Letting Go: You too are a performance artist (Montano)

Thank you. I have recently discovered and lost and continue to discover the practice of gratitude, and I am so thankful to have just read You Too Are A Performance Artist.

I can think of no more economical, honest, giving and intimate and ---- way to share a life, a life work, than in this form: at once confession, blessing, instruction manual, cookbook, mentor, coach, cryer, and open hand ( I remember once a friend now long gone sharing a line from a poem: “coward take my coward’s hand.”)

An invitation to be wholely and perfectly imperfect and inhabit our places, our roles, our practices, our lives in the fullest way—most able to see those around us, or rather most able to give what we have in a way that is always drenched in play and self-becoming

Observations:

1. Format – I enjoyed the economy of the book’s format:

Art

Life

Prepare

Event

Presenting a life of work as an informed invitation to make my own

2. theory - no theory, no barriers to entrance/no adulation for artistic authority and instruction. All work motivated by own urgent internal compass.

3. chicken - closely related to this: an early ‘heart’ direction—‘chicken’ – arises from disconnect with prevalent current art dogma

4. ‘call that time art’ – as a vehicle for illuminating all aspects of life-each as self-design,/self-creating: joyful/helpful/more deeply connected super-being

5. garage talk – exploring the role of artist in a village-what do you have to give?

- the book makes sense as the logical extension of this event / and what I imagine the garage conversations/advice given

6. social roles – like a child trying on new possible ways to live, doctor, cowboy,

-a memory in my 30s: my father-in-law ( a road contractor) invited me to wear a reflective road guy jacket and direct traffic around their work site: I was just so amazed that no one questioned me there and immediately accepted me in my role in safety jacket, listening to me for directions, when to go, when to stop, when to slow down.-it was exhilarating.

Thank you for also reminding me that I do not call my mother enough.