hide You are viewing an archived web page, collected at the request of New York University using Archive-It. This page was captured on 15:58:30 Nov 08, 2019, and is part of the Fales Library: Linda Montano collection. The information on this web page may be out of date. See All versions of this archived page. Loading media information

Friday, December 29, 2017



THE THREE MIRACLES OF 2017    Linda Mary Montano  2017


"A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws.
 Such an event may be attributed to a supernatural being (a deity)
 magic, a miracle workersaint or a religious leader. Informally,
the word "miracle" is often used to characterize any beneficial 
event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of
nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a "wonderful"
occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth.
Other such miracles might be: survival of an illness diagnosed as 
terminal, escaping a life-threatening situation or 'beating the odds'.
Some coincidences may be seen as miracles. A true miracle would,
and scientific thinkers to dismiss them as physically impossible 
(that is, requiring violation of established laws of physics within their
domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature 
(because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out). 
Theologians typically say that, with divine providence, God
 without, above, or against it as well. The possibility and probability
of miracles are then equal to the possibility and probability of
the existence of God."

Having been raised strict Roman Catholic in the 40's, miracles were
a dime a dozen. We grew up expecting them, reading about
them and experiencing them at home, in church and in dreams.
Our miracles were country miracles; miracles of kids cavorting,
playing, maneuvering in the lap of Mother Nature who filled in as
caregiver, friend and collaborator/protector. 
 The fact that we didn't get abducted, terribly abused or run over
by cars was a TOTAL MIRACLE because in the 40's in our small
upstate NY village, we kids were "put out" to play at 8am, told to come
home for lunch and then sent out again, returning at dusk
or sometimes dark. And it was a silent agreement that we would 
come home Miraculously Intact never reporting bruises,
pains or sprains. Or anything else. 
Granted ours weren't  big miracles like St Lucy's whose eyes were
gouged out by Diocletian and then mysteriously regrown back. 
 Nor were they  a Padre Pio miracle, especially like the one when
he literally came to my father's aid while he was having a stoke
in his Lazy Boy chair in the house after a horrendous hit on his
head via a medical mistake at PT that same morning. 
Our child-miracles were not like the one's at  Lourdes or Medjugorje.
Or the ones at Fatima or Guadeloupe. Ours were easy miracles.
For example, it was a miracle that pedophiles were not lurking in the
theaters where we went unaccompanied every Saturday (there were
3 in town that I knew of). It was a miracle we didn't get broken limbs
when we sleighed down the hill in back of the rectory, unaccompanied;
it was a miracle we didn't drown when we walked unaccompanied
to the kids park via public roads while still toddlers; it's a miracle
that the dozing senior at the kiddie pool was able to keep her 80
year old tired eyes on the squirming/peeing/squealing/pooping/
slithering bodies of 20 manic seven year olds, unaccompanied
by Mom or Dad at said public park pool.
Our child miracles were unadulterated Luck.


Statistically "impossible" events are often called miracles.
For instance, when 3 classmates accidentally meet decades after
they left school in a different country,they may consider this as
"miraculous". However, a practically infinite number of events
happen every moment on earth, thus infinitely unlikely co-incidences
also happen every moment. Events that are considered "impossible" 
are thus not impossible at all -- they are just increasingly rare and
dependent on the number of individual events. British mathematician
J. E. Littlewood suggested that individuals should statistically expect
one-in-a-million events ("miracles") to happen to them at the rate of 
about one per month. By Littlewood's definition, seemingly miraculous
events are actually commonplace.

