While I was creating the mural for TAO Hospital I stayed in a hotel. The hotel's architecture was typically Mexican, with halls covered in Talavera tiles and a lobby with chandelier-like lamps. In short, an antiquated hotel.
The general understanding in Mexico is that this sort of old building has ghosts, and, honestly said, the night's there are scarry!
I was staying there simply because I happened to stumble on a special long-term rate for it, rather than because I wanted to meet ghots.
I happened to end up in the top-floor room, where I thought maybe the ghosts would not appear because there was plenty of sunlight to warm myself during the daytime.
This was in Toluca city, which is almost as high as Mt Fuji. The high-elevation made working hard, and I returned home each evening exhausted and sleeping awfully at night.
Soon after, I was encircled while I slept by bizarre things... It was my fate to become a total victim.
I had hoped that on my first night at least I might have some rest, but suddenly in the middle of the night a mariachi band began to play, and I could hear dancing through my ceiling.
It sounded like a party was starting up in the hall. To my mind, it seemed to be the rustling of women's dresses and cheerful chatter.
But in reality, the lady at the front desk apologized saying that there was no hall upstairs and no parties at night, winking "Who knows?" to indicate that it could just be the gods... and, with a gesture typical of Mexico, disappeared into the distance.
Maybe the whole hotel was full of ghosts...
After all, Mexico seems to have a special attraction for that sort of thing. It has a halation which mixes the unavoidable, brilliance, and death.
These three-dimensions con-join to make up Mexican life.
Even world master's who loved this land are convinced like I of our indebtedness to ghosts here.
Another night, I could hear through my ceiling the sound of Zapatista soldiers shouting in excitement like waves, "Viva Mejico!"
Many Mexicans love Emiliano Zapata, and even today many people say that they have seen Zapata soaring through the sky on his horse. And even in many of the films made by Eisenstein in Mexico, I can recall many famous scenes in which Zapata's ghost appears.
And then on another night a deer covered in arrows entered silently through the wall of my room.
It's face was Frida Kahlo's.
"The deer is a symbol of my rebirth and reincarnation" Frida said in tears, and in a moment disappeared.
This hotel seemed to be a historical novel.
Maybe this hotel was a quiet lodging place for beings who couldn't enter heaven, attracting pained spirits whose lives while alive had been active and brilliant...
On the other hand, maybe the friendly ghosts were the stains on my shabby ceiling and walls.
The stains looked at me as I slept, whispering and murmuring like cartoon goblins.
Which makes it a mystery how these stains stopped moving and became the half-finished forms of my pottery creations.
"Hurry up and blow life into us!" they would say as they approached me like a flash of light from the wall.
That is why those works created in Toluca, despite how hard it was living there, seemed to come like magic.
The ability to create in this heightened state, I owe to the spirits that lived on the historical walls of the Hotel Colonial.