Theater & writing
Theater has been the best inspiration of my life. I'd always dreamed of it as I'd always dreamed of cinema, but as I wasn't allowed to do any when I was younger, I waited until I was 37 to enroll at the Cours Florent, freely, in Valérie Antonievitch's class.
It was intoxicating and ecstatic, and I learned so much about myself, my body and the thousand possible ways of saying a sentence or expressing an emotion.
And it made me want to write, because my group was fabulous and they made me want to write for them/ I wrote a play made up of a series of monologues, about finding and accepting ourselves, our true natures, our true motivations, freedom, religion, drugs.... We played it and I was ecstatic. It took place in Bolivia, Argentina and Madrid. I love this little play, and my dream would be to stage it with real resources. One day I will.
Chairs et émotions (Flesh and emotions) is a series of 7 monologues, inspired by 7 paintings by Botéro, but I'm only going to tell you about the first four.
Hilarious memory of our choir at Cours Florent in Paris in 2001
First monologue: Flamenco
“I was born in Bogota 34 years ago. My mother, Rosario Del Pilar, was by far the prettiest Tango dancer in town, and my father, Ramon Curras de Lago, played the guitar.
As a little boy, I got into the habit of accompanying them every evening to the “Buenos Aires Tango Club” and lying backstage, under the watchful eye of the dancers and musicians, I watched with pride as my mother twirled on the arm of a dancer, and my father playing with all his heart, with his eyes closed and a smile on his lips. Life seemed sweet and beneficial to me. I told myself that I couldn't have found better parents, a better living environment, I was in no hurry to grow up.
One evening, sick, I was left alone at home, and dying of boredom, I ventured into my parents' bedroom.
I loved this house, I always felt reassured there. Everywhere I found this wonderful smell of my mother, warm and sensual, and she knew how to make this modest house an earthly paradise. Flowers, birds, little colored lamps, comforting fabrics, perfume burners, lace. It smelled of love and peace.
First I lay down on their cozy and comfortable bed, and on my father's pillow, I found this incense and so particular smell. Above their bed, there was a small crucifix, on which my mother had hung a bouquet of wild flowers and on the right, a photo of me, with the inscription “Pablito”, and then a tiny jagged photo of them, where their smile expresses all the gratitude in the world.
After examining all these familiar objects, I opened the cupboard and stopped at my mother's red dress. It was his favorite. I put it on as naturally as possible, then randomly picked up a record from my father. It was a Flamenco record: Fiesta Flamenca de Andalucia, with on the cover, a stern woman swaggering, with a flower in her ear and a piercing gaze.
I began to dance, clapping my hands and feet, lifting the sides of my flamboyant dress. I was in a trance. The tearful voice, the haunting rhythms, pierced my soul.
That night, for the first time, I felt different, different from all the other days. That night, fiery tears ran down my cheeks, when my mother came in, worried about my state, and took me in her arms, whispering my name: “Pablito, Pablito. » That night, I wanted to say to her: “No Mama, no me lama assi, mas Consuelo o Dolores”, and from this suffering, Dolores was born.
But I kept quiet, I didn't speak, I kept it within myself, I got used to my secret, to this first conflict between me and Dolores. Who among us would win the game?
The year I turned eighteen, I left without giving much explanation, the little house full of birds and flowers, and after a short stopover in Sao Paulo, in order to eliminate the traces-relics of Pablito, in one of the most renowned clinics in Brazil, I crossed the sea, and went without losing a second to Madrid.
Needless to say, I very quickly became "the queen of the Madrid wedding", and every evening at the "Corral de la Morreria", the pantheon of Flamenco, I cast and twirl, to boos of applause, while dancing, there’s not an evening when I don't think of Pablito in that oversized red dress.
There is no evening when I do not see my parents again, young and beautiful, so proud of their little boy, lying behind the scenes, and whom everyone found so handsome.
I also remember that terrible night when I called my mother after leaving the clinic, to have what she had given me taken away when she gave birth to me, and I told her.
Mama sees me, I'm leaving. Because you're fine, Pablito, I replied. : “No mama Pablito stays, he will always stay close to you, it’s Dolores who is leaving. » I heard these tears flow, then in a trembling voice, but tinged with that admirable strength, which mothers have to love their children unconditionally, she said to me: “Dolores, te chierro mi corracon, take care of you. »
Flamenco is the story of my life.
In my show every evening, when I feel that the room is at the height of subjugation, I come off stage, take off my dress and my wig, put on black pants and a white shirt; I then return to the stage, and with a haughty and nostalgic air I scan the room from left to right, I stamp my foot like a man, on the floor, it's my way of paying homage to Pablito for everything what he did for me, Dolores.
