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Rockies Rail Tour
(Note: Clicking on any image in this travelogue will bring up a full screen version of the image.)
Friday, July 7: Meow Wolf
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The plan for today was that I would go over to John's for lunch, and then visit "Meow Wolf". As I dressed in the morning, when transferring contents of my pockets of yesterday's pants to today's, I noticed to my dismay that the little change purse containing my fingerpicks was missing from my left front pocket, where it usually lives. Oh no! I did have spares with me for Saturday's house concert, but it usually takes a while for me to get used to a new set of picks. Where could they have gone? I certainly hadn't used them since I arrived. I wouldn't have a guitar to play until I had the use of the one I'd be borrowing for the gig. Rechecked all my pockets. Looked in the bathroom, in the hotel's Health Room where I did my morning run on the treadmill, went down and searched in the car. I knew they were in my pocket when I left home. Where could they have gone? I sat down and reviewed all my activities since I had arrived in Denver. Aha!! When I tried the flight simulator at the Air and Space Museum, they had me empty all my pockets before I entered the capsule to be certain that I wouldn't lose anything when I turned myself upside down. I called the Museum and asked for them to search the general area where I had emptied my pockets. Got a call back 15 minutes later. They found them. I drove back out to the Museum, retrieved the picks, and then headed out to John's. I need a new app for my phone that rings an alarm every time I put something down..
So what on earth is Meow Wolf? I'm still asking myself that question. I forgot who it was that recommended it to me, but the description intrigued me. Sort of an art museum. Sort of an encounter experience. After actually visiting the place, the closest I can come to describing it might be a giant Halloween fun house on acid. There exist, in fact, three such installations, located in Denver, Santa Fe, and Las Vegas. The name has no significance. In fact I read somewhere that it was chosen by picking two words at random from a dictionary. Whatever it is, it seems inordinately successful. One needs to buy tickets in advance and make reservations to avoid overcrowding.
John Licht wanted to come with me. So he bought the tickets, because they have a discount for Denver residents. So I drove over to his house, and we had some lunch and then he drove us there. We ran into traffic, and were late for our appointment time, but it didn't seem to make any difference. Photo 20 shows the building from the outside. It looked like a converted windowless 4-storey warehouse, decorated on the outside by R. Crumb. You had to pass through a metal detector to get in. We were led to an elevator, and whisked up to the 3rd floor. The doors opened and we stepped into another dimension.
It was a world that made no sense in any conventional fashion. There were sights and sounds (but, surprisingly, no smells) that had vague references to the world with which I'm familiar the way dream does, but were disconnected from reality. The audio that permeated the installation could not be called music of any genre. Maybe, perhaps, ambience. Mind you, nothing ever felt unpleasant, threatening, or dangerous; only vastly different. I've never done acid, but it felt vaguely like I would imagine an LSD or mushroom trip might feel. It was an experience that was not replicable through any sort of camera, but I present below a number of photos and videos I took to try to give you some inkling of the experience. Although they are numbered, their sequence is utterly irrelevant, and captions (with two exceptions) are unnecessary and fruitless.
Meow Wolf Convergence Station
Click any photo for a full-screen view
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It was really weird, but I liked it. Somehow I got the impression that John more tolerated it than enjoyed it. He assures me otherwise, but I think he was being polite. (Sorry John, if you're reading this.) We poked around the place for maybe an hour and a half or two, and then decided we'd had enough. My guess is that I might have spent more time there if I were by myself. I might have also would have liked to have done a little weed before I entered, in which case I would have had to spend enough time inside to have come down enough to drive away
We went back to John's house, where I took a short nap, after which he and his wife Joanne Rena fed me dinner. Jenny's flight was due in at 10:30, and I was planning on heading out to the cell phone lot to await her call that she had landed. Instead I got a call from her that her flight out of Hartford had been delayed in taking off, and consequently she had missed her connecting flight in Chicago. She didn't know when she would be arriving, but it would probably not be until sometime on Saturday. So I headed back to the hotel.
It had started to rain as I went to the car to drive back to the hotel. I turned the key to start the engine, and was presented with a warning message on the dash that the car was low on coolant, and I should stop the engine immediately and add coolant. So there in the dark and the rain, I had to figure out how to open the hood on a strange car, and locate the coolant reservoir. Of course the coolant reservoir was one of several such containers, all identified only by glyphs that are equally incomprehensible in all languages. I picked one that at least didn't look like it was for the brake fluid, and poured about a gallon of water into it. It must have been the right one, because the warning message went out, and the brakes continued to work properly.
