Keith: Rebuilding (first draft)

Keith

“cooking soup with stale words and fresh meanings; it tastes so good.”

I also lost a very good friend over the weekend, Keith of “Dia and Keith” who we often went to dances all over the state with (you can check out my facebook page about it). Very tragic; sudden death and will leave a huge hole in our lives, and, of course, Dia’s.  I had two bizarre and related things happen over the weekend; I got to the show down at Highlands and was walking in the street and saw the guy who set the show up and he said that someone had knocked over my “fragile culture waltz” piece (that was in the EXEX show) and knocked the dancers off and they broke! and he didn’t know quite what to do so I said I would take care of it (the reception was, literally, a few minutes from then and get it back on the piece.  The odd thing is that it broke right above where the hands are joined for the two dancers (two arms) and a leg broke off of the man.  After Keith died I could not avoid the fact that their dancing life together was gone and shattered, that their lives had in fact proved to be fragile and that Keith had also had a damaged leg a week ago!  Then, to top that off; I am not sure exactly when he died up at the ski basin (on the mountain overlooking both Santa Fe and Las Vegas), but at about that time I was setting up all of my musical equipment and had just put my book of lyrics onto a music stand and had bungied it down pretty well, when, all of a sudden, a microblast of air hit the stand and completely yanked out dozens of pages of my book and cast them to the street and against the screen wall nearby.  I got them all back, but that wind was no ordinary wind, like the butterfly who flapped his wings, sort of thing.......amazing life we lead, even if these are just coincidences, they send shivers up my spine as I contemplate the tightness of our lives, thoughts and images and experiences.

North, south, east , west

Rebuilding

‘Yea, we used to have family picnics over here, cause we lived up north past Silver City, raising livestock and scratching out a living, getting beat up because we were white, but that was ok; its just the way it was;  we would get on  the boulder, run up to the brink, plant our feet, throw open our arms for that last balance, and make a little screech, , Erhh!,grinning,  like we put on the brakes just in time.’ So Keith and I did it a half century later, like those giddy boys he described, grinning from ear to ear, scampering around in childish ecstacy.  No more little cowboy shirts , boots and hat; traded in for a cool panama, some shorts and a pair of sandals; boots are for dancing only; for this re-invented cowboy who knew that the rancher wore the simple hat; had nothing to prove.  But boyish  fun is universal and will not be stopped.  So my brother Keith was up on the slopes of the Sangre de Cristos, reinventing himself again as a retired man skiing and became a part of the mountain.  Now, at the time I was in Las Vegas pouring cast iron and playing music for us, then going over and pouring metal; the windy spirit of profound change came and his spirit roared off the mountain and became a microburst that blew my book of lyrics and the bungee that held it down and cast the pages everywhere;  re-shuffled the deck and I realized the lyrics were gone that Saturday; the music died as fate turned the page on us; no cheat sheet; gotta persevere beyond that microburst.  And the cast iron sculpture entitled Fragile Culture Waltz in the art gallery nearby was crashed to the floor earlier; breaking the clasped hands of the dancing couple above their wrists;  we rushed to a hardware store and got some epoxy and I managed to glue them together before the big reception.  And his broken  leg was repaired too.  We all know that a glue job cannot really replace the solid cast iron that is created by shattering old radiators and such, melting them down (with some old man singing faked lyrics to old Leadbelly  bues) and casting them into a mold.  Yes,  the glue cracks show, but it seemed to be the right thing to do; re-make somehow; fake it till we re-make it.   I learned about Keith’s death at 11 that night and I was unable to have a reaction; my feelings were locked up tight and it was disturbing to be like that; I realized I would have to re-invent my  locked emotions  and accept the truth somehow; the fun we love just died.  I broke down sobbing the next morning as I watched a clip of him letting er rip to Rosie Ledet and the Zydeco Playboys down south last year.  I thought about how how we four, like the main characters in a compass rose, travelled all about in that Cadillac, having so much fun for so many years, arriving, Keith parking, then polishing the floors, thinking; is it really ok to have this much fun; it’s not a sin?  Being with Dia and Keith was so much fun!  I remember Keith coming twice to take my odd painted  assortment of plywoods and particle boards and help piece them together onto shimmed up rough sawn one-by-six cull  wood, destined for a Pecos woodpile; $1 a board, screwing them down in the hot sun, Keith smiling and movin boards like he was at his best friend’s  birthday party and there to have a good time.   He was reliving his past as a lumberjack  and  also knew there was a dance at the end of this or-deal and that a floor with bounce and some smoothness  was a good thing.  I hope we find ways to pick up the shattered pieces, re-melt them, perhaps use spit and bubble gum for a while, sweat in the hot sun, pick up the lyrics that were cast onto the street and get back up on our horses or cadillacs and ride like the wind towards our own brinks, with our own grins beneath our own cool hats; not sinning again as we reconstruct  our new adventures, in peace. I want to trust that a sunset is the promise of a sunrise next day, somehow. 

