July 17, 1988-San Antonio Express-News

Room exists for all voices

Urban centers fascinate me. Their prismic qualities spice up my vision as I become ensnared by the many facets and events in the city, any city.

The handiwork of humanity is everywhere, and the exhilarating sounds of human life become a caressive hum.

Along with the pounding of tools and instruments, there is also the hammering of ideas and ideals.

It can be 8 and 1/2 by 11, Xeroxed, spiral-bound high school poetry magazine put out by youths still fascinated by the word, or it can be just standing in the foreground as Miriam Molina mounts an exciting new show.

There also are those events that strike a strident note as disdainful and decadent expressions denigrate the beauty of erotica by the spouting of profanity in a jaded spoof of sarcastic and demeaning national television shows.

Student inspires

With thoughts rambling as I pack up books and other things, I think of the joy in Jo Anne Reves, an Edison High School student and aspiring writer and poet.

I read the edition of "Reflections" and am filled with joy at reading some of the works. It is a positive selectian of works by students - put together and edited by them under the editorial direction of Mario Martínez.

Poems and artwork flow into one another with a youthful glee, an energy that speaks to meaning and truth. Innocence and will interplay.

That sense of a people's energy and will become diluted in the superhip, tres chic spiels of Culture Clash as a cast member apologizes for the heavy dose of profanity due to the many children present at the Guadalupe's TENAZ Festival... then the very same character spouts out an even greater array of F-and-MF words.

The guffaws are loud and boisterous as two construction site cones are blatantly used to project an insidious, sleazy and just plain negative degradation of human sexuality.

The acts are takeoffs on "Saturday Night Live" and "SCTV," but are fairly tasteless and oftentimes poorly executed due to the many technical glitches out of the control of the performers.

Much less honed than the original shows that CC parodies,yet there are some sparkles here and there.

It is as Hispanically yuppified as one can get, yet stay within Hispanic boundaries. Perhaps I had expected more from the hype, or maybe I have become old hat.

Unable to bring my children, I felt relieved that I hadn't and that is a feeling I do not particularly enjoy as I have been and continue to be a fan of José Antonio Burciaga, a member of CC.

There are already too many "real" jaded and disdainful images on television to subject my children to the same antics by friends.

After the Culture Clash show. I wound up at Tacoland for a beer with Nephtalí de León, Teresa, Jim Valdez and Mary Pardó.

We were treated to another stream of consciousness parodies of life in a rapid-fire monologue by Marcelino Martínez, a patron and raconteur.

Though he made cutting remarks, they were not super-sophisticated or jaded. It was ribald acting out, yet it was not at all vulgar in that cantina. There was a concern for life in his words.

Wondering about the arts, I spent the week thinking about what we are doing to ourselves and our progeny by projecting strident, expletive-laden sarcasms and defamations on stages where families go for realization and growth through the spiritual power of all arts.

Celebration of life

It was my good fortune to stop at the Mexican Cultural Institute a couple of days before the official opening of their new exhibition - Saturnino Herrán - which hangs through September.

The works of Herrán have a wonderful lifegiving quality to them, a celebration of human will and struggle. I am awed by images and nuances that uplift us by daring us to create and struggle.

Walking into Expresión Art Gallery, operated by Centro Cultural Aztlán at Las Palmas shopping Center, the colors dazzle me while Andy Villarreal, Willam Oliver Childress, F. Tobin, Miguel Cortinas and Marty Yochum intermingle easily with everyone.

Malena González-Cid, director of Aztlán, amicably joshes me about a few caustic remarks in my column directed at her program, and we laugh as she says that "it is your job to call it like you see."