A Change in the Air

I was born in La Junta, Colorado. My family later moved to California, but Colorado stayed with me.

One of my earliest memories is from around four years old. I remember looking through a window, watching clouds move across the sky. They seemed alive to me — shifting, gathering, disappearing, becoming something else.

I also remember the force of thunderstorms.

A clap of lightning once shook the house and left behind a deafening boom. Then came hail — ice rocks from the heavens. Snow made less of an impact on me, except for the way it changed sound. It quieted the air in a way that felt almost loud.

That kind of weather leaves an impression.

I still have family in Colorado, so I return from time to time. What draws me back is not only memory, but the quality of the air, the sudden shift in light, and the way thunder can move across the sky and make the ground feel alive.

New Mexico holds another kind of pull.

Some of our ancestors were from places there — Questa, Abiquiú, Santa Fe. I do not experience New Mexico only as landscape. I feel it as part of a larger family geography, even when I do not fully know how to name it.

There is a kind of openness there that makes weather visible. The sky does not feel like background. It feels active.

For years we have tried, unsuccessfully so far, to make a one-night reservation at Walter De Maria’s The Lightning Field. I think the pull has to do with more than seeing an artwork. It has to do with wanting to stand inside that kind of charged space — to feel the weather, the land, and the body answering one another.

That kind of power stays with me.

Not spectacle, exactly.

Presence.

The kind that changes the air around it.

I think that is what I want from art too — from the work of others and from my own.

To be moved before I fully understand why.

Something felt before it is explained.