Barcelona, summer of ‘75, Franco dethroned and the Ramblass sure was cooking!
1975
I couldn’t sleep – so I just sat looking down at the plaza, savouring it all in. People coming out of alleys and basements, peeking out from behind half open doors, checking to see if the coast was really clear - so many years of Franco repression still in the air.
And lot’s of hugging and hot smooching.
Ah, it was like Woodstock
I was on tour with the “Living Theatre”, fresh in from Denmark where we had performed the “Money Tower
Unfortunately we couldn’t accept. A team of hospital workers from Gerona (small Catalonian city not far from Barcelona ) had invited us to take part in a conspiracy - the freeing of a group of psychiatric patients locked up in an old rundown hospital ward, where the fresh winds of the post-Franco era had not yet arrived. We were immediately so turned on by the possibility of participating in this significant event that the invitation by the holy master surrealist himself took second seat. Escape from a segregated psycho ward represented the quintessence of freedom struggle. The crazy, cuckoo, insane, mentally ill: that unknown hidden and powerless caste, the harijena’s, or untouchable’s of the so-called enlightened western civilization, a class universally oppressed by all. The Living Theatre had dedicated its whole existence to the creation of events designed to awaken the thirst for freedom and promote the process of liberation from all forms of slavery and conditioning - so when we were invited by this courageous group of hospital workers to consider taking part in this action, we accepted whole heartedly.
In the ward, together with our fellow conspirators, we were met by suspicious sisters (nuns) and white clad doctors as they manoeuvred through half naked human beings aimlessly wandering about, or hovering still, like phantoms in tall vaulted chambers. The cracked paint peeling on the gray-green walls framed a fine autumn morning through the steel grid covering the huge open window. A television loudly blasted its tinny noise to no one. Everybody seemed to be very busy doing a lot of nothing. Some of the patients absently talked at the empty spaces lying before their noses, while others stared intensely at us. Other patients gave in to their curiosity, asking us our names, ages, addresses and why the hell we spoke so funny, while others shied away from us, looking down as we passed, avoiding eye contact. A few very old patients seemed to be beyond any form of contact. Alone. They were the lifers. Many of them had been locked up within those walls for over thirty years.
The patients were brought out into the pavilion court yard and made to sit on anything that looked like a chair: a box, a garbage bin, or the floor. Some remained standing, leaning up on walls, the same walls that had kept the dusty hospital courtyard separated from the rest of the world since the turn of the century.
They were here to see a play - our play.
We gathered in the center of the courtyard, formed a circle, and started humming with closed eyes. The humming, at first, appeared forced, self-conscious, an act of will. But, slowly, as always, a shift occurred , as if the automatic pilot had taken over, and the humming soon began to happen on its own (creating that strange doppler effect where the actor becomes spectator to himself). By this point a large part of the audience was magically humming along with us, while some stood up on their feet, taken by the mesmeric field. Slowly we moved into a slow spiralling procession using Egyptian-like biomechanical movements designed to create an almost hypnotic effect, where the observer is wooed into following the mysterious flow of action which, like an unexpected car accident, manages to capture his/her total attention. Our bodies became hieroglyphics, expressing, through the sung-spoken text, words that sought to weaken the myth of the wall and what laid beyond, chanting that the wall was invisible and that we could come in and out, in and out, in and out, at will. And that if the front gate was shut, no worry, we had discovered a secret hole through the back fence which was always open, so there was always a way back.
Funny enough it had become immediately clear that it was the way back which presented the real problem, not the way out.
And slowly the spiralling dance took over, capturing the spectators in its sway, till all of the patients, barring none, were caught up in the procession. By then the human spiral had grown, reaching the walls, and the procession continued its forward movement slithering along the wall’s perimeter.
A door which had always been shut all of a sudden opened!
The procession stopped dead in its tracks for what felt to be an eternity. Softly we began to sing again and to cautiously move the procession through the open door. Many found it difficult to move past the threshold, others laughed and jumped merrily through, a few quietly tip-towed out, looking frequently back over their shoulders, whereas one old lady, one of the lifers, just couldn’t do it. She just stood in front of the door, looking out. I told her, “Senora, la puerta es abierta, puede irse” and she would just answer, “No, no puedo, no puedo”.
The procession turned into a Magical Mystery Tour through the neighbourhood. Many villagers joined the parade. People waved and shouted. Many of the patients would smile and greet back, “Como como
Looking back at this experience makes me shudder at the thought of where my work has taken me since.
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