One evening, I had a strange feeling when I returned on stage. But I have to concentrate on my game. Something is happening though. I try to stare at the audience, but the lighting prevents me. Suddenly, I see that one of the musicians has been replaced. The new one has white hair, tied with a ponytail, and he doesn't look much. Too bad, Miguel was much more to my taste. However, I decide to catch his eye, and while dancing, I approach this newcomer in a rather modest sway, in order to find out if he too will succumb to my charm.
But the man has his eyes closed, he plays with all his heart, he reminds me...and that little smile, I recognize it, is Ramon, my father. I stop, overcome with emotion, but he doesn't notice anything and continues playing. The tears are flowing freely, I don't know what I should feel. The audience holds their breath. I think that deep down, I would like to climb on these knees like when I was a little boy. I don't know what to do with my body. He finally opens his eyes, takes my hand and says to me: “Dance, in my pretty Dolores, you remind me of your mother…”
Monologue second, the bow
There's no desire left in me today, except to evaporate...I'd like to evaporate like mist on a bathroom mirror. My body, which had never really bothered me, is now weighing me down. All this useless volume...My own smell disgusts me, and as for my image, which I impose on myself like a torture in the mirror, I first stare at it, then start laughing, to tears, like a pitiful witch, like a pig. That's how I see myself, a pig's head in jelly, marbled on the butcher's stall.
That's the only expression on my empty face.
I'm throwing up. I'm a parody of myself.
My every movement is synonymous with abject, unbearable suffering.
But I was pretty when I was little, and my body has remained untouched - I mean, no one has ever touched it, except me, to console me so often for my loneliness.
My life has been filled with these caresses, and I don't think anyone has been as comforted as I have.
In the village where I was born, in Antioquia, my parents had a prosperous coffee plantation, which supported the vast majority of the population. So we were well known.
My father, Eduardo Aires de Campo, had been born in Angola, where his father, an important general in the Portuguese army, had brutally raised him. As soon as he came of age, he fled to Ecuador and did a lot of traveling before meeting my mother.
She, Amendoa Bettencourt del Forte, was born in Rio de Janeiro to a large local aristocratic family of Portuguese descent. Brought up with a sense of duty, religious practice and self-sacrifice, she met my father in Mar del Plata, a highly-rated Argentine seaside resort where her mother used to take the waters.
My father, having quickly sniffed out her fortune as sole heiress, married her just before the war, and from there they emigrated to Colombia, throwing her into the abyss of a self-serving marriage.
When they died, I took over the plantation, not out of interest or passion, but out of a sense of duty.
So, I delegated without conviction. As I never married, I was called “the contessa with the lonely soul”; my position also obliged me to spend a lot of time in religious services and charity work, without ever once being affected by the pain of others, I can't say why.
People used to say of me: “the contessa Carmina Bettencourt Aires de Campo, is so pious, so discreet, so admirable”.
If only they knew, if only they knew what I was capable of.
My most mundane daily thoughts would have sent shivers down the spines of death squads.
The phantasms of the worst cads would have been mere child's play compared to mine. Yet nothing predestined me for such chaos.
My one and only love has been platonic, and has filled my existence. He is the foundation of this chaos.
Every summer, my parents and I would leave the plantation to take in the sea air at our magnificent estate in Barranquilla.
As my father was one of the founders of the Coffee Planters' Banking Union, he went downtown every day to do business, and as he hadn't loved my mother for a long time, he didn't care to stay with her.
We'd be alone together.
Pious and modest, the idea of exposing herself half-dressed on a beach didn't thrill her, and we spent our days under the arbour in the park.
Sometimes we even talked and laughed.
The year I turned thirteen, in the early '50s, the “Violencia” raged in Colombia, and it became dangerous even for servants to go out, so we had everything delivered to our homes.
That's how I met the man I loved so much. He came every morning to deliver our bread.
I could see a guitar sticking out of his delivery basket, attached to his bike, and I thought it was so romantic.
Wearing a flowery dress and a big blue velvet bow that my mother tied in my hair to brighten up my face, which she always thought was too sad, I'd watch for him every morning at the window.
When he appeared at the far end of the driveway, my heart began to race. As if in a precise ritual, he'd park his bike and frantically look for me, but as soon as our eyes met, he'd close his eyelids and gently pursed his lips, as if he were enjoying himself.
From my balcony, I exulted.