 

As a final note,  we saw Dia and Keith last Thursday; we were just getting ready to leave ‘cause Belle was getting tired and in walked Keith and Dia and they sat down with us and we stayed and danced and talked till the Buffalo Nickel stopped playing.  We shared the same sort of time that was now common for us; just being friends and wanting to be there with each other.  Some profound talk was exchanged about how much Keith appreciated having Dia to “keep him  along a good life path”, for instance.  It was special and they invited us to go the next night, too, for Bill Hearne, but I was super busy that night and we opted out, sadly.  What I really wanted to say was that I was telling someone a few days ago that I go down to the draw, the creek bed whenever I am getting ready to do something important or I need guidance….and I am never let down by the experience.  This morning I walked all the way to above the falls, looking for signs of water in this drought.  I noticed that the watercress patch that I had planted near the creek, in a spring 20 years ago was gone; finito; no signs of green, no trickles of water.  I thought about what I should do next; go back to Chimayo and get another bunch after the drought breaks, just forget it and go on with my life, what.  I don’t have the answer.  The other thing that occurred to me because of all the rocks down there, that there are different kinds of rocks, some that you could carve a cool basin out of with the right tools and some that we call huecos; they are natural bowls that catch water and share freely with the animals and humans after the rains; they are not the kind of thing you can just  say, “I think I will go find a hueco today”, like saying  “I will go find a metate today”.  Well Keith was like a  creekbed hueco; naturally sculpted, generous and beautiful and very hard to find and you are always amazed and glad when you do see one, because you are in the presence of greatness.    As one other final note, I wanted to mention that Keith pointed out a very cool framed quote on the way to the bathroom of one of their favorite restaurants in Silver City the last time we were there.  Of course we were treated like royalty once they saw Keith and Dia but what he pointed out was the piece on the wall that said,              thanks

Waltzing with Rattlesnakes; Chickens

 

 

I really don’t like Chickens that much and have avoided raising them for all these years, partly because I got caught trying to steal eggs as a (hungry,  young) boy and got fooled by the glass egg, too.  It left a bad taste in my mouth, but I moved on with my life and eventually raised some turkeys, ducks, pheasants and, of course, a rabbit or two.  My neighbor across the tracks, whose name rhymes roughly with hen, well … he was sitting there with Leroy and Leroy asked if there were any (wild) turkeys around this area.  Just then one of my wandering turkeys, the gimpy one, almost full grown and fond of crossing over  to the ‘other side of the tracks’ (don’t ask me why);  to the neighbors and harassing their dogs, limped around the corner, in full view.  “Well, yes, and there is one right now!” said Ben with a twinkle in his eye.  Now we also had a dog and Ben had chickens and the chickens got killed by a dog and I was telling him that my dog didn’t kill chickens and he said, “then what is that pin feather hanging off the corner of your dog’s mouth?”, to which I had no defense, but still thought, silently, that my dog was not guilty, but in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I could go on, but the real point I want to get at is that chickens like to sit in trucks as the beloved pets of crane truck operators in ‘the city different’ area, because this old guy, not Roger Lamoreux of crane fame in these parts, that I hired to lift vigas for my brother in law, Andrew Lovato (whose wife kept doves  flying around the house);  had one he travelled everywhere with, sitting in the passenger seat and I got the definite impression that they were friends for life.  So consult your neighbors to find out if they want any chicken stories to tell before you go out and get one.  ….and don’t steal eggs!!

really funny "don't judge too quickly" commercials

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QOixDP-SdKw#!

