximately 20% of the world population - the ones who are really thinking beyond their routines. Maybe I am being generous with the human race.
Art, sex and human values are taken to the extremes, so now you know, you have been warned. At one time Jodorowski said about his warped movies: “I think that if you want to change the world, you must first change the actors in the picture. And before doing that you must change yourself right? This must be done… I must kill myself and I must be born again… The audiences must be assassinated, killed, destroyed, and they must leave the theatre as new people. This is a good picture.” 1971.
He did what was stated above with his actors in “The Holy Mountain in 1972, as well as to himself in “El Topo” in 1969, and he was planning to do it in the movie that never was made, but promised to be a masterpiece of all arts combined: “Dunes”. Jodorowski was supposed to direct the project that was full of geniuses, such as Jean Girard (“Moebius”), a cartoon artist and designer with whom Jodorowski had collaborated before in the artistic comic world; H.R. Giger, who at the time was an unknown young artist, was supposed to design the … well that requires no further explanation and also Dan O’ Bannon, who later wrote the screenplay for Alien. The music was going to be composed by Pink Floyd and in the character of the Mad Professor (charging a fortune) the master of dimensions, the crazy genius, Salvador Dali. The project was abandoned after two years of work. In my personal opinion, I think that David Lynch (despite his artistic success with his films, Eraserhead and the Elephant Man) was not the right person to direct the film (which was adapted from the novel of Frank Herbert). This movie would have been a precursor to the Star Wars phenomenon but Hollywood didn’t believe in sci-fi movies and least of all a long expensive sci-fi movie. In the end, Jodorowski’s surrealistic vision will never be imitated.
I will give you a brief synopsis of four of his masterpieces, so you can go by yourself in this trip of mindscapes, gore, and dreamscapes.
“Fando y Lis” was considered to be lost for almost 30 years, a psychedelic trip that remains us of landscapes from Dante’s Inferno and weirder characters than those that Alice found in Wonderland. The movie had its premier, as strange as this sounds, in the Acapulco Film Festival in 1969; the outcome of the festival was as strange as it sounds as well, the cinema was destroyed and the director barely escaped. Mexico wasn’t prepared for this kind of surrealisms. Fando y Lis is a young couples that is looking for the mythic lost city of Tar where all their wishes should be granted. Lis can’t walk what makes Fando the head and the abusive part of the couple. In their trip they are descending into a mad world that makes Mad Max looks like a kids’ fair. The film is made in Mexico with Mexican actors. The film is based on a play by the multimediatic artist Fernando Arrabal and the two actors Sergio Kleiner and Silvia Mariscal are obliged to twist in a mime kind of way through the whole movie.
The trailer of that time which included a drawing of Fando standing on top of Lis who is pictured with six arachnid legs contains the next phrases which I believe will suit the description of the movie better. “An erotic odyssey…through the perverse…the phallic…the mystic…and the sadistic” “A trip into a Dantean inferno where no act is pagan or profane” or logical they might add, the movie is full with surrealistic allegories where everything it just could’ve been one of your nightmares. The film is a real mindbender trip of hallucinating nature.
El Topo, the film that catapulted the Chilean filmmaker to cult status, filmed in 1969 reminds us of a spaghetti western and opens when Jodorowski himself “El Topo” and his son are walking in a town where everybody has been murdered. We can see men women and children surrounded by pools of blood. The kid who is 9 years old has to finish off a dying man with his pistol. After that, father and son begin a quest to discover who has made this bloody parade. The next scenes include a showdown with three bandidos who are taken down by the guru-like Jodorowski. Women-like Catholic priests are humiliated and raped by brainless men under the orders of a sadist and meticulous colonel who also has a submissive woman. Everybody is saved from this hellish slavery by El Topo. The animals presented in these scenes are pigs. Why? It is the beginning of the journey (the first part of the movie called the Genesis) to achieve the Nirvana - the maximum knowledge. The castration of the church and the elimination of the military forces and dictatorships mark the Genesis. El Topo begins his quest joined by the submissive woman meanwhile leaving his son with the effeminate priests. He now has to find the true masters and kill them, sucking their knowledge. The first one is a fakir type who is served by two freaks that together make a grotesque symbiosis. He predicates meditation and at the end El Topo deceives the master and kills him along with the two- part human creature. The second master is deep in the desert. He and his companion look like Hungarian gypsies and predicate perfection, but one must kill vanity to trick perfection and at the end with the symbol of a lion El Topo cheats and kills them.