The day before our departure, my father had been kind enough to take my mother into town to bring back some souvenirs, and I decided to wait for him in the middle of the driveway and surprise him.
He stopped beside me, and I saw his face up close.
He had a young beard, dimples and eyes as green as spring water. I wanted to bite his lips and touch his sex, but my age forbade it. I blushed at my thoughts, and discomfited by my shyness, he gently pinched the skin of my hand, closing his eyes.
I took advantage of this magical moment to breathe in the scent of his body.
He smelled of velvet and myrrh, and I wanted to throw myself on the floor and drag him down with me, spread my legs and shout, “Come on in”, but propriety made me go in a very different direction. I had moistened my lips, and with a look that forcefully betrayed the meaning of my words, and said to her in a pure, childlike voice, “My name is Carmina, I'm thirteen.”
The next day, as we drove our Bentley to the station, I saw him, I saw Ramon being arrested by the police, and asked my father to intervene. It was common practice in those days to arrest people, and usually without slanderous evidence, the police would release the suspects. Everyone was suspected and suspicious; there had been a lot of crime in Colombia, and a lot of drug trafficking.
My father told me it was dangerous to take sides with people you didn't know any better.
The following summer, I didn't see him again, but the new delivery man made some enquiries and told me that Ramon had gone to Medellin, to work in a big hotel or a big pastry shop, he wasn't sure,
So, for the last twenty years, I've been holding out hope, and every summer I go back to Barranquilla where I know he'll come back to me. I wait for him at the window with my bow and my dress, so that he'll recognize me, and I scan the year, night and day, I've worn out my eyes waiting for him.
Today I know he's not coming back, I know because I saw him, and he saw me too, but he didn't recognize me, even though I had my dress and my bow, but NADA. His gaze didn't catch mine.
I saw Ramon with a woman and a child, sitting on a forbidden lawn in Bogotta's National Botanical Park, in the middle of a circle of flowers.
The woman was opposite me, tall with long, very black hair, covered with flowers that must have been applied with the utmost care. She beamed like a star, looking at her son and Ramon with beatitude and gratitude. The child was miraculously beautiful, almost like a girl, and Ramon had this smile with slightly pursed lips. Sometimes he would close his eyes, then open them again in a mystical, contemplative radiance.
I want to evaporate...
Monologogue third, the Tango
My name is Rosario del Pilar, but everyone who knows me and has known me since I was a little girl calls me the butterfly. I've always been rocked by Argentine tango, and I love to dance and twirl whenever I hear it. I was lucky enough to be born and raised in Buenos Aires, where my home was Viale Uruguay, right in the center, close to the tango clubs. I spent every free moment there.
The year I turned fifteen, my father, who was an embassy attaché, was transferred to Bogotá, and I found it hard to leave. Yet it was there that I was to meet the man of my life, and the father of my child, but at 15 you don't think about that. In fact, all I could think about was the tango.
My father, a diplomat, would have liked to see me study seriously, but he had to enrol me in a dance school as soon as we arrived in Colombia, because I had threatened to let myself die or go back to Buenos Aires on my own. Besides, he'd also married an artist, so...
My mother, Maria Del Sol, was a painter and sculptor who hated the beautiful and only loved the ugly. She painted decaying toenails, covered the trees in our orchard with strips of plaster, her aesthetic research was conceptual and rare. Sometimes she'd have ice cream in every flavor delivered to the house, and roll around with strawberry and pistachio, naked on large canvases laid out on the floor, with Traviata playing so loudly on the gramophone that all Bogotá knew she was at work.
In the evenings, we would find her buttocks, breasts or feet, pink, green or blue, sometimes even coffee on the immaculate white of the canvas. She adored my father, but had done a painting of him sitting on the toilet, his features decomposed, which she had entitled “Stabat Pater”. She had also done a series of photos of him, while he was on a ladder trying to remove the plaster strips from the apple trees, with a panoramic view of his genitals through the flaps of his underpants.
So, my poor El Pigio of a father, lost between his two passionate and unreasonable artists, had a very limited field of action.
So, I was able to start dancing again. I ended up performing every night in Bogotá's only tango club, the Buenos Aires Tango Club. It was there that I fell in love with a discreet boy who accompanied me on guitar. He really moved me, because he always played with his eyes closed, with a mysterious smile and his whole soul.
When I watched him play, my eyes always filled with tears.
