Cintra’s been writing (and sharing) fearsome, delicious stuff on this Stack—classics from her culture-defining archive of work and stunning new whip-crackers of commentary and hindsight. And her mesmeric paintings. I’m in awe of her visual output. I think I can safely say that her style has now become recognizable. It’s a “Cintra Wilson piece.” It takes a while for any artist to reach that point but I think she’s reached it.
I guess it should not be a surprise because her written word has always been laser-blasting distinctive. Murderous, sublime, wry, redemptive, brutal, truthful, FUNNY, heroic, insanely perceptive, and bittersweet. That doesn’t do her stuff justice, but it’s a start.
Bear with me: I feel like an encomium is needed for this woman because she’s one of our seppuku-worthy American geniuses and this essay presents all the evidence of her diverse powers in raw, perfect human conveyance.
It hit home for me because I, too, lived in the Mission District in the mid-1990s (Dolores, one block from the Cathedral, $800 a month for a complete crap apartment … with underground parking. ANCIENT DAYS.)
At the time, I was knee-deep in the conviction that I would perhaps become a sort of “Brother Teresa”—working for Frank Jordan’s re-election campaign and serving as a (GASP!) “community organizer” as part of the parish council at Mission Dolores Basilica.
What Cintra writes about these Mission District kids and the absolutely constant tension and fear in their young lives is true beyond true beyond true. These young people—America’s young people—were stressed to points of desperation and ruin, but it’s amazing how many of them held their ground, held onto some shred of dignity, silent and protective of it. Unreal. They don’t get anywhere near enough credit for their personal dignity, despite the cholo/chola uniformity. Cintra and her dude, at the time, saw that.
Cintra’s account of the Christian mission utilizing surprisingly wise and powerful theater “tactics” to give Mission kids even a glimpse of safe emotional space and release (amid a dramatic recreation of their everyday lives!) is a massive and valuable cultural observation, in my opinion.
I lived and worked, as said, in the Mission District for a political team but equally with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which could not begin to GRASP why so many of their Latino/Latina/Latinx constituents were fleeing from traditional Catholic practice into seat-of-the-pants, non-denominational Christian grassroots collectives created and, in my professional purview, expertly expressed by Latino people using a wide variety of art forms and communicative methods to give these kids even a faint glimmer of Light in their hyper-stressed lives.
The adjunct bishop at the time commissioned me to do a study seeking answers as to why so many Latino “faithful” were departing the Church in droves. I spoke/speak Spanish and worked intensively in the district for Catholic ministry, and could have told him in one lunch-meeting over stale cookies and prissy tea what the problem was.
But I did the study, interviewing people from the Mission to Santa Clara. Almost a hundred pages of research that basically could be boiled-down to one conclusion: “The distant, sado-masochistic ‘performance’ of the Mass leaves these people with NOTHING.”
Whuff. Was I never invited back for dinner at the rectory! But that was the honest conclusion of the huge study I undertook. They didn’t like the answer. That was the first major step to my own break with the Roman Lollapalooza.
Those kids (and adults) needed reality, they needed immediate, applicable art and symbols and gestures to gain their trust.
Cintra’s recollection of this play exemplifies and, front-row-seat recounts, what was truly going on at the grittier levels of those fighting to relieve the massive tension these young people were experiencing. Unreal tension. Pressure-cooked existences in so many ways.
A week before I left San Francisco for Sonoma County, the Mission Basilica tried to “get with it” by hosting a Mass to celebrate/interpret/KUMBAYUH the then-recent murder of Latina singer, Selena.
It was staggeringly pathetic, and desperate, the priests in their skirts and lace. Ghoulish and morbid in all the ways that Cintra’s high-school playwrights were NOT.
Sorry for blabbering on, but this is one of Cintra’s “deep tracks,” if you will, and deserves attention. Brilliantly written and raw. Cintra, you and your fella had some serious heart to attend their play. I loved this piece.
