The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography

by Alejandro Jodorowsky

  Criminal acts, despite their horror, sometimes cause the same fascination as poetic acts. For this reason, apprentices in psychomagic must be very cautious. Every act must be creative and must end with a detail that affirms life and not death. The fisherman destroyed the body of the dancer. Yerca destroyed the spirit of the fisherman. If, instead, she had made an effort to involve him in her creative world while at the same time she learned to fish, then he might not have murdered her, and perhaps she would have created a beautiful ballet with fishing as its theme.

  Lihn, seeing me frustrated by my lack of classes, suggested that we put on a dance recital. “How, where, with what music?” I asked. He replied, “Naked, with only loincloths so that they don’t put us in prison, next to the embassy’s electric station, the generators will be our music.”

  The United States Embassy, which was across from Forestal Park, produced its own electricity with powerful generators so that the frequent tremors would not plunge it into darkness when they affected the central power plant. These generators echoed with a regular rhythm for an hour every day beginning at around ten o’clock at night. We invited our friends, and when the rough rhythm began we undressed and began dancing like madmen. The audience soon followed suit. I realized that everything could be danced and that artistic achievement was the result of passionate choices. Once offered the cake, we had only to see it; we grabbed a slice and ate. It was Alice’s cake: when she ate it, she grew or shrank. Such was life, and such was art, a matter of vision and choice. And I finally understood that it was the same for negative aspects. The spirit of self-destruction presents an individual with a menu of all sorts of diseases, physical and mental. The individual chooses his own illness. In order to cure an illness it is necessary to investigate what has led the sick person to select this particular illness and not some other one.

  While it is true that reality gives us cake, this does not mean that we should wait motionless with our mouths open. To bring ourselves to fruition, instead of just asking for opportunities to be given to us, we artists, though seemingly insignificant, can offer opportunities to powerful people. This is how I presented myself, carrying a basket full of my puppets, to the offices of the prosperous Teatro Experimental de la Universidad de Chile (TEUCH), the government agency that put on grand shows and ran a theater school. I was received by Domingo Piga and Agustín Siré, who were the general directors, and I said at once, “I want to direct the TEUCH Puppet Theatre!” They responded that TEUCH did not have a puppet theater. I opened my basket and I dumped the puppets out on the desk: “Now you have one!” They immediately gave me the abandoned room behind the clock that adorned the facade of the central building. The poets and their friends helped me to clean away the dust that had accumulated over half a century, and there we began to build the Bululú. This was an activity in which artistic pleasures were mixed with amorous pleasures. The administration provided us with an old bus, and we joined forces with the university chorus and together—the chorus numbering sixty people and we puppeteers consisting of six men and six women—toured throughout northern Chile giving performances. It was a very beautiful, essentially anonymous activity. Hidden, with our arms raised manipulating these heroes, we learned to sacrifice individual exhibitionism. We knew how to put ourselves at the service of the puppets and the audience. What difference was there between puppeteers who were hidden in the shadows, giving energy to the characters that evolved above us, and a congregation of monks concentrating their prayers on exalting God? After putting on a show for the children of miners one of the best puppeteers, Eduardo Mattei, told me, “I feel like a toad full of love, getting glimpses of the full moon.” I hid a wry smile, for his words seemed corny. But I realized how sincere he was when, at the end of the tour, he bade us adieu and became a Benedictine monk. The puppeteers all attended the ceremony at the monastery of Las Condes in which the abbot washed Eduardo’s feet and gave him his new name, Frater Maurus. Thanks to his work with the puppets, Eduardo had found his faith.

  Some time later, I went to visit him. Frater Maurus, dressed in his beautiful Benedictine habit, looked happy. I told him that I was thinking of leaving Chile to study in Europe. He responded, “They will teach you a science of voids; they will show you where there is nothing. They are experts in this: like vultures, they detect cadavers perfectly, but are incapable of finding where the living bodies are. There is only one way to make a chalice, but a thousand ways of breaking it!” I respected his sentiments. It was a position opposite to mine: I wanted to cut my roots in order to span the entire world. He had decided to confine himself there at the monastery, at the foot of the mountains, and sing Gregorian chants for the rest of his life. It was all the more heroic a decision because, as I knew, he had been in love with one of our actresses. For his devotion to God, was it necessary to eliminate women and family from his life? Eduardo’s profound vocation revealed the sacred character of theater to me. How could I, who had been raised as an atheist, aspire to holiness? Every religion has its holy men, and Frater Maurus quickly became a Catholic holy man; there are also Muslim holy men, Jewish holy men known as the “righteous,” enlightened Buddhist holy men, and so on. Religions have appropriated holiness. To be holy means to respect dogmas. What remains for those of us who are not theological standard bearers, those of us whose animal nature makes us want to be united with a wife? It is impossible to believe that God created women as an evil, just to tempt good men. If women are as sacred as men, intercourse is also sacred, and if this act leads to orgasm, it should be accepted and enjoyed as a divine gift.

