Angar Mora – Clara Hsu

Circles Of Gifts

Angar Mora, or rather, his able assistant Felix Feline has the following to say in the recent View Point: Ideas for Our Imagination, Wow!

The season of gift giving is fast approaching, and Felix suggests giving a ‘gift-of-art’. Here’s how he defines the gift:

* Gifts are the result of the giver’s personal efforts, not store-bought.

* Gifts are given in person, in order to benefit from the extended gift of being in the presence of the OTHER.

* Gifting does not obligate the recipient to reciprocate directly to the ‘giver’; rather, the recipient should pass on the ‘gift’ received, or a gift of equivalent or greater ‘liveliness’ to someone else.

I think the idea is ingenious coming from a feline. But with Angar Mora, you always expect the unexpected.

Walking Through a Wall

“We can all do it if we go slow enough.” The ever enigmatic Angar Mora of the WOW Salon of the Imagination says with a straight face. As he speaks he walks very close to a wall and for an instant I really feel he is disappearing into it. Is it mind over matter, or is he demonstrating the fact that we are all made out of the same atom? I prefer not to analyze. At the moment when I believe in Angar it really happens, or that it has already happened, that he has actually walked through the wall from the other side into the room.

How long does it take to change the mind? It depends on the power of the narrative. If we have conviction it happens instantaneously.

Angar Mora and the Wow! Art Salon

I met Angar Mora a few years ago through Al Averbach, who invited me to the Arriverderci Cafe in San Rafael to attend an “unusual” salon. Before we went Al sent me a flyer that has specific instructions on arrival time, order time, dining time, discussion time, feature time, etc. Everything was planned down to the minute. Al said he had not met Angar, but had only talked to him on the phone. Angar had an accent that he could not place.

A tall, gaunt man with a pageboy haircut greeted us at the entrance of the Arriverderci Cafe. Angar Mora looked European. His gray hair might have once been blond. It seemed he talked metaphorically and the evening was conducted very much in the same manner. After dinner, we introduced the person sitting next to us by comparing him/her to an object in the room. We listened to Angar’s story of the planet that he came from and the universe that he once belonged to. The evening went on like this, suspenseful, intriguing and exotic.

I have since been back to Angar’s salon many times. Sometimes to read as a feature, sometimes to listen. He always pair a visual artist with a poet. The restaurant walls are filled with artworks that Angar personally put up.

In my mind, I seem to recall Angar once shared his earthly origin, that his Danish family was Rom (gypsy). To escape persecution they changed the last name to Mora. But this is just a story. Like so many he tells, I accept them without question.

Photo by Judy Hardin Cheung