What would happen if you were struck by lightning?
It can't be a coincidence, surviving a lightning strike must bring new meaning to my life.
Fourteen years passed since the time when my connection with storms seemed like a simple pleasure. But in ancient pre-Hispanic cultures there was a beautiful answer to this.
It's about a calling, about being chosen to give voice to the phenomena of nature through the gifts with which I was born to undertake The Aztec Tonal-Nahual Journey. Bringing in a contemporary way the sense of life with which our ancestors lived in balance with each other and with their environment through a deep connection with life and death.
That is why The Tradition of the Day of the Dead is a fundamental part of this expression.
Without knowing it, for fourteen years I was manifesting this vision of life through art with four people who, with their deaths, fueled this tribute of life that today has a name.
The Voice of Thunder has the shape and meaning of this tribute of life I make to my artistic influences that have already transcended. And it is shown through some of their audiovisual works and in particular those in which I collaborated either composing and producing music, making time-lapse photography or video editing. Putting these works together creates a "film" with heuristic value.
These four people nurtured my current form of expression within art and the exploration of nature, so the intention of showing part of their legacies is, through a cinematic experience, to give a perspective of how sport and exploration can lead to a particular contemplation of nature, this gives us all the material to create poetry. Music expresses what has no words, photography stimulates the imaginary, and thus, is how this project acquires heuristic quality.
Everything can be related if we see the path that other people enjoyed to know themselves, and perhaps in their expressions we find solutions to personal situations.
We are born with a specific Tonal, and contemplating how someone navigated their life until they became Nahual, can be something so beautiful that we shall decide to take it for our own lives.
I believe this gives a guideline to a creative life no matter what our talents are.
These beautiful people are:
Citlaly Malpica (02/12/1991 - 10/03/2021). Decimista, sonera and writer from Veracruz.
Sergio Zambrano (07/27/1948 - 11/12/2016). Diver, mountaineer and aerial photographer.
Mario V Chávez (30/06/1948 - 05/07/2017). My father and music lover.
Pat Martino (08/25/1944 - 11/01/2021). Contemporary jazz guitarist, among other genres.
In November 2009, during a practice of acclimatization and route reconnaissance on the Iztaccihuatl Volcano, when I was active in the High Mountain Rescue Section of the Mexican Red Cross, Salvador and I were struck by lightning so close that we were thrown to the ground in a deafening shockwave. That event, in the "tempera" tradition in Mexico is known as being "touched by lightning" or "chosen by lightning", and, indeed, after that day my relationship with water and rain became a gift, because since then I find in my story this heuristic value that I mentioned above:
Heuristic in Greek means "to find, to invent". It is used in many fields and we can understand heuristic processing as the ability of human beings to discover, invent or solve problems through creativity or lateral thinking.
Heuristics are general and loosely defined rules of thumb that function as mental "shortcuts" to solve problems that would be extremely complex step by step. They are useful for reducing cognitive overload and allow less mental resources to be invested in problems.
This is the value of The Voice of Thunder, because the presentation begins with a talk where I narrate how my relationship with these four figures was, key moments in our friendship and how the collaborations that are presented on screen came about, thus giving the public the possibility to see in themselves their own families or friends, giving them a unique message that can stimulate creativity, for example, I did not know my grandparents, but Pat Martino gave me the feeling of being one since we met and that leads me daily to take the guitar and develop musical ideas using the legacy he left for the world of improvisation applicable in this instrument, this maintains a very positive human bond necessary for my personal development.
The presentation has live music, dance choreography, poetry recited on the spot. The sound is a "Home Made Surround System" because at the front, along with the projection, is the music and voices previously recorded in each video and behind the audience I am playing a guitar with musicians invited to the project, this gives the surround effect that my father loved to listen to his favorite albums with one of his children playing guitar or drums on top of those recordings.
The creative team that has formed this tribute is:
Katalina Ramirez. Writer and editor.
Libni Casher. Singer and composer.
Flor Rovlich. Poet and photographer.
Mysteries of Water. Poet and globe trekker.
Nahieli Castillo. Cultural manager and circus performer.
Alexandra Tischendorf. Singer and composer.
Luis "Salaz". Guitarist and audio engineer.
Ekiwah Adhler-Belendez. The poet and madman that we all have a little bit of.
Solar Dance Company: Mariana Mhel, Ana Rebolledo and Francisco Monforte, under the direction of Alejandro Ruiz.
The works presented are the following:
-"Souls of the Forest". Introduction. Eduardo V Ríos.
-"Huautla/Peña Colorada 1984-1994". Documentary. Sergio Zambrano.
-"Peru 2016". Videoclip. Sergio Zambrano.
-"Into The Mind". Audiovisual work. Pat Martino.
-"Las Máscaras En El Suelo". Videopoetry. Citlaly Malpica.
-"Los Dos Terremotos" (homage to my father). Audiovisual work. Eduardo V Ríos.
-"Los Besos Que No Te Di". Videopoetry. Citlaly Malpica.
-"Taiga". Videoclip. Alan Fajardo/Citlaly Malpica.
-"Flor De Naranja". Videopoetry. Citlaly Malpica.
-"Without Fear of Living". Audiovisual work. Eduardo V Ríos
Total running time approximately 99 minutes.
La Voz Del Trueno has been presented to date in El Huerto Santo Domingo, Baticine, Apricumbra, Centro Cultural Pedro López Elías and Solar, forums located in Tepoztlán, Morelos, Mexico.
This project also seeks to reach more people touched by lightning and give more strength to this voice through presentations in cinemas, cultural centers, museums, poetic spaces and concert halls.