This story is one of my favorites, combining your trademark outrageousness an sweetness. Thank you for posting early this week. I need my beauty sleep. 🤣
That's profound as HELL and it's too bad we can't force gun nuts and members of the gun lobby to attend a performance. Maybe then their "hearts and prayers" rhetoric wouldn't sound so empty.
Hey. This was a good one, and there are a bunch of other good ones right below it. I'm catching up with your recent (and not so recent) work today, but I stopped reading to come back to this latest piece so my comment will be somewhere close to the top. What I wanted to say is, I really like your paintings! Maybe in some earlier post you've written something about them, how/why you do them, etc. I missed it if you did. Are they done strictly as illustrations to your posts, or are they done because you just love to jump out of bed and into your smock? Do you have stacks and stacks of them that you can pull from, ready for every occasion and article? Curious...
Wow. This is just.. wow. I’m speechless! I felt like I was right there with you in that high school auditorium! So powerful. I get excited every time I see your name pop up in my inbox! Please never stop writing! 💕🫶🏼
it certainly seems to this hmmm voyeur?...voyager? that words like "triggering" have entered popular lexicon for a reason: the somewhat overwhelming speeding up of the distribution of information starting with the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable which basically made a mockery of Captain Cook's tidings to various islanders on thru to the hive-mind capability of the Web have created fecund environment for pretty much every neurosis and anxiety and hysteria-prompt one can imagine. Now more than ever humans feel smaller as they see the world as larger, even walked on the moon! which leads to backlash in the form of acting out in even the most trivial of circumstance, clinging to opinions and shouting them with bullhorns as if screaming "look! look at meeeeeeeeeeee! please.....before i vanish beneath the waves!!"
I love these vignettes of your city...its urgent unrepentant unfiltered human history of expression, life, lack of regret....
Too bad this play couldn't be re-created nowadays when it's more relevant than ever ...
Thank you sweetest Lucy!! XXXX
Cintra’s been writing (and sharing) fearsome, delicious stuff on this Stack—classics from her culture-defining archive of work and stunning new whip-crackers of commentary and hindsight. And her mesmeric paintings. I’m in awe of her visual output. I think I can safely say that her style has now become recognizable. It’s a “Cintra Wilson piece.” It takes a while for any artist to reach that point but I think she’s reached it.
I guess it should not be a surprise because her written word has always been laser-blasting distinctive. Murderous, sublime, wry, redemptive, brutal, truthful, FUNNY, heroic, insanely perceptive, and bittersweet. That doesn’t do her stuff justice, but it’s a start.
Bear with me: I feel like an encomium is needed for this woman because she’s one of our seppuku-worthy American geniuses and this essay presents all the evidence of her diverse powers in raw, perfect human conveyance.
It hit home for me because I, too, lived in the Mission District in the mid-1990s (Dolores, one block from the Cathedral, $800 a month for a complete crap apartment … with underground parking. ANCIENT DAYS.)
At the time, I was knee-deep in the conviction that I would perhaps become a sort of “Brother Teresa”—working for Frank Jordan’s re-election campaign and serving as a (GASP!) “community organizer” as part of the parish council at Mission Dolores Basilica.
What Cintra writes about these Mission District kids and the absolutely constant tension and fear in their young lives is true beyond true beyond true. These young people—America’s young people—were stressed to points of desperation and ruin, but it’s amazing how many of them held their ground, held onto some shred of dignity, silent and protective of it. Unreal. They don’t get anywhere near enough credit for their personal dignity, despite the cholo/chola uniformity. Cintra and her dude, at the time, saw that.
Cintra’s account of the Christian mission utilizing surprisingly wise and powerful theater “tactics” to give Mission kids even a glimpse of safe emotional space and release (amid a dramatic recreation of their everyday lives!) is a massive and valuable cultural observation, in my opinion.