  I decided that I could become a civil holy man: holiness did not necessarily have to be contingent on chastity or on the renunciation of sexual pleasure, the basis of the family. A civil holy man need not ever enter a church, nor does he need to worship a god with any defined name or image. Such a man, having risen above purely personal interests—not only socially and globally conscious but also cosmically conscious—is able to act for the benefit of the world. In knowing that he is united with others he understands that their suffering is his suffering, but their joy is also his joy. He is able to sympathize and help the needy, but also to applaud those who are triumphant, as long as they are not exploitative. The civil holy man makes himself the owner of the Earth: the air, the land, the animals, the water, the fundamental energies, are all his, and he acts as their possessor, taking great care not to damage this property. The civil holy man is capable of generous anonymous acts. Loving humanity, he has learned to love himself. He knows that the future of the human race depends on partners capable of achieving a relationship in equilibrium. The civil holy man struggles to ensure that not only children are well treated, but also fetuses, which must be protected from neurotic couples who have conceived them as well as from the toxic industry of childbirth. He also struggles to liberate the field of medicine from large industrial companies, makers of drugs that are more damaging than diseases. To achieve civil holiness—to be outside of any sect, sweetly impersonal, capable of accompanying a dying person whose name I did not know with the same devotion as if she had been my daughter, sister, wife, or mother—seemed impossible to me. But, inspired by some initiatory tales in which the heroes are apes, parrots, dogs, all animals capable of imitation, I decided to use this as my technique. By imitating civil holiness over and over, eventually I would authentically achieve it in my actions.

  My intent to imitate civil holiness gave me justification for living. However, I committed some grave errors trying to apply what in those years were only theories. An example was the de-virginizing of Consuelo, a young woman I met at Café Iris who had been invited there by her sister, a painter. Consuelo had an ungainly physique but sensuous curves, a wide mouth, deep-set eyes, and protruding ears that gave her a sympathetic simian air. She was introduced to me, and we sat down to talk at a separate table. While combing her hair, which was cut short in a masculine style, she explained that she was a lesbian. Most of her sexual relationships had bee
n with married women who had refused to leave their husbands to go and live with her. Since Consuelo was interested in literature, we began a friendship in which she behaved like a man. Everything was going well, we took great pleasure in getting together to explore bookstores or sit and drink coffee at various popular spots, but my desire to imitate civil holiness came into the mix. I asked if she still had her hymen. “Of course!” she told me proudly. Carried away by the desire to do good in a disinterested way, I replied, “My friend, I know that phallic penetration does not interest you at all, but it would be unfortunate for a future great poet like you to have to grow old as a virgin. As long as you keep this veil, you will never be an adult, nor will you know why you reject the male member: you will be afraid of it; you’ll feel it stalking you in the shadows like an implacable enemy. Prove to yourself that you are strong. I propose the following: let’s get together in my studio at a precise time. I will borrow an operating table, there’s one in the university theater that was used for a play. You will arrive wearing a coat, with hospital pajamas underneath. I will be dressed as surgeon. We will not touch each other at all beforehand, I’ll lay you down on the table, pretend to anesthetize you, take off your pants, open your legs, you will pretend to be asleep, and then, with precision and extreme delicacy, I will penetrate you as a purely medicinal act. Once the hymen is torn, I will retreat with the same delicacy with which I entered. There will not be any pleasure; any form of foreplay is excluded. It will be a surgical operation between friends, nothing more. Once this poetic act is finished, you can live your life free of this cumbersome hymen.”

  She liked my idea. We set the meeting time and performed the operation exactly as planned. Consuelo, happy not to have suffered any trauma, thanked me for the impeccability of my technique, and with her face glowing from having released herself from this troublesome detail, she went out with her friends. However, the following evening, suppressing her drunkenness, she came to me to confess that she had felt a form of pleasure that she wanted to investigate. She literally dragged me to the studio, threw me on the bed, and sucked on me frantically. Although she was not the type of woman who excited me, I responded to her touch due to the energy of my age. After we finished, all I wanted was to be as far away as possible from this impassioned woman. Unfortunately, from that day on, she began a fierce pursuit. Wherever I went, she would show up. If a girl approached me at a party, Consuelo would drive her away with insults and shoving. It did no good to tell her I did not love her, that she was not my type, to remember that she was a lesbian, and finally to leave me alone. She cried, threatened to kill herself, cursed me . . . My life became unbearable. I talked to her sister and begged her to assist with my plan. Understanding the seriousness of Consuelo’s delirium, the painter agreed. I locked myself in my studio and did not leave for a week. Enrique Lihn phoned Consuelo and asked to visit her at her home, because he had some serious news to tell her. When he arrived, dressed in black and feigning grief, he told Consuelo that I had been hit by a bus and had died. Her older sister, bursting into fake sobs, told Consuelo that she had been aware of the fatal accident but had not said anything for fear of causing her atrocious pain. Consuelo fell to the floor in a nervous fit. Her sister took her to a vacation house they owned in Isla Negra. She stayed there for three months. When she returned to Santiago and saw me sitting in Café Iris safe and sound she slapped me, burst out laughing, and began passionately kissing a female friend. She never bothered me again. For my part, I decided to stop imitating civil holiness for a long time.

