Spirituality takes many forms. At the deepest level, rather than relate it to a specific theology or dogma, I can’t help but separate it from an institutional basis and view it instead as a search for coherence and meaning. It is encompassing and organic, because it is not part of the whole, it is precisely a sense of wholeness. I’m not sure if there is something that other writers from a more skeptical bent would call a “God Gene”, but I think that on a deep level we are programed to look for patterns and to make associations, to stitch together, as it were, a tapestry of the world we encounter. Perhaps it is also an aesthetic notion, a comforting sense of beauty that underlies the world and allows us to engage our storytelling faculty.
It
is thus that I can perhaps tie my spirituality to the pathways that my life has
taken. Having taken what I perceive to be many mistaken turns, and filled with
regret as I am, I still draw comfort from a feeling of spirituality, one that
interprets these explorations as precisely those that I needed to make in order
to encompass a greater whole. These considerations came to the fore during my
conversation today with artist Eloy Torrez.
Eloy
is a Chicano artist who works within the general style that can be characterized
as realist. He has painted several famous murals throughout Los Angeles, works
that have achieved iconic status. Perhaps the most famous is the mural that
depicts actor Anthony Quinn with arms upraised, a gesture that can’t help but
be perceived as enigmatic. Is it an embrace, a gesture of reconciliation, a
recapitulation of a celebratory dance such as that which conferred so much fame
to him in his role as Zorba the Greek, or a crucifiction? We can’t help but
infuse it with all manner of symbolic meaning, and the fact that it is located
in a nondescript corner of downtown Los Angeles, away from the main avenues,
and advertising as it does a retail establishment that was a mainstay of East
LA, means that it is also in a way a private and secluded domain, a destination
for pilgrims. The dreams it portrays are larger than life, speaking of grandeur
and dignity and uplift, and this can’t help but be considered another instance
of spirituality at play.
But
Eloy has also created paintings that are smaller in scale, more intimate in
tone and style, and ones that can characterized as more personal journeys. I
haven’t viewed the full range of works by the artist, but was able to visit his
studio and view a selection, and I was frequently struck by the way in which
multiple figures, even in gatherings with many other individuals present, seem
so isolated, each dramatizing their own private spectacle. It is at times as if
they are ghosts, each invisible to the other, for are ghosts not the symbolic
representation of unresolved conflicts, of traumas that have yet to be purged,
or symbols of transcendence? The ghost is both of this world and not of this
world.
The
allusion to ghosts is no accident. Despite the fact that the western mythology and,
in particular, of that variant associated with Los Angeles in which past identities
can be transcended and image rules supreme, is viewed as part of an apparatus
whereby newcomers can aspire to be purged of their inner demons. It is the
place where people give up the ghost, so to speak, in order to be symbolically
reborn, and assume a new identity. The overpowering sunlight bleaches away our
darker demons, or at least temporarily submerges them, all in the interest of
the dream that obsesses so many of us, this conjunction of economic refugees
and aspiring middle classes, those who would seek to escape the stifling
realities of social and ideological systems that seem so much more
constraining. The West and, California in particular, is a religion in and of
itself.
I
was struck by the comment made by Eloy about his great interest in the “Dark
Ages”. This is the appellation that has been given, traditionally, to the
Middle Ages in Europe, and which was formulated by the philosophes as a way to
dismiss an entire epoch in favor of their own cultural project, that of the
Enlightenment. It is an age that is taken to commence with the sacking of Rome
and end with the beginning of the Renaissance in 14th or 15thcentury
Italy, and as Eloy expressed to me, as a child he used to take this appellation
literally. This was influenced by his upbringing in the traditional brand of
Catholicism that is a mainstay among Latinos, one that is characterized by a
heavy emphasis on literalism.
The
“Dark Ages”, in Eloy’s imagination, were an age in which, perhaps, the bright rays
of the sun were somehow blocked out and, instead, the people of that age lived
in a perpetual twilight. What a far cry from the Los Angeles of the 20th
century! I could imagine it almost as a type of purgatory, but one that, of
course, has nothing to do with the experience of the people during that period,
for it was a conceit, but one that fit in neatly into Catholic theology from
the point of view of a child. It is also, of course, a relative term, for those
of us who were able to study the splendors of other civilizations, and in a
European context, the dream that was Moorish Spain.
