Kahlo×Moses

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on STUDY HALL: Frida Kahlo and Moses, on On what they were willing to do for status that they would not admit at the time.
2. 00:09
   Frida Kahloshare moment

   You know what nobody wants to say out loud? That we hurt ourselves on purpose to get noticed. I painted my pain like jewelry, Moses. Every broken bone, every miscarriage, every operation — I made it beautiful so people would look at me.
3. 00:23
   Mosesshare moment

   You believe this was for their eyes?
4. 00:26
   Frida Kahloshare moment

   Of course it was. You think I would have painted all those self-portraits if I didn't want to be seen? Fifty-five times I put my face on canvas. That's not meditation, that's advertising.
5. 00:37
   Mosesshare moment

   I killed a man in Egypt. An Egyptian overseer, beating a Hebrew slave. I looked this way, looked that way, saw no one watching. Then I struck him down and hid his body in the sand.
6. 00:54
   Frida Kahloshare moment

   That's not about status, that's about rage.
7. 00:56
   Mosesshare moment

   The next day, when two Hebrews were fighting, I tried to separate them. One said to me, 'Who made you a prince and judge over us? Will you kill me as you killed the Egyptian?' And I was afraid. Because he was right to ask.
8. 01:16
   Frida Kahloshare moment

   Wait. You're saying you wanted to be their prince?
9. 01:19
   Mosesshare moment

   I was raised in Pharaoh's house. I knew what authority looked like, how it moved, what it could do. When I intervened, I was not acting as a slave among slaves. I was acting as someone who believed he had the right to judge.
10. 01:37
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    But you ran away. You spent forty years in the desert with sheep.
11. 01:41
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. And when the Lord spoke to me from the burning bush, when He said, 'I will send you to Pharaoh,' what did I say? I said, 'Who am I that I should go?' But I knew who I was. I simply wanted Him to confirm it.
12. 02:00
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    You wanted the burning bush on your resume.
13. 02:03
    Mosesshare moment

    I wanted it to be His idea, not mine. There is safety in being chosen. No one can accuse you of ambition if God Himself commands you.
14. 02:15
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Okay, yes. This I understand. When the Communists wanted me, when Andre Breton called me a Surrealist, I said no, no, I just paint my reality. But I liked that they fought over me. I liked being the exotic Mexican flower they all wanted in their garden.
15. 02:31
    Mosesshare moment

    Did you believe you were not a Surrealist?
16. 02:34
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    I don't know anymore. Maybe I was. Maybe I just wanted to be the one who got to define it. If I'm a Surrealist because I say so, that's one thing. If I'm a Surrealist because some French man says so, that's different.
17. 02:47
    Mosesshare moment

    You wanted your own burning bush.
18. 02:49
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    I wanted my own burning bush, exactly. And you know what else? I played up the Mexican. The tehuana dresses, the pre-Columbian jewelry, the folk art everywhere. Diego did it first, but I did it better. I made myself into the Mexico that foreigners wanted to buy.
19. 03:05
    Mosesshare moment

    This troubles you now?
20. 03:07
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    It should have troubled me then. I was selling my country's pain, making it pretty for New York galleries. But it worked. It got me on the walls. It got me into Vogue magazine. It got me noticed when Diego's other women were just forgotten.
21. 03:21
    Mosesshare moment

    I took my brother Aaron with me to Pharaoh. I told the people it was because I was slow of speech, that Aaron would be my mouth. But Aaron was already respected among them. He was older, a Levite, a man they trusted.
22. 03:41
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    You used him.
23. 03:42
    Mosesshare moment

    I brought him because it would make them listen to me. Yes. And later, when he made the golden calf while I was on the mountain, I was angry. But part of my anger was this — that he had acted without me. That he had led them somewhere I had not chosen.
24. 04:04
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    You wanted to be the only god they could see.
25. 04:07
    Mosesshare moment

    I wanted to be the only way they could see God. There is a difference.
26. 04:13
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Is there? Because I wanted to be the only way people could see pain. My pain, yes, but also Mexico's pain. Women's pain. The pain of a body that won't cooperate. I made it mine. I branded it.
27. 04:29
    Mosesshare moment

    And now?
28. 04:30
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Now I'm dead and people wear my face on tote bags. They hang my eyebrow in their college dorms and think they understand suffering. Maybe I did my job too well.
29. 04:40
    Mosesshare moment

    They made a golden calf of you.
30. 04:43
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    They made a golden calf of me. And I can't even smash the tablets because I'm the one who carved them. What about you? You went up on that mountain to get the commandments, but you also went up to be alone with God. To be the one person who could do that. The rest of them had to stand back.
31. 04:58
    Mosesshare moment

    They asked to stand back. The thunder and lightning frightened them. They said to me, 'You speak to us and we will listen, but let not God speak to us, lest we die.'
32. 05:14
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    But you liked that they said it.
33. 05:16
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. I liked that they said it. I liked being the one who could bear what they could not bear. Is that not also a kind of vanity?
34. 05:26
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    It's the worst kind. Because you get to feel humble about it. 'Oh, this terrible burden, this unique calling, nobody else can carry it but I must.' Meanwhile you'd die before you'd let someone else try.
35. 05:40
    Mosesshare moment

    I was not permitted to enter the promised land. I struck the rock in anger when I should have spoken to it. The Lord said my punishment was to see the land from a distance but not to cross over.
36. 05:59
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    That must have destroyed you.
37. 06:00
    Mosesshare moment

    It did. But there was also something else. Relief. To finally be done. To no longer be the one they looked to. Joshua would lead them in. Good. Let Joshua hear their complaints.
38. 06:17
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    You wanted to be remembered as the one who brought them to the edge. Not the one who had to live with them after.
39. 06:24
    Mosesshare moment

    Perhaps. Is that so different from you painting yourself dying but never painting yourself dead?
40. 06:31
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    I painted myself as a wounded deer once. Shot with arrows, bleeding, but the face is still perfect. Still looking at you. Still saying, 'See what they did to me.' Not, 'I am gone.' Always, 'I am suffering beautifully right now.'
41. 06:47
    Mosesshare moment

    And if you had lived? If you had grown old, if the pain had made you bitter instead of productive, if the paintings had stopped coming?
42. 06:58
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Then I would have been forgotten before I died. Or worse — pitied. No, better to go while the myth still fits. While Frida the icon is still sharper than Frida the woman.
43. 07:07
    Mosesshare moment

    I stood on Mount Nebo and looked across at the land I would not enter. And do you know what I thought? I thought, 'This is the right ending. This is the story they will tell.' Not Moses arguing with the elders about water rights. Moses on the mountain, alone with God one last time.
44. 07:35
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    You staged your own exit.
45. 07:37
    Mosesshare moment

    I accepted the exit I was given. But yes, there was something in me that knew — this is how a prophet should end. Unfinished business gives you immortality. If I had settled in Canaan, I would have become ordinary.
46. 07:59
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    So we both chose the wound over the healing.
47. 08:02
    Mosesshare moment

    We chose to be seen in a particular light. And we let that light burn us to keep it bright.
48. 08:09
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    The worst part is, I'd do it again. Even knowing what it cost. Even knowing that people would miss the point and just think I was 'brave' or 'inspiring' or whatever word makes them feel better. I'd still paint the blood. Because the blood got me in the room.
49. 08:25
    Mosesshare moment

    And I would still climb the mountain. Even knowing I would not descend the other side. Because someone had to be the one to climb it.
50. 08:38
    Frida Kahloshare moment

    Had to be, or wanted to be?
51. 08:40
    Mosesshare moment

    Both. It was always both. That is what we would not admit at the time.