solar culture (andrew)
solar culture, captured by miles
The Darwin Deez boomerang swoops east. Our path will reverse through the time zones, the temperate degrees, back into winter. In marathon drive mode again, we retraced California, picked up Miles in LA, and made a mad dash for Tucson. We were relieved to learn that Miles has also been digging on Kanye’s “Monster”, and (hopefully) will not find intolerable our frequent Kanye quote (“Whatever I wanna do, GOSH, it’s cool now”), Nicki Minaj quote (“My money’s so tall my body gotta climb iiiiiittttt”) and Jay-Z quote (“LOooove, I can’t get enough of it”).
How I adore the windmill desert on the path to Arizona. Like living in CGI animation. It’s a pity how cameras often so poorly capture a wide horizontal landscape.
I lost my film camera. After a restless night, I called Enterprise and it turned out that we’d left it in the rental car in Redding. They’re mailing the camera to my Aunt Peggy in Nashville. So this week, the task of capturing the beauty is relegated to Miles.
We find ourselves amidst the splendor of a new age shrine/venue in Tucson called Solar Culture. A soft spoken guru and his wife have spent years literally sculpting this building into their artistic vision. The walls are adorned with haunted stone masks he’s made, alongside paintings by his wife. One of the rooms he calls the goddess bath: murals, tiles, and tub. In the main room are works from over 150 local Tucson artists. There’s that pueblo flavor all around, turquoise and violet, coyotes, sunsets, desert ghosts, agave, cacti. We gulp up rice and a big pot of homemade yellow veggie curry. In the dark backyard, trains composed of countless cars, stacked two high, barrel past on the railroad more times than we can count. It’s an enchanted place. Like the spirit animal of Goodbye Blue Monday (a Brooklyn venue), I comment to Darwin. He tweets that.
This is the first night where Greg and I will split Darwin Deez guitar duties. In the tradition of Darwin recruiting friends who don’t know much about their instrument, I’ve played electric guitar on stage maybe once or twice in my life. Greg says this is the first time he’s seen me nervous. Wish me luck!