Only in Santa Fe

Every year I have a sort of tough job. I motivate myself to get on with it because somebody’s got to do it. For one week, each July I go to Santa Fe, the capitol of New Mexico, for nights of opera, chamber music, choral singing, and museum hopping. But that’s just the frosting on the cake. Because I work for an arts-oriented public radio station, KSJE-FM in Farmington, N. M., I get to interview the curators, musicians, singers, and theater techies who make the art happen. The fact that I’m dealing with superior minds doesn’t escape me when I talk to these people. It’s a “tough” job all right. I love every minute of it.

I love it for several reasons. First, I’m getting to be old enough to see trends. When I was a kid in art school in New York, I darned near got myself shot for suggesting that word and image could coexist in the same space. Racing out of the range of bullets—well okay derisive laughs that felt like bullets–made me keep my opinions to myself for the rest of my school career, and question my sanity for suggesting artistic ideas could blend. Of course I was too young to realize that in the 1950s, while I was playing with the first fashion dolls with high heels–Revlon Dolls that pre-dated Barbie by several years–grownup artists were busy separating themselves into little boxes. (Little Boxes on the Hillside–like the old song goes?) Painters went in one container. Composers popped into another. Journalists hid out far away from novelists.
I still haven’t figured out why this happened, and if anyone has any idea, I’d like to hear. Anyway by the time I was 19, words were words and pictures were pictures. Never the twain would meet. No more could a Debussy be influenced by a Renoir, as happened early in the 20th Century.

Since then, I’ve–thank goodness–seen change. Words and images live together in museums now, right on the same canvas sometimes, or in wonderful wall text beside a painting. Maybe Gertrude Stein was right. We live in circles–and circle around, not only on earth, but in our collective and individual minds, thoughts, and ideas. We begin in one spot, leave, and come back.

The second reason I love Santa Fe is the level of art going on there–well actually in the whole state. Some people tend to think of New Mexico as the wild west. Well, okay, it was for a time–from about 1870 to 1890. But even at its western wildest, New Mexico was connected to the rest of the world. From Santa Fe south, one could ride the El Camino Real all the way to Mexico City. The royal highway followed Indian trails existing for thousands of years previous to anyone on this side of the world hearing of the Spanish.

A few generations later, a busted wagon wheel prompted painter Bert Phillips to start the Taos Society of Artists, after he trained at the Acadamie Julienne in Paris. He, his classmates, and their followers painted Native American Pueblos, buttes and mesas, and cattlemen rounding up mustangs in the latest Cubist, Expressionist, Modernist, or Impressionist styles.
The Native Americans added their lines, colors, and forms to the mix. Pablita Velarde blended the sense of design she inherited from her native Santa Clara Pueblo with point perspective in the 1930s.
The Spanish brought in their Moorish influence, carved and painted saints, and filigree jewelry, then added tin work, snatching lard cans the U. S. Cavalry cast off, and making mirror frames, candle sticks, and whatever else they could think of.
Today the tradition passes through families.

As of 2007, New Mexico has artists who happen to be Indians, Hispanics, Germans, or–turtles, and who create things they love unrelated to their origins. New Mexico also has Indians, Hispanics, Germans, or–turtles who happen to be artists, and recreate the richness of their ethnic, racial, and cultural experiences, on canvas, in orchestra pits, and on stages.
The music is another whole story. Internationally-known artists and composers work at the Santa Fe Opera, and perform with the Santa Fe Desert Chorale and the Santa Fe Chamber Festival. All scale systems and theories are fair game, Native American to Chinese.

The diversity of expression creates an energy that radiates around the state. The contrasting ideas also forge public characters. That’s the final reason I love Santa Fe. As a writer, all I have to do is stroll downtown to the plaza that’s been around since 1610, and I’ll find someone who might eventually end up in a book. This summer, I discovered a tall man in faded jeans and tee shirt, with a bushy beard and thick gray hair, lounding on the sidewalk on San Francisco Street, the original narrow main drag that starts at the plaza, and in a sense, ends up in Mexico City, by hooking up with the Camino Real.

At the lounger’s feet sprawled a large, black, white, brown, and orange-flecked mutt with heavy fur. I have no idea what sort of canine he was, except to say he was big boned, massive, and probably a blend of several breeds, with no distinct features of any. He flopped, head on paws, watching the world from relaxed, brown eyes.
On his back, stretched a gorgeous, fluffy gray-and-white cat with a green, translucent, gaze that stared into mine. I stared right back, like I’d found the bottom of her soul through the luminicent globes of her eyes. I had the feeling she’d found the bottom of my spirit as well. In an instant, we checked each other out, and engaged in the cross-species communication of a gentle look.

On top of the cat, nestled a white rat. With nose a-wiggle, she surveyed the street from merry red-dot eyes, and seemed to be laughing at the whole situation, her round belly, all but bursting with babies, and shaking like Santa Claus’s.
Everybody on the sidewalk–including me–stopped dead in their tracks when they saw that combination. The fellow made a few bucks for his show.

I’m home from Santa Fe now, and back to work, but that image stays with me. It will end up in a book, if I live long enough, I’m sure. Personal encounters have led to most of the characters for my stories.
if you pick up one of my novels, ‘A Mouthful of Shell,’ or ‘Snap Me a Future,’ you’ll find folks I ran into at some point, in some fashion. Okay, I snipped and clipped them to make them fit my fiction–to drive my plot or set my mood–but way back when I first saw them, they were real–every one. I can describe the moment I met them.
They’re not really auto-biographical. My heroines, Betsy Craig in ‘A Mouthful of Shell’ lives in the mountains of Pennsylvania, which I never did, and Shelby McCoy in ‘Snap Me a Future’ got shot. I didn’t.

But there is some of me in both. They’re arts-oriented people. With me living in New Mexico, what else could they be? Everybody’s an artist here. Not always a good one, but New Mexicans do art the way people in New Orleans do jazz–for the joy of it.

And those artists who are professional, are competing in the second or third largest art market in the country–depending on who you talk to.

So there’s a lot of good material in my wanderings around this place west of Texas, east of Arizona, south of Colorado, and north of Mexico we call The Land of Enchantment, as well as New Mexico. I hope you’ll take some time to check out dlsijpress.com and enjoy ‘A Mouthful of Shell’ and ‘Snap Me a Future.’ I hope you’ll come to New Mexico. It’s a fun place to get in touch with your inner scribbler, paint-slosher, performer, or plain ol’ people watcher.