The second part is called “The prophets” and began with the quest to find the third master who is an Indian harvesting a horde of rabbits. All the rabbits died when El Topo arrives and because too much perfection is a mistake, he wins by lying again. The fourth master who lives in the centre of the desert is a maharishi, a guru type who taught the ultimate lesson and humbly kill himself before the eyes of El Topo who is now the deceive one.
El Topo finds another woman, a devilish lady who started introducing masochism and lesbianism into the trio. The women later planned to kill El Topo who is left in a comatose state and is rescued by a freak community that lives underground. The third part or the “psalms: began here when he adopts a Hare Krishna look after a revelation and became the Shaman and Messiah of the freaks, whose purpose was to emerge to the surface. It was written that El Topo was the chosen one to help the community to leave the depths, but in the surface a strange society rules, a combination of a western town full of Masons, Lutherans, Slaves, Aristocrats, and a political religious party. Then the last part of the movie or the Apocalypse began when the midgets and freaks came to the upper world after all the sacrifices of El Topo and his midget lover. There are more surprises and symbols (the symbols are used in the way we use them now; they stick into our minds in form of subliminal messages. He explores some of the weapons of manipulation) to come, but is not the intention here to give away the movie, but only to give glimpses of it. El Topo ignores all traditional approaches to narrative and characterisation to become an innovative film.
The next movie and more psychedelic is The Holy Mountain, filmed in Mexico City in 1972. It is about a Master who recruits 9 thieves and teaches them to kill themselves in order to seek the great masters in the Holy Mountain; of course the movie is again full of symbolisms. Animals are a constant, like in a scene where the conquest of Mexico is represented by iguanas and frogs in a model of Tenochtitlan; the scene becomes bloody when the Spaniards take the city. We can see the freaks as an important part of his filmography, the rediscovery of aesthetics, the occidental beauty is questioned, and our heroes are mostly ugly to our conception. One of the thieves is a representation of Christ who has a horde of whores following him. He is beaten up and used as a marketing device and finds himself surrounded with hundreds of images of himself. So after this new birth and beginning, he enters the world of the Hermetic, Alchemy and chromatic psychedelic contained in a concrete tower. The thieves, who will go on a quest for the ultimate truth, are represented by the planets and put in a fantastic, apocalyptic, doomed and even crueller world than the one we live in. The first thief is Venus, who represents beauty, sex, polygamy, appearance, masks, sex slavery, and other perversions. The industry is bizarre love. Then we have the thief represented by Mars, which as a god of war shows weapons, bombs, but also polygamy, sex slaves, religion and dogs. Klen is the next one and represents Jupiter and we see fish, hedonism, art, and sexual art like the giant electric vagina (which has orgasms). Sel comes from Saturn, and is the one in charge of conditioning the children to create war with other human races (in this specific time the Peruvians) to exterminate them and keep the economy rolling, the industry is the war toys and is linked directly to the government and politics. Uranus explores the Oedipus complex, communications, and is the bizarre advisor to the president. Neptune is the chief of police and is perverse, evil, foments a cult of killing and of course, bloody massacres can be seen. Pluto is the games, art nouveau, housing, the industry is the coffins. The last one of course is our Christ. So they are trained to join their powers as one and began their hallucinatory trip by burning their money and killing themselves to reborn as one being in their true essence. They take powerful drugs and go to places like the huge graveyard bar, where you can find all the people that were in search of the masters but preferred to stay in this crazy purgatory. Again, the end and the rest of the adventures are totally pshycotropic so I cannot go any further with the rest of the descriptions. This film is a strong critic of the modern societies and in particular de developed countries.