  I was drawn to another idea: reality, being amorphous in principle, organizes itself around any given act that is put forward, whatever the nature of that act may be, positive or negative, and adds unexpected details. Thus thinking, I decided to carry out an act in the greatest possible secrecy to see if I received a response. I went to a shop that specialized in manufacturing footwear for artists and asked them to make me a pair of clown shoes forty centimeters long. I asked for them to be made of patent leather with red toes, green heels, and gold edges. I demanded further that whistles be affixed to the soles that, when stepped on, would emit a meow. Dressed in a very proper gray suit with a white shirt and discreet tie, I walked through the streets of the city center at midday when they were filled with people, the time when people would take a coffee break or have a snack. Uttering one meow after another, I moved among them. Nobody seemed to consider the shoes abnormal. They would cast a quick glance down at my feet, then continue on their way. Disappointed, I sat on a terrace having a drink, crossing my legs to raise one shoe, but with little hope of provoking a reaction. I was approached by a well-dressed gentleman of around sixty years old who had a serious face and an amiable voice.

  “Will you allow me to ask you a question, young man?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Where did you get those shoes?”

  “I had them made, sir.”

  “Why?”

  “First of all, to attract attention, to introduce something unusual into reality. And second, because I love the circus, especially clowns.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say this. Here is my card.” The gentleman handed me a business card with his name inscribed on it in small letters, and then in large orange letters: TONI ZANAHORIA (Carrot Clown).

  Oh, what an incredible surprise, I had met him in Tocopilla when I was a child! He had placed a lion cub in my arms.

  “What’s your name, young man?” When I gave my name, he smiled. “Now I understand; you’re one of us. I worked with your father. He was the first man to hang by his hair; before that it was only women. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: these shoes show that you want to return to the world where you belong. And this meeting is no coincidence. We’re performing in the Coliseo Theater. There are international artists and a group of comedians: I (the first donkey), Lettuce Clown, Chalupa Clown, and Piripipí Clown. Pacifier Clown walks with the bottle in his mouth, as we say among ourselves. He’ll be drunk for a fortnight. We love him, and we’re worried that the owners will kick him out. You seem to love the circus so much; if you want to try the experience without anyone knowing, you can wear our friend’s costume, wig, and nose, and stand in for him while he’s drunk. The routines are easy; it’s not that much to do. You stick a fake ax in my head, cluck like a chicken while throwing wooden eggs at Chalupa Clown, and participate in a farting contest where you squirt out clouds of talc from a tube hidden in your pants. If you get there a couple of hours before the first act, we’ll teach you the basics and you can improvise the rest.”

  “I don’t think I could do it.”

  “If you have anything of the child left in your soul, you can. Here’s an example: you ask me in a falsetto voice, ‘How is a live bull a like a dead bull?’ and I answer, ‘Easy, mess with a live bull and you’re bound for grief.’ You say, ‘What about the dead bull?’ and I say, ‘Ground for beef!’ And the audience laughs and applauds. It’s that easy. Now, have you decided?”

  I went to the small apartment that Carrot Clown rented across from the Coliseo to put on Pacifier Clown’s costume. It was astonishing to see the ceremony in which the upstanding gentleman I had spoken with on the café terrace was transformed into an orange clown. I had the sensation of seeing the rebirth of an ancient god. This mythical personage then helped me to dress and put on my makeup. In the same way that my friend had designed his costume using the colors of the root vegetable that was his namesake, Pacifier Clown was dressed like a big baby: a ridiculous diaper over long underwear, a hat with bunny ears, and a bottle in his hand; a thick drop of wool representing a booger hung from his false red nose. As soon as I was in the costume, my personality began to fade away. Neither my voice nor my movements were the same. Nor could I think in the same way. The world had returned to its essence: it was a complete joke. With my exterior aspect dissolved into that grotesque baby, I had the freedom to act without repeating the imposed behaviors that had become my identity. How old was Pacif
ier Clown? No one could know. Mix together the infant, the adult man, and also the adult woman, and here was the ultimate and miserable manifestation of the essential androgyne. When one is young, an immense distress exists beneath one’s joy in life. Once transformed into Pacifier Clown only my euphoria remained; my anxiety vanishing along with my personality. I realized once again that what I believed myself to be was an arbitrary deformation, a rational mask floating in the infinite unexplored internal shadows. Later, I understood that diseases do not actually sicken us; they sicken what we believe ourselves to be. Health is achieved by overcoming prohibitions, quitting paths that are not right for us, ceasing to pursue imposed ideals, and becoming ourselves: the impersonal consciousness that does not define itself.

  A reunion in Chile, forty years later, with Pacifier Clown. This clown, who used to play a baby, is now dressed as his mother.