I lived and worked, as said, in the Mission District for a political team but equally with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which could not begin to GRASP why so many of their Latino/Latina/Latinx constituents were fleeing from traditional Catholic practice into seat-of-the-pants, non-denominational Christian grassroots collectives created and, in my professional purview, expertly expressed by Latino people using a wide variety of art forms and communicative methods to give these kids even a faint glimmer of Light in their hyper-stressed lives.
The adjunct bishop at the time commissioned me to do a study seeking answers as to why so many Latino “faithful” were departing the Church in droves. I spoke/speak Spanish and worked intensively in the district for Catholic ministry, and could have told him in one lunch-meeting over stale cookies and prissy tea what the problem was.
But I did the study, interviewing people from the Mission to Santa Clara. Almost a hundred pages of research that basically could be boiled-down to one conclusion: “The distant, sado-masochistic ‘performance’ of the Mass leaves these people with NOTHING.”
Whuff. Was I never invited back for dinner at the rectory! But that was the honest conclusion of the huge study I undertook. They didn’t like the answer. That was the first major step to my own break with the Roman Lollapalooza.
Those kids (and adults) needed reality, they needed immediate, applicable art and symbols and gestures to gain their trust.
Cintra’s recollection of this play exemplifies and, front-row-seat recounts, what was truly going on at the grittier levels of those fighting to relieve the massive tension these young people were experiencing. Unreal tension. Pressure-cooked existences in so many ways.
A week before I left San Francisco for Sonoma County, the Mission Basilica tried to “get with it” by hosting a Mass to celebrate/interpret/KUMBAYUH the then-recent murder of Latina singer, Selena.
It was staggeringly pathetic, and desperate, the priests in their skirts and lace. Ghoulish and morbid in all the ways that Cintra’s high-school playwrights were NOT.
Sorry for blabbering on, but this is one of Cintra’s “deep tracks,” if you will, and deserves attention. Brilliantly written and raw. Cintra, you and your fella had some serious heart to attend their play. I loved this piece.
This story is one of my favorites, combining your trademark outrageousness an sweetness. Thank you for posting early this week. I need my beauty sleep. 🤣
It was almost impossible to find the right quotes tonight but I just did it.
That's profound as HELL and it's too bad we can't force gun nuts and members of the gun lobby to attend a performance. Maybe then their "hearts and prayers" rhetoric wouldn't sound so empty.
Sounds like Rushmore (the munitions part)!
Hey. This was a good one, and there are a bunch of other good ones right below it. I'm catching up with your recent (and not so recent) work today, but I stopped reading to come back to this latest piece so my comment will be somewhere close to the top. What I wanted to say is, I really like your paintings! Maybe in some earlier post you've written something about them, how/why you do them, etc. I missed it if you did. Are they done strictly as illustrations to your posts, or are they done because you just love to jump out of bed and into your smock? Do you have stacks and stacks of them that you can pull from, ready for every occasion and article? Curious...
Wow. This is just.. wow. I’m speechless! I felt like I was right there with you in that high school auditorium! So powerful. I get excited every time I see your name pop up in my inbox! Please never stop writing! 💕🫶🏼
it certainly seems to this hmmm voyeur?...voyager? that words like "triggering" have entered popular lexicon for a reason: the somewhat overwhelming speeding up of the distribution of information starting with the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable which basically made a mockery of Captain Cook's tidings to various islanders on thru to the hive-mind capability of the Web have created fecund environment for pretty much every neurosis and anxiety and hysteria-prompt one can imagine. Now more than ever humans feel smaller as they see the world as larger, even walked on the moon! which leads to backlash in the form of acting out in even the most trivial of circumstance, clinging to opinions and shouting them with bullhorns as if screaming "look! look at meeeeeeeeeeee! please.....before i vanish beneath the waves!!"
I love these vignettes of your city...its urgent unrepentant unfiltered human history of expression, life, lack of regret....
.what....no sex in this one?!? heeehee
Whatever happened to that t-shirt collection?
This is a great story.
“I DO love you!” (In yellow script) 💛
This is so wonderful! Wish I'd been there.