Into the heart of whiteness

We went through Wilmont Arizona as featured in some hippie song by hippies from the 1970’s and or 1960’s. I’m sure I don’t know. There we stopped to visit an artist who lives in a house built inside a garage. Picture a giant airplane hanger. Now put a 1970’s ranch style home inside that hanger.  Actually you don’t have to picture it because while I did not take a picture, I found one on the internet. There are probably sixteen pictures of your house that anyone could look up on the internet. I’ve been to my childhood home (virtually) in both Oklahoma and Florida — and have silently judged the decor of their current occupants. Anyhow, point of story, we went to visit the artist and he then took us to another artist’s house in an old department store that had been abandoned for 30 years until the city sold it to the artist for $2 on the condition he fix it up. This place was crazy. It’s called Snowdrift Art Space and you can look it up if you want to see pictures. We were given the friends and family tour and I felt weird about photographing someone’s home. I always do even though I’m usually dying to take pictures of people’s homes. Snowdrift is about 20,000 square feet of space and they have filled up every square inch with objet d’art. Even the basement, which is huge. I was mentally writing a horror film to shoot there but I found a much, much better location. More on that in a bit.

Next stop was 10,000 waves on the Northern edge of Santa Fe. When I was in my 20’s we always had a running gag about “Santa Fe ladies.” These were women of a certain age who wore flowing linen garments, turquoise jewelry, un-processed hair pulled back and were likely to tell you something about your chakras or your rising moon sign. Don’t get me wrong, I love a woman of a certain age who ages gracefully. There’s a lot to be said for Santa Fe ladies. It’s the one’s who are all that plus republican to boot who really get on my nerves. You know, you know the type — I breathe in a cleansing breath before I scream at the Latinx convenience store worker for not carrying my brand of organic tea. The new age variety of a Karen with the white to be angry. There were a few hither and yon. But the highlights of the hotel were first, the robot toilet in our room at 10,000 Waves.  See they’re going for this whole authentic Japanese experience there and I have to say it pretty much delivered. The only thing they didn’t have was a vending machine selling panties worn by school girls, which is apparently a thing in Japan, so don’t get mad at me for bringing it up. I mean I’m not going to write an angry email to the hotel/spa owners, I personally don’t condone such purchases because they seem boarder line pedophilic to me. No, the robot toilet, that’s the thing. More than the VERY HOT soaking tubs and dangerously hot saunas, I was most enamored of the toilet in our room that had a robotic lid that would raise and lower, bidet function and a built in ass warmer. The ass warmer, to be honest, is overkill and made me think of the toilet at my grandmother’s house because she was always, ALWAYS, on the toilet and when you did get a chance to go in there, if you sat on the toilet it was body temperature. So kind of disturbing and not really what I want from a hotel toilet — the ghost of my grandmother. Okay but the best things in Santa Fe, to me, were Site Santa Fe where we saw an amazing show by this artist Jeffrey Gibson. Not a name one would connect right away to indigenous peoples but he is a Native American artist working in a contemporary way with traditional elements of the Choctaw/Cherokee cultures. These sculptures are strands of aluminum fiber in various colors hanging from the ceiling in cube formations. As you walk around the piece the fibers align to create different colors and so the work changes depending on your vantage. The second piece that I really LOVED was a video called “She Never Dances Alone” that is kind of a Cherokee dance performance with music by “A Tribe Called Red” that kicks. The dance is totally captivating as well as his editing technique and kaleidoscope effect — with the videos being played over a grid of 9 screens. I’d upload a video I shot of the video but it exceeds the size limit. Then we went to see an exhibition of paintings by Will Bruno at the “Smoke the Moon Gallery.” STMG was hard to find because our google searches kept sending us to weed dispensaries. Eventually though we found the place in the Santa Fe arts neighborhood. I don’t know how a neighborhood of 200 galleries stays afloat but they do. I was slightly aghast by the preponderance of paintings of tigers and bears. What is it with all the tigers and bear paintings? Who buys this stuff? I guess the same could be asked of me since I love aggressively difficult art. We have one of Will Bruno’s paintings — it’s ridiculous. It’s of Whimpy from Popeye running in the desert. So you know. Whenever our family visits they’re always weirded out by our art collection.

We got insanely expensive chocolates from Ka Kawa (like $12 for six pieces). Yes, it was the best chocolate I’ve ever eaten. But was it worth it? I guess? Sure, yeah. Then we had a seven and a half hour drive to The Boulders in Arizona. I’m just going to come out and say it: Arizona kind of sucks. It’s like desert Florida. Okay,  that’s a rash judgement based on 24 hours in one tiny part of the state. But here’s why I think Arizona kind of sucks: the roads suck. There is pro Trump bullshit everywhere. Most of the women I’ve seen here are that kind of fake plastic face lady. All glossy and pinched and injected. Their husbands are gross and sloppy and look like they’re concealed carrying. The front desk guy looked at us and asked incredulously, “just one room for you two gentlemen?” Is that really shocking in 2022? Yes, one room for the faggy gay fags, please. Where we went for breakfast this morning they had on Newsmax and a table of BOOMERS was getting agitated. Their blood pressure rising with each Biden outrage carried breathlessly by the ‘news caster’ in between non-stop My Pillow commercials. Flattop Blowhard announced to his friends, “and you just know all those liberals believe every word they’re hearing from the January 6 commission.” Well, yes, I do tend to believe empirical evidence and I clearly remember all the details running up to 1/6 as reported at the time. Your guy’s a traitor who should be in prison for life. Anyhow, Flattop then protected the virtue of the white waitress after a Latinx delivery man dropped off a shipment of napkins. “Was he flirting with you!?” Flattop Blowhard, I guess was going to go out there and shoot the guy if he had dared to even think for a moment he had a shot with a “WHITE LADY.” Omg, this place sucks. I mean I live in a bubble, for sure, but even when I go to Florida I encounter less casual racism. There were “FUCK JOE BIDEN” signs and bumper stickers and all kinds of road side signs for the various republicans running for state and national office, each trying to out do each other in signaling their level of crazy. “STOP CRITICAL RACE THEORY!” Was one candidate’s big promise? There’s a candidate for governor and she has a picture of herself with Trump and the words “Trump Endorsed” which is as alarming a label as “POISON GAS!” Someone had spray painted orange blobs over Trump’s face which I thought was pretty good.

We went today to Arcosanti which is proof of what happens when you let hippies make important decisions. Arcosanti was an experiment in ecological urbanism and if executed correctly, would be my dream city. It’s kind of a mega-structure with complete environmental systems built in to be self sustaining (food, water, electricity) and to marginalize cars.  They’ve built like 10% of the structure in 50 years. The way they are financing construction is through the sale of bronze and ceramic bells made on site. Yes, they’re building a city one bell at a time. Now, don’t get me wrong, these are beautiful bells. Dean bought a half dozen of them as Christmas gifts to our Architecturally inclined friends. But come on, you’d have to sell 500,000,000 bells to get the money they need. Anyhow, the place looks like Tattooine from Star Wars but with more armpit hair visible and fewer robots. We then went to the Biltmore which is Frank Lloyd Wright’s hotel and it was fabulous. They’ve built tons of new additions but I have to imagine they’re using blueprints that were drawn up at the time the hotel was originally built. The new additions blend seamlessly with the original hotel — you’d be hard pressed to spot the difference except for the crisper lines in the formed concrete blocks and sharper edges to the metalwork painted details. It’s our last night in AZ then we’re back to LA in the morning. This has been a perfect vacation. The kind where you have a great time and you’re ready to go home at the end of it. Being around my fellow whites has made me more than ready to get back to LA.