In the last movie of this article Santa Sangre filmed in Mexico City in 1989, Jodorowski teams with the Italian master of horror Dario Argento as a producer and cast his son (Adan Jodorowski) as the main character. The story is based on a serial killer that terrified Mexico City in the 50’s: Goyo Cardenas who murdered tens of women. Again Jodorowski plays with the animal symbols and the surrealistic that comes inherent with the most populated city in the world. The story is developed in the circus, and starts as a love story between the young killer and a young mime after the mother’s church is tear down by the government and the catholic religion. The story focuses also on the cults. The killer’s mother is defending her religion based on a woman who lost her arms when a couple of thieves rapped her. According to the faith, the blood left a pool where they built the temple. Later the mother will suffer the same fate as her idol. The picture depicts a bizarre and macabre life in the circus, however full of art, theatrical and mime expressions as well as music and dance. The movie is beautifully gory.
Then we see the killer escape from a mental institution and reunites with his armless mother and the killing begins along with the unique vision of Mexico’s low life scenarios and semi-cultural life. The love interest is played by Sabina Dennison and is a deaf mute girl with a white face. The acting of Blanca Guerra as the mother and the performances of Jodorowksi’s son are extraordinary. Some powerful shots are when Blanca Guerra losses her arms, when the female ghosts came back to haunt Felix in a graveyard in the back of his house in ruins or when a dead elephant is thrown to the homeless mud people. We can see that his influences include Buñuel, Fellini, Freud, Breton, Philip k. Dick, etc.
The rest is up to the viewer, but let me warn you that this dark movie is depressing, but beautifully obscure. These were some glimpses to a visionary and warp world of one of the most complicated minds of our time. Currently he is working with Fernando Arau in the second part of El Topo called “The Sons of El Topo” but you never know with the extravagant souls. My final recommendations, see the movies with extreme caution and expect anything, expect to be annoyed and disturbed, at the end that is the purpose: To kill the audience.
After reviewing the classical cult movies of this Chilean multi-artist, let’s proceed to give some information that you would not find on any web site. In my writing career I have found that when you are dealing with surrealist poetry or short stories, people tend to imagine and understand the contents according to the way each one of them has been living. Sometimes a reader that comments on a short story sees a symbolism or a metaphor that I didn’t intend to put there, nonetheless it works perfectly. I think when we are dealing with a complex mind like Jodorowski’s we can apply the same principle. It is very difficult to fully understand all that he is trying to show but you will have a lot of fun trying to understand his movies, especially because you will have to use your brain.
What it is clear to me is that he likes to mock the religions and the human race in general. But he takes this mockery and satire to the extreme, making it harsh for the viewer with a weak stomach due to some very graphic scenes. But the maximum mockery comes with the ending of Holy Mountain. If you saw it, you know what I am talking about. We humans generally go through a lot to try to achieve our goals. We even step on people and succumb to evilness to get what we want and at the end what is the point? At the end it is all just like a big game and the result that we were hoping to achieve is not as good as we thought it would be. Then we become greedy, obsessed, unsatisfied, like Oligarchs because we don’t know how to enjoy what we have - the parody of Jesus walking in the streets of Mexico City, the most surrealistic city in the world, searching for his salvation turning down his life with prostitutes and the potential marketing of his image. At the end, after he went through the teachings of the master he ends up with… nothing. In the same way the audience, that Jodorowski likes to involve so much, ends up wondering what it was all for. At the end the result doesn’t matter, we have to enjoy every moment of the process while it lasts and then be reborn to another process or into another movie.
