I then noticed that on a tall stool next to this intimate object was a bronze sculpture consisting of fifteen thick letters thirty centimeters high, forming a shiny ALEJANDRO FLORES.
“Do not be surprised, young namesake: although as a sculpture they are a vulgar jumble, those letters deserve my veneration. Today’s public is not attracted to the bag of bones that is my body, but to my name. While it is true that in the beginning I invented that name and put my energy into it as a father does with his son, today it has become my father and my mother. Alejandro Flores is a sound amulet that fills theaters. For example, when I go onstage the audience does not hear, ‘Good morning,’ but ‘Alejandro Flores says good morning.’ My name is what speaks and what exists. I am merely the anonymous owner of a treasure. I have heard that people in India keep statues of their gods in their homes to which they offer flowers, candied fruits, and incense, making the statues into idols, giving them the power to perform miracles through religious fervor. That is how I treat this set of letters, as an idol. Every day I polish them and perfume them. I offer the flowers people give me to them. When my mind is tired, I touch my forehead to them and recover. If business is bad, I rub them with my hand for a long while, and soon the money flows in. If I wish I had a woman to take away the night’s worries, I prop my heart up on them. They never fail me. Choose a name with fifteen letters, because that is the number of the Devil Tarot card, a potent symbol of creativity. The devil is the first actor in the cosmic drama: he imitates God. We actors are not gods, but devils.”
It was the first time that someone had told me that if one exalts one’s name, it becomes the most powerful of amulets. Jaime, wanting to become assimilated in Chile, to be equal to others, hating exclusion, never signed with his surname. His checks bore a brief Jaime. The Polish-Russian name Jodorowsky bothered him. Over the years I grew to understand that one’s first and last name contain mental programs that are like seeds; fruit trees or poisonous plants can grow from them. In the family tree, repeated names are the bearers of drama. It is dangerous to be named after a dead sibling; it condemns one to be the other and never oneself. If a girl is named after an old lover of her father’s, she is doomed to play the role of his girlfriend for life. An uncle or aunt who has committed suicide turns his or her name, over the generations, into a vehicle of depression. Sometimes it is necessary to change one’s name in order to stop these repetitions that create adverse destinies. A new name can offer a new life. This, I understood intuitively, was why most Chilean poets had achieved fame using pseudonyms.
I asked the actor to give me the great honor of polishing his name every morning. He flatly refused.
“No, boy. I know your intentions are good, that you admire me, but in order to be, you have to learn not to want to be anyone else. By polishing my letters, in a way, you would steal my power. Your name is Alejandro, like mine. Your devotion is bound to turn into destruction. One day you will have to cut my throat. In primitive cultures, the disciples always finish by devouring their master. Go and fertilize your own name, learn to love it, exalt it, discover the treasures contained in it. You have nineteen letters. Find the Tarot card called The Sun.”
The performances continued. The audience filled the theater. My acting was getting better, causing more laughter and applause every time. On the day when a fan threw a bouquet of flowers to me, the lead actor once again called me into his dressing room.
“I’m sorry, young namesake, you must come here no more. I will give you seven days. I have to replace you.”
“But, Don Alejandro, the theater is full for every performance, I receive applause, good reviews, and all my jokes make them laugh.”
“That’s the trouble. You stand out too much. You think only of yourself and not of the entire work, and I am the only one here who has the right to think of only himself. A wheel holds up an axle, nothing more. It is I who they come to see. Everything must revolve around me. Understand: I am taller than you, and taller than all the other actors. I only hire people shorter than me. And so I stand out. And that’s fair. When you enter a game, you must respect its rules or the referee will expel you from the court. You have been increasing the humor of your scenes. Since I have to maintain the overall balance, I have to struggle to outshine you in every performance. If this continues, I will have a heart attack soon. Look, boy, I became an actor mainly out of laziness: I do not like to work or make any great effort. Above all, I do not like fighting to defend what is mine. And don’t look at me like that, as if you think I’m an immense egotist. I don’t have to give you what I got with my own efforts, with no one helping me. The audience that comes to this place, which not by coincidence is called the Empire Theater, is mine and no one else’s. You don’t get to steal it from me, shielding yourself behind the hypocritical belief that because you are young the old winner should give you his secrets and hand over what he’s earned from a life of efforts. In any case, the people who come here correspond to my human and cultural level. They will never understand you: their ordinary taste will limit you. Go create your own world. if you can. You will have to shackle your inner child, which is afraid of investing and is constantly asking for things to be given to it.”
“But Don Alejandro who will be able to replace me in seven days? In a certain way, of course second to you, I’m holding up the show.”
“You’re naive, namesake. In my company, all are necessary but none is indispensable, except for me.”
I received the lesson of my life: when I attended my replacement’s first performance, wearing a sarcastic smile, I saw that he was none other than the ex-boxer and injection assistant, grotesquely dressed in a costume that was a poor imitation of what I had created for my character. This clumsy man, with his disastrous diction, was more of a rock than an actor. Bathed in sweat, badly doing as best he could, he made me feel pity. I thought, “That’s it for this play. At the end, people are not going to clap; Flores will finally see what I contributed.” But to my surprise, the audience applauded with the same enthusiasm as always. The curtain went up and down seven times or more. The star of the show, with his long arms spread open amidst his modest supporting actors, received the usual ovations. El depravado Acuña finished up the season with a full house. I was reminded of a fable from Aesop: a mosquito comes and settles in the ear of an ox. It announces, “Here I am!” The ox continues plowing. After a while, the mosquito decides to leave. It announces, “I’m leaving!” The ox continues plowing.
I tried to form my own theater company, but very soon lost enthusiasm. I realized I did not like theater that imitated reality. To my mind, that kind of art was a vulgar expression: trying to show something real actually recreated the most apparent and also the most vacuous dimension of the world as seen within a limited state of consciousness. This “realist theater” seemed to me to be uninterested in the dreamlike and magical dimension of existence, and I still believe today that generally speaking human behavior is motivated by unconscious forces, whatever the rational explanations they may attribute to them. The world is not homogenous, but is an amalgam of mysterious forces. Viewing reality as nothing more than immediate appearances betrays it. Thus, detesting this limited form of theater, I began to feel repulsion for the notion of authorship. I did not want to see my actors repeating a previously written text like parrots. Making them creators, rather than interpreters, required everything other than speaking: their feelings, desires, needs, and the gestures they made to express those things. I decided to form a silent theater company for which purpose I began studying the body, its relationship with space, and the expression of its emotions.