SKETCH OF AN ART SALE

Sketch of an Art Sale

This particular piece of art has such depth and disaster that it bears a little more scrutiny as it gains even more character, which means that it packs in more tension and fascinating flaws as well as the marks of love and acceptance .  The moment  I laid eyes on him, I saw a big disaster and  a touching story of survival as he was in a field up in Chimayo and I had just bought him for $150 and took a trailer up there to bring him to Adventure Trails Ranch, the name I had snagged from Laina, my grandmother, on her deathbed; the name of a children’s magazine she published and mostly illustrated back in the late 30s and 40s, based in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, a real cow town back then  and ‘ not fit for a widow with 5 young children’, the local realtors said as they refused to show her any property so she ‘marched’ out and found a place to buy by herself, a cabin by a tiny creek in a small valley,  later moving out of there and buying  some more contiguous land nearby,  up higher  with a view and an old homestead-type log cabin and another larger stream with little speckled trout in it, that tasted really good.  She taught me how to ‘clean’ them by taking a knife and stabbing through the end of their intestinal track and cutting their soft white bellies up the the gills, cutting the gills just right to grab the whole mess and drag out the guts and all and then cook them by coating them in oil, then dragging them around some corn meal and then frying them in butter.  You could catch them with a hook and a worm grabbed from the super black soil near the creek or even a safety pin and a crooked little root would do to get one.  I was with her many years later, in her sky blue International Scout, down in La Jara,  as she cried when she had to sell all what was left of her herd of horses to a Ute Indian guy with a thin pocketbook for a  few hundred dollars.  I had never seen her cry before, really, as she was pretty tough, but I had to convince her  that the era had  ended and it was time (actually way past time…..).  I loved looking at the horses and I liked riding them, but in my world it was mostly just work; breaking the ice on the water trough, feeding them, moving them, seeing their various tragedies unfold, so when I had a young family I got the usual pressure to ‘get a horse’ and so I finally said that I was not interested in a horse but might consider a donkey.  Here in Chimayo was Benjamin ( who came to be called BJ) and he was injured all over his body from kicks and bites from the  other horses in the field with him.  It almost killed us and him to get him loaded in the trailer but we finally got him home, where he stayed for the next 20 or so years, under my (sometime dubious) care and becoming a huge part of my life and consciousness. 

BJ was a mammoth burro, which means he was huge for a donkey.  I rode him and packed him and, eventually found him a few companions, like Pinta the paint pony who I found by advertising to board  ‘an old nag’ to keep him company, then Candy the miniature horse and then Isabella, a normal sized burro.  BJ was loaded with personality and every day was an adventure out here on the ranch and all of the neighbors knew him;  probably better than they really wanted to.  Despite his basically kind nature, he was real smart and always a hand full and loved to escape and rediscover the neighbor’s dog food, loved to chase dogs, loved to eat.  He looked pregnant much of the time, but was strong and fast and when the neighbors got together to take a group ride, he (we) always ran up to the front and stayed there, much to the chagrin of my fellow riders on their handsome steeds.  A donkey is the sort of creature that, if you are not familiar with their looks, you , like me, are startled by their features;  you are expecting to see a horse but run smack up against the large head, the  stiff whiskers and scruffy mane, the grey color, the big eyes and massive ears, the small hooves and the scraggly and blunt instrument of their tails.  Looking into their eyes is like looking into eternity and pondering the meaning of it all. 

 

I did ‘controlled grazing’ with him for many years, working the ½ mile of Galisteo Creek bed, up and down and alternating the various fields I had fenced off and tying him to a long chain and rope each day and moving that around all summer to be sure he got food and the land was tended.  It was an extraordinary learning experience for me as each day had some sort of tangle, drama, time stretching event.  I often was trying to get to work in a hurry and was frustrated because as soon as I got his lead rope on and out the gate, then he would lurch here and there with his utterly massive neck and start grazing on the grass and weeds and trees and whatever else he fancied in the moment.   I fought him for years and poked him with branches and sticks and prodded him with whatever I could till we finally got to where we were going and I tied him up.  One day, ‘decades’  into this routine I decided to try something different; I threw the utterly soft braided lead rope across his back and headed for where I was wanting to go.  This was an experiment that occurred to me.  He kept eating away like he was want to do, but then, as I rounded the corner out of sight he, all of a sudden, would run towards me and stop right where I was.  Then I would stop where I wanted and he ran up and held his head high and I attached the hasp and walked away.  This was stunning and wonderful!  All of those years might have led to this mutual decision and solution that probably troubled him too.  I decided to do a piece of art around him and this new ‘string theory’ and so I threw the (now magic) rope on his shoulders while he was eating out there and took a simple crude digital shot, then I carved the scene into a large sand mold to be a heavy bas relief piece in cast iron, the iron pour with the Iron Tribe down at Highlands at the foundry where I had been learning the skills to do this kind of work.  The iron pours are wild events (rodeos)  in some ways and lots of people making decisions and trying to pour lots of molds and avoid getting hurt.  It is colorful with the molten iron and the sparks and the heat  and the ladles being carried around by two people and a director to help coordinate the pour.  I had carefully leveled my piece and was satisfied with the setup, but, to my horror, at the end of the pour I saw some students lugging the large mold to a different place closer to the cupola furnace and setting it down roughly and unleveled and I saw it crack in a few places, and I tried to level it quickly by eye as the ladle was headed my way and I banked it some with sand and they started to pour and the cracks were channeling the molten metal away and onto the sand and then they ran out of iron (which is a big no no) and came back as soon as they could to pour the rest and I was mortified by then and traumatized and it poured to the top and maybe the cold joint would hold and then I was dragging it to the loading dock still hotter than hell and someone decided to spray it with the hose (another thing that I would consider an insult) and I was pissed and I got it home and cleaned it up and noticed it had these beautiful color changes from the water spray and the cracks made it all the more ancient and interesting and I sold it not long afterwards, but not before I made a rubber mold. 