Nonetheless,
I am struck by this title, and by the way in which we could perhaps relate it
to the portraits of the people in his works. Eloy was kind enough to pull out several panels of
a large work that he has completed, and that gives us a panorama of Los Angeles
in the modern age. In this work there is a sense of turmoil and of disjuncture,
for the elements of which this work is made up reveal fascinating contrasts,
alluding as they do to different social layers and to what we can almost call a
carnival atmosphere, another ritual in which revelers assume whimsical
identities and roles in eternal narratives.
For
one thing, it is notable that so many of the individuals in this work seem to
inhabit private realms. Rarely do the
people seem to acknowledge each other, while they seem fully cognizant of the
voyeurs or the ghosts, so to speak, who inhabit this terrain, by which I am referring
to the viewers. It is as if we were immersed in this private landscape, viewing
them in static poses, capturing them whether they are looking at us or not. A
few are looking off to the side, and others are just as compelling for their
own private ecstasies, those that clench their eyes tightly closed, in the way
that we all seem to inhabit a more ghostly realm, with people who take little
note of their surroundings as they walk along the streets texting intently,
paying no attention to the ghosts who surround them.
I
return over and over to the idea of ecstasy, and how so often it seems to
involve a private experience, where even sex is merely a mechanical prelude. How
else to read the pose of the young man who sways backward, a pose that is so
reminiscent of that of Anthony Quinn in the famous Victor Clothing mural,
almost as if he had been dizzied by the swirling patterns at his feet? Is he
mourning, is he drunk, is he speechless, and is he destined inevitably to fall?
This
is not the case with all of Eloy’s paintings, but what is evident to me is how
lonely many of these figures are. They are contorted, they seem to lean over,
to squirm, and at times, to balance precariously, as does the young woman of
his panoramic series of panels does, in his vintage scene of Los Angeles as
envisioned as a private festival. Nero is fiddling (or playing the flute, the
accordion and the guitar) while Rome (or in this case, the Hollywood hills) is
burning.
There
is an element of humor nonetheless evident in his work, but it is the feeling that
is pervaded at times by the foreboding that I associate with the image of the
Dark Ages, and of social conflicts that were unresolved, conflicts that erupt
over and over in our modern age, and the fires, of course, resonate for me as a
former Angelino with the experience of having living through the Rodney King
riots of 1992, those momentous few days of civil despair when it seems as if
our city was coming apart at the seams. We all carry around our ghosts, but how
can we identify and exorcise them? The private vocabulary that I saw being
elaborated is one that resides in recurring motifs that point to a hidden
rhythm, to a music that we all seem to hear, even if different for each and
every one of us. The poses and expressions and symbolic language, with the
juxtaposition of revelry and intoxication as well as lonely and crouching
figures, can be considered, in an essential way, as metaphors of distance, of
space telescoped into images of loneliness, rendered all the more dramatic for
being situated in urban social settings filled as they are with people.
As
a way of illustrating this, I could make reference to the concept of personal
space. During our meeting today, the three of us ventured out to a local pizza
place to enjoy a meal. It was a crowded restaurant, filled with bohemian types
who have increasingly reclaimed downtown Los Angeles and are in the process of
transforming once again the social landscape. This area abounds in murals, but
old warehouses as well as historic buildings, and I was struck by all the
historical layers in evidence, all within a few short blocks of the gleaming
skyscapers (the modern day glass cathedrals) of the city center. We couldn’t
find a place to sit down, and we opted instead to take our food to Eloy’s
studio, missing out as we did on the spectacle of people watching.
Well,
as we were preparing to leave, my friend Roberto approached a table that was
occupied by two young women enjoying their pizza slices and extended his arm
over their plates, pointing to the container of oregano and asking if they
could pass it over to him, for he needed to pour some into his napkin to take
back with him to the studio. The two women were quite gracious, but I couldn’t
help but feel horrified at this intrusion, reflecting as I did that we have
quite different conceptions of private space, and that not only had he
interrupted them, but he also reached around them and over their food as he
took his share of spices. I was outraged, and this prompted Eloy to reflect, in
the age of modern technology where we are constantly bombarded by invisible
electromagnetic signals so necessary for cellphone and WiFi coverage, the very
thought of private space is a problematic concept. Perhaps I am old-fashioned
in that way. Privacy is no longer a matter of proximity, it is a state of mind,
and despite the way in which people broadcast their most inane observations on
mediums such as Twitter, we are all, perhaps, lonelier than we have ever been.
