She began with a story about attending her first corrida, where she vomited in histeria when the matador killed the bull with his sword. My eyes opened like deer´s. Judy left the stadium promising never to return to the bullring and returned to California where she lived as a Spanish teacher. Wanting still to be informed of this Spanish tradition, she came across a book by John Fulton, the only American to ever have become a Spainsh matador, and from there was intrigued. John Fulton was many other things-- an actor, a storyteller, and among them, an artist.
Judy continued animatedly with her story; she moved to Sevilla and visited John's art gallery often. One lucky night, she was introduced to him and one thing led to another... She volunteered in his gallery and in four summers they fell in love. Or as she told it, it took him four summers. As Judy moved around the room, showing us props and telling us these intertwining stories about how she fell in love with corrida de toros and also with John, I found myself intrigued. She spoke all over the place, jumping from history to irrelevant antidotes: in ancient times hunters would paint members of the bovine family (the bull's ancestors) on cave ceilings and tap them with the tips of their swords for luck; matadors "dress on the left" because they always sacrifice the bill right-handed. (I´ll leave it up to you to learn that expression.) The word used in Spanish is always sacrificar, to remain conscious of the purpose behind ending an animal's life.
I never thought I'd be convinced that there is ever a reason to kill an animal in this way, and I'm not quite sure I am. But in Judy's talk I learned the facts. These bulls are treated extremely well and cared for during their lives, and live longer for this reason. They are not trained to fight; it is a bull's natural instinct to charge anything that moves. The horned beast has throughout history been represented in rituals for renewed life. (In fact, it's where we got the word 'horny' from.)
I thought about the bull's natural instinct, as a member of the world in its most natural state. Ernest Hemingway describes bullfighting as ´´the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.´´ The romantic notion of a heroic matador controlling a beast has never attracted my praise. But there is greatness in the idea of honoring the immensity of a life cycle, which as much as we try to ignore the fact, includes death. It truly is a grounding idea, even a spiritual act, to acknowledge death in its most honest performance; a respectful act of opening one's eyes to the end of a life as it follows it's most natural instinct. I began to see this tradition as I imagine the ancients viewed the world: as a cycle of life forms, which are greatly respected as equal members of the universe. I am still quite torn about the morality of this spectacle of Spanish tradition, but my eyes are open to the values of sacrifice and honor that are rooted in humanity´s history.
The bull´s instinct is to charge (and not towards red, as we often believe, but toward any moving thing). The human´s instinct is to run away. It is poetic irony to place man and animal in a place where one is fighting all instint to survive and the other is expressing its purest instinct. I believe we owe great respect to our instincts, and the instincts of all beings; I am attending a bull fight on Sunday in Sevilla to see the very famous matador Manzanares.
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