I got interested  in glass casting and so I decided to make a glass piece using that mold, so I made a plaster mold and I, at the end of the process before the kiln, used a little piece of refractory mortar to seal up a small imperfection in the  mold and dam off a potential glass flow.  How was I to know that that tiny piece of different material would, at the very end, slightly ‘catch’ the glass and set up the conditions for a crack, but it did.  Later I went up to Montana to an iron pour and made a complicated mold for a frame for this piece and had a series of similar disasters then, too, that creating interesting cracks and wabi sabi features to deal with as I created the whole piece.  The crack became larger and then a full split, and I decided, at last, to do something interesting with the piece and the crack and put a magnetic strip in the void and then carefully placed old wire brush bristles into that area and then I sprinkled iron from the creek bed on the magnet to create an affect that simulated that first glance at a burro and those whiskers and characterized the whole experience of being with this creature.

The experience of having to put my donkey down some years ago was extraordinary, also and bears repeating as it fits into this scenario and this codification of the clumsy, brutal and touching life event of raising a mammoth donkey.  He became incapacitated from years of fighting hoof problems that began with being overfed, probably and he had foundered many years earlier and it caught up with him and me, finally.  He could not get up for weeks and I took my front bucket and strapped it to him and raised him up and he could not hold himself up and I realized it was over.  Now I do not like talking about these things lightly, and it was, like with my grandmother, a rare event that I cry, but I did and said farewell and took my 22 rifle out to kill it (which is was all the yahoos I know had talked about doing in these cases….and I believed them…which I don’t anymore) and I shot him between the eyes and up) and he bolted upright and stood, dazed.  I thought my gun had jammed and I was desperately trying to  shoot him again to make him drop dead.  I managed to get another bullet or two in him and he was still standing and began to walk.  I ran into the shop and found my hunting rifle and by then he had walked around the bulldozer (there to bury him) and was leaning on it looking bluntly ( and with love I might add) at me.  I dropped him instantly with the big gun and buried him right there.  I have learned over the years that euthanizing and death has its own poetry and the stories are often profound and important, which is why I am writing this piece.

You would think that this story was over now; the high drama finished and the beauty of imperfectness well described, but there is more, in my mind.  I put this piece of glass art in a gallery on Canyon Road, the last gallery on the right, and is has been outside for a full winter and done quite well that way.  I put a good light behind it so that the greens and blues and clear glass show up nicely and it has the feeling of just what it should; a timeless description celebrating  imperfection and beauty and life and death and timelessness in a real genuine way.  A woman walked into the gallery and bought it the other day and she put a deposit on it to hold it so that  after her surgery in a few days she could have me come and hang it in her home.  I was, of course, elated.  A week passed and I heard that the surgery went well and she was doing well and had mentioned being excited about getting her piece to her house.  I was flattered and glad to know she was doing well and conscious of her acquisition.  A few more weeks passed and I got a message from the gallery that her brother had called and said that she would probably not last another month and that he wanted the deposit back.  I was sad, but , somehow, not surprised by all this as this is what I was talking about all along.  The artist, the subject, the art and the buyer were ensnarled in the same cosmic drama from beginning to end; no question about it.  I wish I could have talked to her to see what she saw and compare notes, as she may be what we artists are always hoping for; an informed observer.   I often think about the donkey out there on a brutally cold winter’s night in the ice, mud and snow and the open sky and stars above them, and wonder what they are thinking and how they can possibly survive with such thin ankles…….

 

       Thor Sigstedt,  November 30, 2012    Adventure Trails Ranch,  Spirit Valley