Just recently I was witness to three miracles in a row that were not
just luck. No, that many all at once smelled more like Divine Intervention. 
 I was flying from NY to Austin to present and perform DAD ART,
a meditative interaction with the audience via the story of the life/sickness
/death and funeral of my father. Having asked for prayers from
The Way of The Rose group that I joined a few years ago, I felt mantled
by their good wishes; wishes that I witnessed working on other members
of our group of Mary Prayer Warriors. 
I expected the same. So it should not have been a surprise when I drove
85MPH in a 45MPH zone at  3am to catch a 4am bus to the Port of
Authority that I would be forgiven! I was being prayed for and there were
zilch cars on the road and in fact I was the  only car on the road
because it was  3am.
But here comes the first miracle: little did I know that officers pick up
lots of people at that hour because drivers at that time are careening
 home from parties/bars/ secret trysts/hospital visits/caregiving jobs and
this young officer-man, 50 years my junior, pulled me over on Rte.209, 
thinking me one of those listed above and  politely asked, " Do you know
that you were driving 85MPH  through Lake Katrine? I have been
following you ever since and you are going  80 right now  on Rte 209!"
In neurologically triggered adrenaline mode, I pulled out insurance
and license cards and with a real, honest to God tremor in my
right hand, and with all due respect, offered them to him. "Where
are you going? he asked. "To the 4am bus, and that's why I
was rushing. So sorry." 
Sorry comes immediately to my lips when confessing to priests
or police. I was trained that way. 

And yes, you guessed it, "I'm NOT going to give you a ticket

this time," he said and then proceeded to follow me from 209 to
Washington Ave, assuring himself  1. That I was safe? or
2. That I was telling the truth and going to the bus?
Let's all stand and applaud MIRACLE NUMBER 1 and the fact
that I didn't have to pay a fee or get a mark on my license or 
I didn't kill myself or anyone else going that horrendous speed.



According to the philosopher David Hume, a miracle is
"a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition
The crux of his argument is this: "No testimony is sufficient
 that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact
which it endeavours to establish.
" Hume defines a miracles as "a violation of the laws of nature",
or more fully, "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular 
volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible
agent." By this definition, a miracle goes against our regular
experience of how the universe works. As miracles are single
events, the evidence for them is always limited and we
 experience them rarely. 
On the basis of experience and evidence, the probability that
a miracle occurred is always less than the probability that it
did not occur.

As it is rational to believe what is more probable, we are not
supposed to have a good reason to believe that a miracle

MIRACLE 2: My parents communicated non-verbally and when
at their best, musically. Strapped to the life of the 40's-50's, 
parents/breadwinners performed those roles with great dignity.
But love shone through the cracks of my parent's disbelief that this 
is what life was supposed to look and be like, by listening to music,
singing all together and passing on their love of SOUND! 
Not the sounds of; " What are your feeling? What happened
at school? Why are you puking down the stairs every morning?"
Not those words, not those sounds coming from words, but the
sounds of Mom playing the piano after dinner, the sounds of Dad 
listening to trumpet and big bands on vinyl, the sounds of silence
when they went to Church and especially when Dad would sit in 
meditative-absorption on Sunday afternoons at the Chapel. 
Those were my languages. 
So when I shyly hid my parental DNA-ed  love of singing, something
Mom did in Dad's band before they married, I let it leak out in some
of my videos and performances, always undercover, always as  one
of my many 'characters' singing and belting out country western
Linda Ronstadt songs.
 But at 75 , the hidden dream could no longer be mummified
with fear and it was reborn when I organized an event for Bonnie
Cullum's VORTEX THEATER in Austin. 

It was a performance about the life/death of my father.

In 2006, during  the memorial at Pauline and Ione's at Deep
Listening Space, I sang seven of his and Mom's favorite songs: 
Time On My Hands, My Funny Valentine, songs like that.
Never giving myself full-dignified presence or credit, I sang
them without ownership, without receiving the full gravitas of what
or how I was feeling, delivering or experiencing while singing. 
I did not birth the songs in the past.
That is, I never allowed my voice to cry.

Since then, for years, I would visit musician David Arner
once a month and sing in preparation for my debut as a SINGER OF 
MY PARENT'S LOVE SONGS. Admittedly, I softened/relaxed
when I sang with loving/beauty man David, but I didn't feel ready 
for the stage/jazz club or slot on America's Got Talent!  So I
continued to prepare, recording a trumpet player's
accompaniment and guitar player, Jim Barbaro's version
of the songs as acts of rehearsal and practice for the big day
and DEMAND that I  sing like a "friend of Ella/ an Alberta
Hunter protégé."  
"Ladieeees and Gentlemennnn, I would like to introduce
 the soul singer, the voice of love, the sound Guru, Miss Linda
Let's give her a big, big hand. Montano is in the house!!!" 
That's what I was seeing/wishing! 

