“Someone else’s vision will never be as a good as your own vision of yourself. Live and die with it, because in the end it’s all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else.” Georgia O’Keeffe
Santa Fe was the first city I’ve explored on this trip. I had no intention of visiting it, but once I was there, I thought why not deviate from my plan of sticking to the wilderness and try exploring here too. It is a beautiful place, with a diversity of feels and a persistent pulse. Amid the bustle, I felt both a heaviness and lightness of spirit. While thankful for the freedom to explore or linger as I pleased, there is no loneliness quite like being alone in a crowd.
Optunia Coffee Shop - at opening
I felt frustrated to feel so much sadness, especially on a bright sunny day. So much has shifted for me these past few weeks. Sadness, unattached to personal tragedy or empathy for someone else, felt like a personal failure. Being sad felt like part of my old story – a state of being that with enough yoga and meditation one might be able to vanquish.
Stained glass shadows spilling onto the floor of the Cathedral of Saint Francis of Assisi
Perhaps that is why the welcome video at the Georgia O’Keeffe museum so moved me. It is 15-minute video of quotes from her life. “I think it’s so foolish for people to want to be happy,” she said as I sat down midway into the film,“Happy is momentary – you are happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.”
I’ll be honest, I’ve never much liked Georgia O’Keeffe before. Yet in Santa Fe, everything shifted.
More broadly, I don’t think I ever “got” modern abstract art before. In New York, it felt like a joyless game of learning the right names; and masochism, because the winners of the game had to display the soul deadening paintings in their homes. But I didn’t find O’Keeffe’s work deadening. I understood why bright colors would do this, but what was it about the compositions themselves?
In so many of these posts I’ve written about how the best conversations, words, and photographs are almost always the product of having first sat quietly with a subject for some time – unconstrained. That is what I saw in O’Keeffe’s work. A rejection of realism, which merely / mirrorly reflects. Instead, in many of her words she reveals lines and colors which could only have been seen after sitting with a thing for a very long time. In abstraction, by magnifying only certain lines, she strips away that which we all readily see, and instead points us to truths which have always already been there, but which we may never have seen. To me, this gives her images a pulsating vitality, even when the subject was desert bones.
Close-up from painting in Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. No copyright infringement intended.
Close-up from painting in Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. No copyright infringement intended.
I know that many men carry secret angst. I know that human beings are capable of atrocity. I know that consumerism and the capitalist order only came to be as the result of subtle (and blatant) inequities and hypocrisy. It takes no special eye to see depravity and put its shape on a canvas. I want art which reveals that which is true but unseen. I want art to fill me with passion (to live, to change, or feel in new ways). That is what I found in O’Keeffe. A woman who wandered long in the desert, and sat with stones, branches, bones, and cliff faces – a woman who sought to convey something elemental about the language of the desert, the rhythms of life, and the shape of death.
I felt inspired by O’Keeffe’s insistence on discovering and painting in her own way – even before others understood what she was saying. I also felt deeply connected to her. A feeling that has only grown since with each day I’ve lingered in New Mexico – running my hands over twisted branches, digging stones from out of the mud, scrambling up rocky ledges to find new angles on all that is below.
Twisted dead tree branches on the top of Kitchen Mesa at Ghost Ranch. Georgia O’Keeffe spent her summers at Ghost Ranch for many years.
She is right about happiness too, of course. I can cultivate gratitude. I can seek new clarity of vision. I can reflect in hoping to understand my feelings. But I will never be able to control the emergence of happiness, sorrow, or pain. The best I can do is learn to observe them and let them go, knowing they will come to visit me again at a time of their choosing. And amid it all – I can stay true to that which I love, to my personal quests, and pursue them doggedly, even if the whole world doesn’t yet understand what I see.
My time with O’Keeffe’s work began to give me a new sense of calm and confidence in my purpose — feelings that kept me company, even as I walked alone among the crowds of strangers.
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After leaving the main part of the city, I visited Whiskey & Clay, a small pottery gallery owned by Kimmy, a friend of Matt’s. She invited me to join her and her friends at concert that night at Meow Wolf, for a band called Rayland Baxter (I’d never heard of him before).
Original pottery at Whisky & Clay
What is Meow Wolf? It’s hard to know where to begin. After sending out my email last week, I got a lot of responses. In them, a few themes emerged. One was that multiple people encouraged me to experiment with psychedelics. I’m not there yet, but Meow Wolf may be a sober person’s best chance to experience a psychedelic state short of learning holotropic breathing. Beyond that – I still don’t know how to describe it. Situated in a 20,000 square foot converted bowling alley, it’s a series of connected spaces designed by experimental artists that you can explore – many have hidden passage ways, benches, and ladders connecting you to the another space. The first part of the experience makes you believe you are solving a mystery. The second half simply revels in the art, the colors, the contours, and the absurdity of it all. At every turn, I felt new waves of excitement, wonder, and delight. Pictures simply can’t capture what it was like.
The concert was held amid this beautiful insanity, in what must be one the most inventive stages in America. At first, I couldn’t find Kimmy and her friends. So I lingered in the back and observed the crowd and the band, as I’ve always done at concerts. But, that was the old me. Enough of that. I love music, and I love to move. The music was incredible. Slowly, I forgot about finding her, and I started to move into the center of the crowd and move to the beat.
Later, when I found Kimmy, she was not terribly warm or cold. After a moment of wounded pride, I shrugged, and moved away from her without looking back into the middle of the crowd. Closing my eyes, I lost myself in the beat again. Throughout the day so much had changed. Now within the crowd, I was both alone and not at all lonely. I didn’t talk to or connect with anyone at the concert after Kimmy - and I didn’t care at all - I felt entirely connected to the music - and I’ve rarely had more fun.
Rayland Baxter and his band warming up a few hours before the show
As if the universe wanted to test me one last time to ask - “Are you really happy exploring all alone?” - when I finally came home I had trouble sleeping because a couple in the room above me were singing, laughing (and making other noises of connection), until well past 2am when I finally fell asleep.
In the morning I saw the happy couple leaving. And who do you think it was? Of all the hotels in Santa Fe, and of all the rooms - I’m 99% sure it was the leader of the band from the night before himself. I literally burst out laughing. Oh serendipity – what surprises do you have in store for me today?