I
was struck by these observations, and couldn’t help but apply them to the themes
that were reflected in several of his works that we were subsequently to review
in his studio. In one work we have a scene with two individuals, both naked, a
man and a woman, lying on different sides of the same bed in what would seem to
be a pose of postcoital despair. They possibly may or may not have been able to
consummate a sexual act, but their poses reveal a certain element of despair,
two people curled up separately, gazing at us directly, imploring us possibly
to arbitrate a dispute. Eloy titled this work, “She said, He said”.
And in another project that he described to me, he elaborated on the theme of the bridge, referring as he did to his recent experiences in Venice, Italy (and not Venice, California!), where he had spent a few months and where he was noting how people had no qualms about venturing out and sharing a close space, almost rubbing against each other as they passed in different directions, but studiously refusing to interact with each other, despite all the jostling. It was another instance of ghosts who float by one another, impervious to contact, deeply esconced in their own interiority.
For
some reason, the idea of the bridge couldn’t help but connect with me on
another level, for I couldn’t help but relate it to the experience of migration,
with the idea of crowds of people who traverse other ghostly realms such as the
searingly hot deserts that separate Mexico and the United States, or other
passageways. It is part of the overall myth that we all share, the idea of the
private journey, and the hope for deliverance on the other end. Our passageways
are much more physically taxing, for we aren’t talking about tourists walking
across a bridge in an old European society, but of a transition between worlds,
having to surmount immense obstacles. I couldn’t help thinking of my migrant
forebearers, and we all have such forebearers, no matter how settled we may
consider ourselves.
As
I spoke to Eloy about his upbringing in New Mexico and the path he took as a
child to Barstow, that dry city in the eastern deserts of California, and
reflected on the journeys of so many other groups who came to this region, I
couldn’t help think of the pilgrims who undertake long and painful journeys to
visit sites of religious significance, the peregrinos who crawl on their knees
to visit the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City, wearing crowns of thorns, or
those who made pilgrimages of a different sort, to the fields of central and
northern California, suffering as well the impalement of thorns as they groomed
the virgin fruit of the agricultural fields. One day, one day, I will have to
sing the song of the Mexican Ulises, men such as my grandfather, the bracero
who came to pluck the golden apples (and plums and oranges and lemons) of the vast
agricultural fields of California, men who were stealthy and stoic but who
nonetheless pined desperately for the voyage of return.
Thus,
I couldn’t avoid considerations of movement as I talked to Eloy and considered his
works that were characterized by private spaces. I think that our immigrant
forebearers had a deep spirituality that became all the more essential because
they led lives of primitive asceticism, out in those hot fields, with abusive
managers and exploitative conditions that were portrayed so convincingly in
works such as Tomás Rivera’s novel Y no se lo tragó la tierra. But it was a
literal journey that forms the springboard for our metaphorical search, the
search of their descendants, Chicanos such as myself who are continuing a
journey that hasn’t been completed. I’m not sure if these reflections can be
compared with the private apotheosis of individuals who are portrayed in the
works of Eloy Torres, or if it is part of a social movement and consciousness.
And
yet there is something within me that resists this apotheosis. There is something
that insists that it is not about reaching a destination, because concluding
such a journey would somehow lead to a paucity of spirit. Perhaps that is how I
can explain what I think obsesses Eloy and myself, for we have both traversed
different roads, he having begun his journey in the small pueblitos of New
Mexico, me in the small and nondescript rural community of Corona, California,
but both of us having been seemingly chased (or drawn?) by our inner ghosts.
Two Chicano Hamlets, impelled by the ghosts of our forefathers to redeem them.
The
symbol of the road is one that has richly contributed to our ideological
landscape, and to the illusion that we have, perhaps, that we are as coherent both
as individuals or as communities as we would like to believe. Am I the same
person I was thirty years ago? In some ways yes, but in other ways, of course not.
I think I have left parts of myself wherever I have been, sloughing off bits
and pieces, but I have also picked up others. And I perceive in this a source
of turmoil and conflict as well as wonder. The struggle lies in continuing to
try to resolve these questions.
There
is no black and white, no absolute dichotomies, “Dark Age” and no “Day in the
Sun”, no this-side-of-the-bridge and that-side-of-the-bridge. It is all grey,
like the dust devils sweeping across the desert in the afternoon light.
OGRomero (c) 2013
Copyright OGRomero, 2013
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