And that day came in October 2017. Singing lessons with my
across the street voice teacher, Barbara Wild, and daily practicing,
were the lubrications and last preparations. And then STOP!
 I could do no more, visualize no more, hope no more, wish
no more, expect no more. The piece de resistance was when 
the  prayer group sealed the deal with Ave Marias to Mary before
i took off via JFK airport on the coldest most blustery, windy,
freezing day in the history of global warning. But at least I was

Always 5 hours early I sat there in that windy airport clutching
my silky long pants that had turned icicle cold against my legs.
Acute sniffling and dangerous germy sounding coughing began.
Admittedly I don't have to continue this Miracle Story because
now you know the plot and how this will end, however in good
storytelling fashion,  I continue. 

Arriving in Austin frigid/cold/slimy with mucous and thankfully
a jar of Vicks, Bonnie's emergency Chinese cold herb, my ginger
tea and hours in bed silenced some of it but after years of a desire
to finally sing "seriously", I hoped/prayed/ imagined that I
or something/someone magically hidden inside me would rise to
the occasion and belt out torch songs with or without refusals
from my red-rubbed nose in a voice that was rasped yet fabulous!
Given my performance art show must go on record, I knew
I could pull this off and NOT BREAK A LEG, but deliver a
transformative spiritual experience for all, myself included.
Having done so for the last 50 years, I believed I could get high,
yet again, ON MY ART. Cough or no cough. Voice or no voice.

The Miracle; Those two nights of the performance, I sang as if
I were coached by Callas and heard my voice, hoarse from
consumptive all  day-night coughing, rise to the occasion . 
And here is the denouement/clincher: the bad, bad cold had
worked a strange magic. Instead of sounding like a croaking
senior in the back ward of a nursing home, I sounded SEXY
and guttural.I was chocolaty and erotic, dreamy and intimate.
The audience groaned at times in positive-this-is-unbelievable
admiration and I leaned into each song, sick as a dog who is
liking herself-trusting herself; a dog, sitting at the feet of her
own Self-Love. 
A miracle had  begun.
Let's give a big hand for the second miracle!


A story  from Amsterdam, 1345, claims that a priest was called
to administer Viaticum to a dying man. He told the family that if 
the man threw up, they were to take the contents and throw it
in the fire. The man threw up, and the family did what the priest 
had advised them to do. The next morning, one of the women
went to rake the fire and noticed the Host sitting on the grate, 
unscathed and surrounded by a light. It has apparently passed
through both the man's digestive system and the fire unscathed.
The story is commemorated with an annual silent procession 
through central Amsterdam.


Is it OCD that compels me to arrive at airports five hours before
take off? Or is it my compromised neurological disorder
which torques me into paroxysms of anxiety over little things like;
"Where is my credit card? Who stole it?" (A habit learned
from my aging grandmother, Nan, who blamed all her woes
on Mrs. Peters, her neighbor.)  I, over time, was becoming more
and more like my Nan.  Suspicious!

When I have thoughts of dread like this regarding travel they are;
"Will the car break down on my way to the airport? Will the 
bus be in an accident? Will I be in a two hour traffic jam and miss
my plane? " These mind altering adrenal-busters never 
entered or bothered my subconscious twenty years ago when life
 was an exciting, trauma free journey. But wait, that's not true. 
Back then I was a walking PTSD candidate, but I don't think I
worried about missing planes,or did I? No it isn't my fault, we are 
all compromised by cultural doom and gloom, yeah, that's the
reason that i needed this last miracle and completion of the trilogy.
The plot:  Had I gotten on the 4pm flight to Newark via United's
economy-no-change-fare, I would have arrived into Newark

Airport at 9pm and then run in a sweat to catch the Airporter to
the Port of Authority by 11:30 for the last bus to Kingston.

Having rehearsed this scenario and all of the permutations of
"what ifs" for days, I heard inner prompts saying,"What if
I have to stay in the airport because I might miss the bus
to the Port of Authority?" Google said when I asked about sleeping 
at Newark Airport;" Stay and sleep in the International Terminal
but remember it is extremely cold.They blow air on you all night."
That was a report from someone who slept there. She was a
hostel-type voyager from Greece.

