I'm still working to find some words to meet yesterday's experience and I think it will just be matter of time until this is possible. In the meantime, we visited Liberace's sparkling museum (and face) this morning and it brought some humor to what might have been another dismal morning in Vegas. From there, we visited the Hoover Dam, got stuck in an amazing dust storm, drove past the third largest solar project in the world (Nevada Solar One) and tumbled across the border into the high desert of California's mojave this evening.
As a whole, Nevada has most definitely stolen my heart and mind. It is such a complicated and beautiful place that I was pained to say goodbye today. A next visit is completely unknown from here, but the work and making-in-relation to this place feels as though it is truly just beginning. Las Vegas, on the other hand, isn't a place that I need to visit again soon- if ever. After three days of being subjected to its violent energy, pollution, artificial excess, cheapness, and culture of containment I was actually thrilled to drive away from it today.
As I continue to work through the madness that Wednesday's tour truly was, I sense a state of calm within myself that wasn't possible before going. It feels as though we crossed the apex of this trip with the tour of the Test Site. From here the trip can, and will be, about other things. But Wednesday's experience also feels as though it was a fundamental experience of crossing into another threshold of life-on-this-planet for me.
Baudrillard rises to meet the moment once again,
"The only question in this journey is: how far can we go in the extermination of meaning, how far can we go in the non-referential desert form without cracking up and, of course, still keep alive the esoteric charm of disappearance? A theoretical question here materialized in the objective conditions of a journey which is no longer a journey and therefore carries with it a fundamental rule: aim for the point of no return. This is the key. And the crucial moment is that brutal instant which reveals that the journey has no end, that there is no longer any reason for it to come to an end."
-America
As a whole, Nevada has most definitely stolen my heart and mind. It is such a complicated and beautiful place that I was pained to say goodbye today. A next visit is completely unknown from here, but the work and making-in-relation to this place feels as though it is truly just beginning. Las Vegas, on the other hand, isn't a place that I need to visit again soon- if ever. After three days of being subjected to its violent energy, pollution, artificial excess, cheapness, and culture of containment I was actually thrilled to drive away from it today.
As I continue to work through the madness that Wednesday's tour truly was, I sense a state of calm within myself that wasn't possible before going. It feels as though we crossed the apex of this trip with the tour of the Test Site. From here the trip can, and will be, about other things. But Wednesday's experience also feels as though it was a fundamental experience of crossing into another threshold of life-on-this-planet for me.
Baudrillard rises to meet the moment once again,
"The only question in this journey is: how far can we go in the extermination of meaning, how far can we go in the non-referential desert form without cracking up and, of course, still keep alive the esoteric charm of disappearance? A theoretical question here materialized in the objective conditions of a journey which is no longer a journey and therefore carries with it a fundamental rule: aim for the point of no return. This is the key. And the crucial moment is that brutal instant which reveals that the journey has no end, that there is no longer any reason for it to come to an end."
-America
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