What A Life Is For (8)

What A Life Is For

Aug. 17, 2023 (day nine)- Taos to Santa Fe. My mom texted and asked if we were getting on each other’s nerves yet. I have deliberately omitted any such detail because, as anyone who has ever embarked on any kind of multi-day road trip knows, OF COURSE we are, and what happens on the road should stay there. But for the sake of the story, I’ll give you just a taste-I was riding shotgun as Sam was taking a turn at the wheel on the short trek to Santa Fe, and I may have made a few (way) too many comments about her driving so when we parked at the KOA, she stomped off and we didn’t see her for a half hour. When she finally appeared, she had secured herself a paper-plated meal,  announcing “Everyone’s on their own for dinner”. So I tried making a box of Zatarain’s red beans and rice in the low-wattage RV microwave which ended up taking an hour and a half and was still a little crunchy. So you can probably see where this is going….I got what I deserved.

Sam recovered much quicker than I did from all this, sitting down with Booker  and giving him tips on how to draw facial proportion by lantern light. Booker called this time “Arting and Farting” which he turned into a song by substituting lyrics into the structure of “The Distance” by Cake. I can’t lie, it was pretty catchy. We had to return the rental car by 10am the next morning, and we decided to split up the committee- Joe and Booker took the Jamboree to the Santa Fe version of Meow Wolf, an indescribably freaky-deaky art installation that is a must-see for the psychedelic art-minded, and even though I somewhat fit in that category, I had to decline for the sake of my over-saturated nervous system. I just could not have my mind blown one more time for at least 24 hours.

I decided to decompress with some good ol’ retail therapy, gift-shopping with the gals in the Santa Fe Plaza, which turned out to be like Taos on Human Growth Hormone. The ancient looking dark-wood and stucco market architecture went on for blocks, surrounding a historic mission church that looked like one could easily have a religious experience there regardless of your level or type of belief. Y’all….ART. WAS. EVERYWHERE. I had never seen so much color and hand-painted surfaces in my life, I felt like a Ken walking around in Native Barbie’s New Mexico dream house.

I somehow managed to keep my purchases to a minimum and after lunch, Sam and I brought the high vibe down real low with a moving visit to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. While most of her best known paintings are housed elsewhere, this institution focuses on telling the story of her life and evolution as an artist, with a guided, chronological audio narration (that you download onto an app on your phone). This heightened the directness of the experience so that standing in front of a painting, with an art historian’s (or sometimes Georgia’s) voice in your ears (or in my case, hearing aids), one feels invited into an intimate exploration of it with her. This trip comes at a time of great existential reflection for me, trying to reconcile deep regret about having been too afraid to follow my artful heart for most of my life and facing down the fear that time is running out to change this. And here I was, in a temple honoring the life of a woman who had devoted her entire life to her creative heart, still creating into her 80s, when macular degeneration took most of her eyesight, so she hired an assistant to help her see and she kept on going. I was moved to tears multiple times here, feeling exposed and summoned out by Georgia’s voice on the app, speaking to an interviewer but also seemingly asking me directly “If you see the world a certain way, and you have the desire to make art, then why not? I mean, what is a life for?” So, friends…that’s what these posts are, in case you were wondering. I reckon there’s no turning back now.