Why are preparations and travel plans so demanding and
anxiety producing?  Getting home was the goal and the strategies
to get there were militaristic in nature.
 Calling all Miracles. Calling all Miracles. 

Sweet Heloise, a friend who shares my birthday but not the
same year, drove me to Austin Airport and I was embarrassed
to admit to her I was five hours early as we parted with effusive
hugs and sweet baby talk. 
Entering the Holy Land of Southern Hospitality, the Austin Airport, 
I expected to sit and people watch for five hours but that was not
to be because at the ticket counter there was a Real Person:
a smiling, gracious, verbal woman-Angel who not only rescued
me from the confusion of using the kiosk, but looked at my
reservation number and without a flinch of "I don't want to
be nice to this Northerner," offered to upgrade me to a noon
flight mit FREE BAGGAGE!
 Where do you find this kind of kind????
Miraculously (remember this is about miracles?) I dashed
to the take your shoes off check in area which is usually
an hour event, drank 16 ounces of water in one gulp
on the way, kept my shoes on, got through all of that chaos
unscathed, sprinted to the Gate which seemed miles past
14 "starbucks," and within 45 minutes from start to finish,
got on the plane and took off! 
If all of that doesn't qualify as Divine, what does? 
Let's give a big round of applause for Miracle number 3. 



Gratitude, thankfulness, thanksgiving or gratefulness,
from the Latin gratus ‘pleasing, thankful’, is a feeling
of appreciation felt by and/or similar positive response shown
of generosity, towards the giver of such gifts.The experience 
of gratitude has historically been a focus of several world
modern philosophers,and continues to engage contemporary
western philosophers.The systematic study of gratitude within
psychology only began around the year 2000, possibly because
psychology traditionally focused more on understanding distress
than on understanding positive emotions. 
The study of gratitude within psychology has focused on the
understanding of the short term experience of the emotion
of gratitude, individual differences in how frequently people
feel gratitude, and the relationship 
between these two aspects.






" I am asking Barbara to add my review due to the fact that I limit myself and am shy when it comes to passwords and with Amazon, you have to use one to write a review! So here is my  review: For reading URBAN TANTRA and being live with Barbara mit book or in person, THERE ARE NO PASSWORDS! Why? Because Ms. Carrellas gives ALL a chance to be fearless and awake without signing into anything, except to sign into  the Love of Being Alive. Buy her book for a taste of this fearlessness. And another good reason?  You get to visit with The/Annie Sprinkle while reading  the book's forward. Good=Good.  Linda Mary Montano, Performance Artist "






The Performance Artist Who Tied Himself to a Woman for a Year on Artsy: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-performance-artist-tied-woman-year



Bethany Ides
Performance legend Linda Montano situated an event at the Vortex Theater in Austin, TX, in November that invited everyone to come to themselves and others as though the context for introduction were newly ancient, which I am pretty sure it is.
How it started: each person who’d prepared to undertake the evening’s proceedings (the performers and tech crew) came out on stage, one by one, to let everyone know what they usually do during the day and what kind of different role they would be playing that evening. For some these were practical roles—lighting, sound booth—while others would be taking up more exquisitely occasional positions—a water ritual healer, a slow dancer looking for a partner, several designated close-listeners, an MC—and each mentioning had an effect of re-initiating all of our reasons for being how and where we found ourselves there.
What struck me and stayed with me was that this equanimous, equitable gesture which had initially seemed so simple was actually not so at all. Rather, it was a welcome departure from the demand so often made to audiences attending “interactive” works that everyone render themselves performing subjects, exposed as though already complicit in this or that construct. Montano’s invitation to be private while present reminded me of the “recursive yoking” Donna Haraway invokes on her way to discussing conjunctivitis as it occurs in both herself and in the “dog of [her] heart,” Cayenne. “People conjugate in public spaces,” she writes. “[T]hey yoke themselves together transversally and across time and space to make significant things happen.” Like Haraway, Montano creates the occasion to “conjugate ‘to conjugate.’” Over the course of three hours, we all circulated at our own pace around the theater, together imagining multiple variations of the inner-regulatory substances our bodies routinely produce, exchange, and lose. If the word “co-opt” had never been used with any pernicious affect, it might describe these sort of elaborately interwoven inclinations. Amid love songs, companion species, and a bonfire, an audience conditioned conditions of exuberance in spite of death that luckily exposed everything else as mostly unnecessary, if not intolerable.




