... Gustavo Thomas Theatre: June 2007

During several of my travels I’ve found some groups of street musicians, I’ve listened to their music, sometimes videotaped a bit of it, and many times I thought about their job and their reasons to do it.

For a long time street performances have been part of my interest in performing art, but I’ve had little opportunity to do something concrete with it. However the experience in my travels of meeting this kind of groups has left an impression in my mind and I’m sure it will impact my future “observations” through the world. I can see music, dance, theatre, theatres, all profoundly linked. Asia is an enourmous group of performative mixture sometimes unthinkable in the Western world and accidentally present in that “middle” world where I come from, Mexico.

These musicians and their street performances open my imagination and my sensitivity, they take me deeper in the reasons for expression, over the impulses which drive us to expose ourselves to anybody. Sometimes I feel pain, my heart breaks, and then I realize I’ve cried, and after some minutes I start writing (not for stage; it’s one of those moments I’m sure I’m a poet too).

A few videos of these meetings will help to illustrate what I’m now writing, and one text written in an instant of explosive emotivity (Just Angkor could produce it), will be the pick of my idea of “sharing the experience”.

The crippled musicians of Ta Phrom(1)

I thought it’d be decades before I’d long for the words that speak about that within me wich is imposible to descypher; what a fool, as the wait was only of two ridiculous years;
the immense beauty of time that passed broke my sinless silence.

Cripples.

An apparition of crippled musicians, with tired eyes and smiles, their hands and instruments, their prosthesis lying on the side, resting and fed up.

No feet, no legs, no foot, no fingers, no hand, no arm, no sight, no eye, yes a bit of music, and a smile that will play for a dollar.

I sweat as I walked, I wanted to record them with the memory I carry in my pocket, that machine that keeps that which I see and then shows it to the world, a machine that lets me rest from what I was and am in passing.

You’ll see them, recorded, but words stay best with a pulse of soft crying, of that stinging pain in the chest, that smile that you see and that won’t imitate their pain.

Music was their dance, and their singing was their walking and their speech. Music wasn’t hate, not vengeance, it was another machine that only plays at the sound of a coin falling.

When I saw the tree that tears the temple apart, and its roots absorbing time, I saw my dead father, teacher and friends, I heard those musicians again with missing body parts. I went back to my obsession of wanting to register everything with my hand memory, but a pain in my chest and in my head stopped me.
I was left alone within the horde of tourists and herders, of warrior and priests carvings; for an instant I was a cripple, my almost useless hand also writing for a dollar no one would give me,
I was like a machine,
And my feet were only contraptions that lay on the side, dirty, waiting.

I was in the midst of a tree covering my beliefs, and those faces, and carvings, and wanting to silence dozens of women yelling. I turned my mind (already burning white) towards those towers that the day before showed me tens of proud faces.

I looked at the roots at my feet, I touched the fallen stone to my side, then I put a stop to the madness and my own scream, and kept from falling from insolation and tiredness.

There, the men without hands or feet kept playing.

There, the old temple, expired and useless, remained hidden by the roots of a tree thousands of years old.
There, in my hand, was the camera, recording everything, taking so little of what I’d seen…

A few months before I had seen some other musicians on the street, blind, playing and trying not to be recorded.
Years ago I saw some others at a Roman temple, offering tea with also playing, without feeling.
Yesterday night was my first encounter with the cripples… is there another word?
Today, I couldn't stand the vision of that new encounter,…

and in that temple-non-temple
I saw not a ruin, not some musicians, I cried poetry, dance, singing.

Gustavo Thomas
June, 2007
Siem Reap, Cambodia

Video of crippled musicians in Ta Phrom, Angkor, Cambodia:

Video of blind musicians in Shanghai, China:

Video of street musicians in Baalbek, Lebanon:

(1) Translated by Tadeo Berjon from the original in Spanish. Berjon thinks is important to say that he is not a professional translator of poetry and may not reflect properly the original poem in Spanish. I publish the original in Spanish here:

Los músicos lisiados de Ta Phrom.

Pensé que habrían de pasar decenas de años antes de volver a suspirar por las palabras que hablaran de aquello imposible de descifrar dentro de mí; como un iluso el lapso fue de tan pocos dos ridículos años;
la inmensa belleza de un paso por el tiempo rompió mi inmaculado silencio.

Lisiados.

Una aparición de músicos lisiados, con sus sonrisas y su ojos cansados, con sus manos y sus instrumentos, con sus aparatos a un lado descansando del hartazgo.
No pies, no piernas, no pie, no dedos, no una mano, no un brazo, no la vista, no un ojo, sí un poco de música, y una sonrisa que se toca por un dólar.

Sudaba y caminaba, quería grabarlos en la memoria que cargo en el bolsillo, esa máquina que guarda aquello que veo y que lo muestra después al mundo, máquina que me deja descansar de lo que fue y fui en el paso.

Tú los verás, guardados, pero las palabras quedan mejor con un impulso de suave llanto, de ese tintilante dolor de pecho, con esa sonrisa que no ves imitando su dolor.

La música era su danza y su canto, era su caminar y su discurso.
La música no era odio, ni venganza, era otra máquina que solo toca con el caer de la moneda.

Cuando vi el árbol que destroza el templo, y sus raíces absorbiendo el tiempo, vi a mi padre, a mi maestro y mis amigos muertos, volví a escuchar a esos músicos sin una parte de su cuerpo. Volví a mi obsesión de querer plasmarlo en la memoria de mano, pero un dolor en mi pecho y en mi cabeza lo evitaron.
Quedé solo en medio de la horda de turistas y pastores, de las formas de guerreros y sacerdotes; fui por un instante un lisiado, mi mano casi inservible escribía también por un dólar que nadie me daba,
era como una máquina,
y mis pies sólo aparatos que a un lado se quedaban, sucios, esperando.

Estaba en medio de un árbol tapando mis creencias, y esas caras, y tallados, y queriendo callar también a decenas de mujeres gritando. Volví mi mente (ya en brasas) hacia esas torres que un día antes me mostraban decenas de orgullosas caras.

Miré las raíces a mis pies, toqué la piedra caída a mi lado, entonces detuve la locura y el grito propio, evité también caer de insolación y cansancio.

Ahí los hombres sin manos ni pies seguían tocando.
Ahí el templo viejo, caduco e inservible, seguía oculto por las raíces de un milenario árbol.
Ahí en mi mano estaba la cámara, todo grabando, tomando tan poco tan poco de lo observado…

Pocos meses atrás vi a otros músicos en la calle, ciegos tocando y evitando ser grabados.
Años atrás vi a otros en un templo romano, ofreciendo té y sin emoción también tocando.
Ayer por la noche fue el primer encuentro con los lisiados… ¿hay otra palabra?
Hoy no soporte la visión de ese nuevo encuentro,…
y en ese templo-no-templo.
Vi, no una ruina, no unos músicos, lloré poesía, danza, canto.