Old Man Gloom divulges his secrets (well, some of them).
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SFR: You have more lives than a litter of kittens. At 81, what's your secret to longevity?
Z:
Gloom is something that Santa Fe seems to conjure up every year and they like to bring me back.
More than 20,000 people come out to burn you every year. Are you worried that all that fame will give you a big-or bigger-head?
Well, since I'm an empty-headed façade, there's plenty of room for that fame to fit into.
How long does it take to rebuild you after a burning?
Well, first they have to catch me up in Pecos Canyon. Then they have to chase me through the caves that link from Pecos to the Santa Fe Ski Area and this year it was really hard [to catch me] because the chair lifts were in the way and they were cutting trees down. There were these big annoying cables going up for the new chairlift so I was able to hide behind those every night. Once they finally captured me, they hauled me down to their secret warehouse where they put me back together.
I wouldn't have figured you for an environmental activist.
Well, seeing as that they burn me down every year with a blaze of glory, it's only fitting that I escape through the trees that were cut down [to burn me] in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Little boys are made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails-what are you made of?
Here goes the exposé: My dress is made of muslin. My bones are made of wood. I'm all held together with chicken wire and tire wire and-the most embarrassing thing of all-duct tape. Then of course they nail me, screw me and hammer me until I become the gloomy old man that I am.
Do you always rock the bow tie and cummerbund or just for special occasions?
I've been rocking that since the late '40s. They used to have me in a loincloth, that's all they'd let me wear up on those poles. [But] the belt fell apart and the loincloth came crashing down to the ground. It became a dress ever since then. I think they thought that it would be more dignified to put a cummerbund on me and dress me up in a tuxedo-so to speak-for my funeral pyre.
I don't suppose they have cuff links in your size at the Big & Tall outlet?
They don't, so this year we had to have some brand new ones fashioned from pizza pans. They're going to be gilded in gold to match the gold buttons on my chest.
Snazzy.
And that of course will go well with my new hairdo and the really cool color of the cummerbund and tie, which you can see tomorrow night.
What'd you do to your hair?
Every year they give me the option of colors. This year, we needed something to go with the cummerbund and tie and the most appropriate color was chosen. Again that's a secret for tomorrow night.
Who the hell is this Will Shuster guy?
Ah, Will Shuster. The bane of my existence. He was one of the more famous of the Los Cinco Pintores painters who came to Santa Fe back in the early '20s. He'd only been here like three years when he decided to come up with the idea to burn me. Back then I was known as Old Man Groucher. That was '24, I believe. The name Zozobra was then attached to me in 1926 by E Dana Johnson and kinda stuck with me ever since. Will Shuster was partly responsible for Santa Fe becoming the art community that it became, so it is fitting that I am this large folk-art object that Santa Fe loves to scream 'Burn him!' at…And it's actually quite appropriate that I'm being interviewed here inside the Santa Fe Reporter offices on the site of the original burning.
We're pretty good at the pagan thing here at the Reporter, but what do you say to those people who condemn your burning as a hedonistic pagan ritual?
What's interesting about that is that the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe-which does me in every year-raises money for local non-profits and children. They give out scholarships [to area high schoolers] from the burning and they're building an endowment to fund these future scholarships. It's an amazing community event that brings this community together in ways that somehow transcend the reasons that we're a community steeped in Catholicism. Yet, Santa Fe is the art community where anything goes sometimes.
Do you ever see a cut of that money?
Sadly, no.
What's the most rewarding thing about dying a cruel, horrible death every year?
That we get to do it all over again next year.
Are you just misunderstood? I mean, all that moaning and groaning and gloom could just be a product of the social anxiety of having 20,000 people trying to incinerate you, right?
Yeah, that's true. But like the famous author Tony Hillerman said, the aspens wouldn't turn their amazing shades of yellow and orange and the snow wouldn't fly the way that it does if we didn't begin September and begin the Fall with the burning of Old Man Gloom.
Zozobra burns at dusk Thursday, Sept. 8, at Fort Marcy Field.