This paper is divided into six sections:

1.Time in general.

2. My use of time in performance.

3. Reasons for using time.

4. Time and the university.

5. Timelessness in Eastern Thought as explained by Daepak Chopra and Dr. Ramamurti Mishra.


In childhood there is not time, only the feeling of space, expansion and infinite possibility. Time is a concept that is taught. learned and defined in Webster's dictionary in a six inch column, using miniscule type. It reads, "Time is the measured or measurable period during which an action, process or condition exists or continues." Another says, "Time is a continuum which lacks spatial dimension and in which events succeed one another from past to present to the future."

Once I lost the feeling of space in childhood, I began romancing time because my life became a series of thoughts about events instead of mythological journeys, the mental food of a child. As a good Catholic girl I monitored my mental, physical and emotional responses to life so that I could avoid sinning by thought, word or deed. In the process I began to appropriate and play with time and controlled it with the same intensity that I controlled my actions. I counted, watched clocks, competed with time by giving myself temporal deadlines. I would clock off minutes and seconds and make rules. For example I would say that I would move or not move by the count of 2. In retrospect I realize that I was enjoying a control and power that allowed for a deep mental and poetic intimacy  and spaciousness. Time became my playmate and my friend. It was a doll and obedient servant.


In the 70's, I transformed time into matter. I molded it, sculpted it, painted with it, designed with it. It was how I always structured my art.


By durating as art  for extended periods of time, I found that among other things, I was able to affect my physical chemistry. Basically my art was a cheap drug and time was the pill. Athletes use running, I use duration and it's been found that long term activity releases histamines and adrenaline into the bloodstream and that leads to a cessation of pain. Joseph Previle in the book, Human Physiology, theorizes that endorphins, enkephalins and dynorpphins bind to opiate receptors in the brain and body, triggering a series of physiological events that induce narcotic effects like drowsiness, hallucinations and the inhibition of stress or distress.  I used art to change my mood.


Before I took a full-time tenure track university teaching position at  The University of Texas, Austin three and a half years ago, my work was devoted full-time to large scale projects .  I made my living by teaching part-time and working  part-time at blue collar jobs. 

When I came to the University I had already completed Tehching Hsieh's ART/LIFE:ONE YEAR PERFORMANCE. We were tied together for a year by an eight foot rope, never touching. And I had completed six years of a chakra experience titled, 7 YEARS OF LIVING ART. 

I took this job knowing that I could  do two things at  once. That is I could continue to perform ANOTHER SEVEN YEARS OF LIVING ART and keep the three part commitment that the University asks of it's professors:

  1. A commitment to private research, performance and books.
  2. A commitment to teaching, office hours and seeing students doing independent studies.
  3. A commitment to 5 administrative committees.

The world is my studio and my life is art. So logistically, teaching is my art as was suggested by Joseph Beuys whose theory of Social Sculpture  expanded the concept of art. His classes at  the Dusseldorf  Academy were sculpturally forming artists for life on every level. He says, "Artists must be kneaded from top to bottom. We are malleable and might turn out to be  an agriculturists, doctors, computer scientists, police officers, mothers  but always the artist."


I will not stop dreaming.  If the dream is too big for the University job, I will have to leave even though I love and am addicted to the security, the health insurance and the dental plan. And my students.

Never a team player, I might have to leave having been on my own since 1970 and never learning how or wanting to spend "time" with the other members of the team. I do life My Way.

The muse is timeless and more powerful than money and if I hear her call for me to recalibrate and follow The Path of Space and leave the University, I will do so and then design a new way to consciously prepare for my last performance:  The Performance of The death of the Body and Mind.
Without Time, there is only Space.

1990. Linda Mary Montano