In Santa Sangre he explores the Oedipus complex to the excessive levels of a hallucinatory trip caused by a very traumatic experience. In Jodorowski’s world everything is taken to the extreme. Another astonishing image is when in the corrupted environment of the circus, an elephant dies spitting blood from its trunk. Some say that an elephant represents wisdom. Then wisdom spits blood and dies and then it is thrown to a horde of hungry mud-people. The meaning of this symbolism here is that wisdom can only be used for a certain time, like food, eventually it will be devoured by the people and became useless like everything in the world, like every cycle of life. There is the eagle tattooed on the chest of the owner of the circus. The mighty eagle that represents the commercialism of the Yankees is a sort of dictatorship arranging the problems and disputes of the members of the circus. The owner does so with a raunchy oligarch and authoritarian attitude and is unable to solve his own problems, problems that end up killing him in a painful way. This metaphor is very interesting because the owner represents the authority (he is actually from the US). The authority (the Yankees) that wants to be the police of the world but at the same time they create wars so they can sell their weapons which is one of their major businesses. This topic is also explored by Jodorowski in Holy Mountain where kids are conditioned to kill and create more wars so that the economy keeps on flowing. He is a strong and merciless analyst of our twisted society.
The exploration of settings is a bonus in Jodorowski’s movies; from the gothic settings of Santa Sangre, especially when the victims rise to haunt the murderer, to the western and desolated setting in El Topo. I think his intention is to always create a parallel world full of nightmarish landscapes where anything can happen and only he is capable of taking us back from his personal dimension. The characters are also a little metaphysical, grotesque and above all, very interesting - all full of a bizarre psychology.
The love interest of the antihero in Santa Sangre is a deaf mute, abused child who resembles a harlequin and symbolizes purity in some sense because she escaped from evilness and is tries to do the same with the antihero, like the mythical bird the Phoenix which rises from the ashes.
She is a freak as well. The freaks are one of the most important characters in his movies. Freaks of all kinds: evil freaks, short freaks, disabled freaks, ugly freaks, beautiful freaks, etc. ‘The freak’ by definition is someone that is abnormal or subnormal, that because of his/her special condition is considered a curiosity or an oddity. But if we think deeper aren’t we all are freaks of some sort? Who is to say where to draw the line that separates normality from abnormality? We all are freaks in one sense or another. Isn’t society a freak entity that no longer lives in balance with nature? The president that executes somebody because of his-her political ideas - that president is a freak! The soldier that follows that order and kills - he is a freak too! The ones that fight in a war, those are freaks too. The priest that fucks expensive women and the next day ask for money to the church members, he is a freak, as well as all the parishioners that do exactly what he says; pedophiles, rapists, women beaters, etc. All freaks of nature. That is the point that I believe Jodorowski is trying to make. “Freakness” can be applied to everybody. You don’t have to be a midget or have three arms or have a tumor the size or a watermelon to be a freak. In the end we are a race of freaks. “We have to kill the audience” “We have to be born again”. The question is: Is the world that we live in as different as the chaotic world of Jodorowski? We have the same fanatics ruling countries, the same religious leaders, the same surrealistic environments, the same cruel killings or massacres. Genocides. Kids are inhaling cement on dirty streets and we become freaks because we just keep walking throwing them a coin or a piece of bread. We become insensitive which I believe is a quality of “Feakness” and then we cry with a stinking Julia Roberts film - pretty pathetic!
The prostitutes walking the dirty alleys looking to escape from reality at the beginning of Holy Mountain. The prostitutes are following a doubtful Jesus who represents a crumbling faith, but they follow him where? Nothing good results from following religion scams in his movies and in real life. It’s the same thing with the politicians. Jodorowski explores all religions sometimes combining them, sometimes being obvious, but always mocking them in one way or the other. He destroys all religions in El Topo and creates his own version of a martyr saving the new race (which is made of freaks) that seems more normal than the inhabitants of the surface.
So what Jodorowski is exposing is the destruction of ourselves as we know ourselves to be but not such a drastic destruction. It is more of a sardonic and ironic destruction of our inner selfish beings. In other words, we mock ourselves because of the way we are, the stupid things that we do, like kill another human being, and destroy all that by laughing and satirizing until we are disgusted by our ways then we can be reborn. We killed ourselves and we can start all over again, then the term freak will be erased from the dictionary because we will not consider anybody strange anymore.
That is the secret message of Jodorowski, but to get to it, you have to go through all the horrors that we have created.
OSWALDO PÉREZ CABRERA.
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