By Laura Gomez
HAVANA TIMES – Finding mechanisms to overcome anxiety and depression is a challenge in today’s Cuba. Marcia Ocaña discovered herself at the age of fifty building musical instruments to preserve her mental health.
What led you to choose this activity to alleviate your emotional instability?
Marcia Ocaña: I’ve always enjoyed creating. For years I experimented with sculpture and occasionally photography, drawing, and papier-mâché. When wood began to become scarce, I started to feel despondent, then crayons, charcoals, watercolors, and brushes became prohibitively expensive: it was either buy food or the essential materials for my creation. Anxiety was the extension of my inability to express myself. In Cuba, it’s necessary to find a hobby; unfortunately, there are more and more unbalanced people every day, not everyone can endure this imposed way of subsisting.
How did the creative process begin?
For a while, I was depressed, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think of any activity that could meet my need to express myself through my hands. I wandered around the house feeling lost. I didn’t bathe. When I went out, I was depressed by the looks on people’s faces, but I was also depressed by the elderly begging for alms. One night I heard the neighbor across the street strumming the strings of his guitar and then I knew. I would build musical instruments with recyclable materials.
What were your first steps in this discovery?
At that moment, I felt possessed by a flood of ideas. I imagined different instruments and listened to their sounds. The first one I visualized was the tambourine. I imagined that I could easily obtain the materials except for the piece that would make the indeterminate tone. A feeling of freedom overwhelmed me as I thought up possible designs. I replaced the usually wooden hoop with cardboard, which I happene