One evening, when I was particularly applauded, I decided to find the strength within me to talk to him. At the end of the show, I followed him quietly into the dressing rooms, and saw him, as usual, put on his sequined jacket, put on an old black velvet coat, and carefully put away his musical instrument, which he covered with a red silk band, before putting it back in its case. He'd never looked at me, or anyone else for that matter, and I was suddenly afraid of imposing. Hiding behind a column, I held my breath, but he saw my eyes shining in the mirror's reflection. Without turning around, and in a bewitching, sensual voice, he said: “Ola Rosario”.
I thought I'd faint. It was the first time I'd heard her voice, and she was saying my name. It was the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard. I was so moved, I began to tremble. I said in an inaudible voice, “tengo frio”, I'm cold. He covered me with his heavy, holey jacket and held me gently to his chest. His scent was incense-like and mysterious, a mixture of hemp and myrrh like that of the churches. I felt like I was in God's arms, and I thought: how prayerful this man is.
At that moment, my body stopped shaking, and a smile lit up my face that was to remain there for the rest of my life. I knew that I would never be alone again, that I had found my exact place in the order of things, my place in the universe. We walked through the streets, one against the other, without speaking, our eyes half-closed, without a clear direction. Then, in a park, he stopped. With his magic fingers, he made a bouquet of a thousand flowers, which he fixed as he went along, in my hair, on my dress, around my wrists and ankles. All his gestures were filled with love and devotion.
Finally, he made a circle of flowers around me, and began to make mystical incantations to the moon. Then he approached me, very close, very close, and we danced a silent tango, until the clear dawn gorged the morning with sunlight. At the first light of dawn, Ramon said to me, “Dawn is the rising sun, the one that brings life, with the promise of day.”
My red dress still smells of that night. Flower petals, incense, prayers, hemp, myrrh, moon, imaginary notes. That night, like the Virgin Mary, I felt invested with the mission of carrying God's son within me. That night, God's name was Ramon. That night, though he only touched me with the tips of his flower stems, I felt that my belly was filled with him.
Shortly afterwards, Ramon asked El Pigio for my hand in marriage, and with little enthusiasm, or choice, he gave it up, knowing that I wouldn't let him decide for me anyway.
And then our wonderful little boy, our Pablito, was born.
Pablito Del Pilar De Lago, may God protect him. I have only one wish for him, that he be as fulfilled in his life as I have been. I want his life to be a fulfillment of every moment, and I will do everything, everything in my power to make it so.
So that he experiences the vertigo of well-being, of love, of passion. I want him, like me, to find his place in the Universe, in the “Great Whole”.
I want him to find his way, his happiness, his Eden. During the nine months I carried him, I prayed to the earth and the angels to protect him and make him happy.
On the day of his birth, Ramon and I laid him in a cradle filled with flower petals of all kinds, and burned sage, as Ramon's Indian ancestors did, to ward off evil souls as soon as a child was born.
We clasped our hands over the cradle and Ramon said: here and now, Pablito, as in all the seasons of your life, find your light, be it wind and water, sun and moon, birds and earth, go and become who you want to be. I added: “Marie Pleine de Grace, please don't let my child ever be cold, hungry or in pain.
When we had finished, a tropical bird of a thousand colors, the like of which I had never seen, landed on the edge of the cradle and began to sing.
Monologue fourth, The naked man
There are 193 living species of apes and gorillas. 192 are covered in hair. The only exception is a naked ape, which has given itself the name homo sapiens. Apart from the tufts of hair on our heads, under our armpits and around our genitals, our bodies are naked. We all come into the world naked, in this carnal envelope, which is also our earthly vehicle... I love nudity, I love my nudity.
To be naked is also to be devoid of all influences, to come face to face with nature, in all humility, without superfluous things, to be closer to God. The body is the temple of the Spirit, the one that carries us through the stages we have to go through, but it also enables us to exalt our senses and our perception, like a tool of happiness.
I love the world, life and the love that emanates from every being and everything around me. I'm not a dreamer or an enlightened person, but I've spent my life contemplating, feeling, loving and enjoying.
Nature is my only true nature. Perhaps this is the heritage of my Indian ancestors, the Mapuches, from the Bolivian Andes. My ancestors also passed on to us the importance of discovering who we are, and the profound meaning of our lives. To achieve this, they tell us to unleash our creative energies, to acquire the self-confidence founded on gratitude and respect for the earth, and to put ourselves in harmony with nature and the environment.
The ancestors tell us to recognize the subtle influences of the earth, to discover our energy collectors in order to expand our field of consciousness, to free ourselves from the harmful idea that we think we are the victims of circumstances. Our ancestors tell us: if you understand yourself, you'll understand others, and you'll get what you want. You will then transform your life and give purpose and meaning to your walk on earth.
