Opting to avoid a red light, I turned left. Despite the seeming vistas of Santa Fe, there are inclines to be sure… and I wound up going up a fairly steady, steep one by turning. On the plus side, I came across a former rail line converted into a bike trail. It was a great paved experience, running alongside brush and dry river beds. There were however more than a few notices along the way, such as the added bonus “No Motor Vehicles” but also the disheartening warning of “Steep Inclines Ahead.”
It was a slow day, but I wasn’t aiming for any personal records. It was just a day to try and shake the cobwebs and get some mileage in. As is often the case with me, I thought I knew what I was doing. And so at the turnaround point I figured I would just come back the way I came… a stellar plan until you take an early turn *thinking* you’re at the right place. And inexplicably, the road off the bike trail was not a grid system… Santa Fe is apparently laid out like an octagon, not a grid. I therefore found myself inexplicably running back toward the road I had used as my turnaround point on the bike trail. Curious and curiouser… and then I had that sinking feeling of being lost in Santa Fe and forgetting to bring my phone with me to aid in GPS navigation. I eventually made a turn figuring I would wind up back on the original cross street I took… only to discover I had somehow re-routed myself to the road my hotel was on… just a mile and a half away when I thought I’d be intersecting it at half a mile out.
I mention all of this because our expectations inform our mindset and our experiences far more than perhaps we would like. Last night’s opera with Steve was fun but I had been most excited about the pitch of it as a Spaghetti Western Opera.
While it was true that it was an Italian sung opera set in the West, I guess in my head I was expecting more of a staging that embraced the spaghetti western imagery. I obviously wasn’t expecting gunfights, horses, and badly dubbed heavies. But once we arrived and the ushers were all dressed in Clint Eastwood-ian serapes, I guess I brought more of an anticipation for the staging than would prove to be the reality.
I posted to Facebook at intermission my belief that the opera needed more spaghetti. I stand behind that comment.
Like all audience members, I bring my own personal baggage, be it emotional, experiential or at times literal physical baggage. Eons ago I recall being 6 or 7 years old and going to see Starlight Express on Broadway. That morning my father bought a plasma globe thing at 47th Street Photo that he’d seen on “Newhart” and become obsessed with. We carried that plasma globe throughout the streets of New York and then somehow had to keep it amongst the cramped seats of the Gershwin Theater. That was literal baggage that has since become emotional baggage. But I digress. The point is we interact with works of art based on our own mindsets, experiences, and issues. Such prejudices, preconceived notions, and past experiences can enhance, muddy, misconstrue, or at times transcend the art.
I thought about this during the opera and my expectation for the Sergio Leone or Ennio Morricone seasonings on Puccini’s work. Obviously an opera written in 1910 wouldn’t have the works of the spaghetti westerns of the 1960s and 1970s in it but a director and production team can stage it with those flavorings to draw out insights or commentaries on the work as a whole. Purists might balk or might rave; neophyte philistines such as myself might do the same but for different reasons. Art is subjective and as such can be both viewed through a critical eye and a visceral, personal screen.
I thought about this as well during my run. Not that running is an art (though in watching some people blow past me, I suppose it can be…) but what I really found myself pondering was that maybe life as a whole becomes our own personal work of art.
There is nothing earth shattering or “new” about such thoughts. Hell, even Kermit the Frog posited that Life is like a movie; write your own ending.” This isn’t really a segue mind you but amidst the subtitled arias of “La Fanciulla del West” there’s a line that Sheriff Jack Rance has:
What is death? A kick in the dark and good night!
This too had me pondering life’s mysteries, life’s meaning, and perhaps what it means at the very end. There’s my oft-considered by others notion then that in life, our personal baggage informs and reflects and alters our lives. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. We can be so sure of our life’s choices, as I was on the morning run as I cut back off the bike trail, only to realize later we’ve made a wrong turn. And in correcting that turn, we take another, we make another decision, and though we’re sure it will lead us back to a particular place, it takes us somewhere else entirely. Eventually we wind up where we are meant to be. Maybe a little longer, maybe a little farther than we had thought, but we get there. Maybe it’s some place we never even realized we should be. But we get there.
Heady thoughts and perhaps not that insightful. But something one ponders on the road, be it running, seeing an opera or four, or just traveling through this thing called life. And, yes, it might all be rationalizations for getting lost. But sometimes the best things happen when one is lost – a new discovery, a new challenge, a new reservoir of strength and courage to press on.
In an irrational world that often makes no sense, rationalization is a necessary coping mechanism for sanity.
It also helps so you don’t freak out when you have no idea where you are in New Mexico, have no phone, no motorcar, not a single luxury save one’s own two feet and a vague notion of which way to go. Scientists and explorers have made huge discoveries with less… and all I wanted to do was to find my way back to the King’s Rest Court Inn on Cerrillos Road.
Plus, the added mileage this morning meant I could scarf down this reportedly “reasonably sized” lunch entrée at La Choza:
Tonight: More Opera, More Munchies. Tomorrow: More Mileage!