Of course, I've had my revolts, but they've turned into learning experiences, into life lessons. My grandparents, who were born in a wonderful, nourishing forest, were hunted at the turn of the century, during the rubber harvest, and deforestation was accompanied by the hunting of Indians. My father was born on a reserve where his family, herded like cattle to the brink of poverty, had become very poor peasants. It was in 1935 that my father decided to leave for Colombia.
And I was born the following year, in a small fishing village near the large port of Barranquilla. My mother, whom I loved dearly, had emigrated to Barranquilla, married my father, and died the year I was seven.
Just before she died, she took me in her arms and, stroking my hair, said: “Mi vida, there are only four elements. Air, fire, water and earth, and they form a fifth, the subtle breath of the invisible. This breath is space, the nothingness from which all things originate, and it is in this space that our real Self decides, before our birth, to manifest itself on earth. I had time to find out who I was and what I had come to do on this earth. Life made me grow, and you made me grow too. My life has been a dance, a marvellous dance, and my great pride has been to have been your mother, for I can feel your magical radiance, mi nino querido. Now I can go back to where I came from, and how I came, but I no longer need my body, and I leave it like a cloak.
Twilight is sunset, the end of the day, a time for rest, relaxation and renewal. Ramon, my son, follow the path of beauty, you will bring beauty to others and to the earth, do everything with your soul, you will then bring healing to this planet. I'll always be with you, in the wind, in the earth, in the water and in the fire. Touch them and smell them, in the breath of the invisible, you'll find the scent of my body.”
So, I like to be naked to better feel the elements, the firm, damp earth beneath my feet, the wind on my skin, the water from the rain or the seas covering my body, and the fire warming my soul. But there are still many things I love: the smell of coffee, a field of wheat, fresh grass, flowers, myrrh, tree bark in the early morning, love. And above all, I love music, the sound of the forest, the springs, the storm, the strings of my guitar, especially when my eyes are closed.
My guitar is as naked as I am, and often I caress it and it responds to my touch. And it takes me to distant, radiant lands. The most beautiful thoughts are born in me. All I have to do is close my eyes and I'm in total harmony with the world and the energy of the Universe.
I love all beings deeply, but I've loved two women who loved me back. The first I never loved with my body, I only loved with my soul, and she never disappointed me. She was a girl of about thirteen or fourteen, to whom I delivered bread. Her name was Carmina. But her father had me arrested by the police, because he had realized that a feeling had developed between us, and despising my skin color, which revealed my Indian origins, he had accused me of stealing silverware from his kitchen. He wanted his daughter to be happy.
I spent several months in a dark prison, never seeing the sun or the moon. Naked, on the cell's sticky mattress, all I had to do was close my eyes. Then I'd think of her, of her golden hair that reminded me of sunny wheat fields, and of her blue eyes tinged with sadness, but with a sky much bluer than mine.
She helped me to remember, even in the dark, the beauty of the world. When I became free again, out of respect for her and her family, I never went near her house again. If one day our paths cross, I'll tell her why I didn't try to find her. Since then, I've never stopped praying that she won't suffer, and that she'll forget that we loved each other.
It was in Bogotá, where I arrived the year when I turned twenty-five to play in a club that hired me on a yearly basis, that I met my second and probably unequalled love.
Rosario was the energy of love in motion. She was emotion, everything about her was emotion, every one of her physical assets, her gestures, her smell, her voice, her walk, she was a gift of herself. She radiated like no other, in total and innate harmony with everything around her. She marveled at everything and was enthusiastic about every situation. Gifted at everything, filled with an exceptional power of love. She knew how to recognize the beautiful things in this world, but above all, she knew how to embellish everything. She was nature, gentleness, healing, joie de vivre, contemplation, a gift.
From her, I learned that beauty is knowing how to give of oneself, to give one's time to others, but also to understand them, to help them through the stages, to lead them towards elevation without them even realizing it, but by being oneself the example, the path, the way.
Faced with Rosario's naked body, I have the whole world before me. Nature in all its splendor. Each of her curves is an enchanted place. Her skin floods me like a warm sea of fine, fragrant sand, and in her eyes are reborn all the mornings of the world.
And then Rosario gave birth, and gave me offspring. The naked little boy she gave birth to brought tears to my eyes. I held him close to me, still wet from his mother's womb, and laid him on her breasts, overflowing with milk. She had become a mother and I a father, and he, this little being, was the symbol of a new season in our life together, in our life on earth.
