Road to New Mexico
…and a photo I made in Michigan, as well as ramblings that actually have little to do with New Mexico and more to do with changing vehicles.
I learned yesterday that my 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe has finally bit the dust after being driven 230,000+ miles. (Only the last 160,000 miles were put on the car by me.) The timing chain broke while I was driving it to work one morning, damaging the engine beyond affordable repair.
I was never really attached to this car except for in one way. The name of the model shares the name of the a place I have wanted to visit for many years. It’s the only must-see destination currently on my bucket list of places I would love to visit. I never actually made such a list, but if I were to do so, Santa Fe would be at the top of the “places to travel to before I die” list.
Santa Fe, New Mexico is where Georgia O’Keeffe lived out the final years of her life. Because she is my favorite painter (and just a favorite person/artist in general), and because I always admire her home whenever I see pictures of it, I’ve wanted to take a sort of pilgrimage type trip there.
Right now, I only travel there vicariously… through the many books I have acquired about Georgia O’Keeffe and her New Mexico home.
The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is also in Santa Fe, so I would have an opportunity to see some of her works (paintings, drawings and photography) that I’ve never seen if ever I were to check that destination off my bucket list. The Art Institute here in Chicago, as well as the Milwaukee Art Museum, has some of her paintings on permanent display. But these are only a small fraction of her work, so it would be wonderful to view a much broader scale of it by visiting her most recent home.
O’Keeffe was born in Wisconsin—the state I work a full-time job in. But when one thinks of her and her vibrant paintings, they are likely picturing her New Mexico life. I know I do.
All of that to say that I once envisioned taking my road trip to Santa Fe in my trusty Santa Fe. It was a dream of mine to do this for my fiftieth birthday, which has since come and gone as of three and a half years ago.
That never panned out, so while I won’t be able to drive to my dream destination in a set of wheels with the same name (because I now drive a Tucson), I still very much hope to venture out on a road-trip to New Mexico to see O’Keeffe’s Santa Fe home one day.
The above photo popped up in my Apple Photos app as a memory today. I made it with my Nikon D800 camera body and attached 50mm lens during a camping trip in Michigan at the Warren Dunes.
Michigan is a long way from new Mexico, so it might seem strange for me to be using my Warren Dunes photograph. The reason I did is because whenever I see this photo, I think of New Mexico—even of Georgia O’Keeffe. She was fascinated not just by flowers (which her body of work is known for), but other things in nature like trees, rocks, shells and clouds and even remnants in her arid New Mexico surroundings, like animal skulls and bones, which she often included in her work. And sometimes she painted skies that look similar to the sky in this photo, so it always makes me think of her sky paintings done in that vein.
To me, my photo—or rather, the dune I was standing on when I made the photo—has that very southwest vibe to it, even though it is a view of a place located here in the Midwest. So having it show up right after receiving the news about my car seemed oddly coincidental.
While Santa Fe the car has died, my dream of visiting Santa Fe the place has not. Seeing this photo today felt like a tiny-but-significant reminder and sort of a life lesson for myself or for anyone, really—one that reminds us that we can continue dreaming of the things we most want for our lives even when the vehicle we thought would get us there is no longer available. There is more than one vehicle, just as there are more roads than one to get us where we want to go.
That sounds very cliche, I know. But it’s actually a theme that’s been sort of following me around lately. And if I’ve learned one thing as I get older, it’s to pay attention to the themes that seem to follow me. When this happens, I think of it as, “Something must be trying to get my attention… there’s something I’m meant to know or re-remember.”
People do become attached to their cars. And quite honestly, saying goodbye to that Santa Fe does sort of feel like the end of an era. Superficially, I can say it was my trusty companion while I made thousands of photographs on the sides of many roads through the years. If you ever drove past an olive-greenish 2007 Santa Fe that looked like it was out of gas on the side of the road somewhere, it was probably mine, and it probably had plenty of fuel, and I was likely only about a yard away from it, shooting some spectacular clouds or the silhouette of a beautiful tree or the sun rising behind a thick sheet of fog.
Less superficially, that car was with me through a lot. It took me places I both had to and wanted to go. It even took me to some places I didn’t want to go, but most of those places fall under the “had to” category.
And yet… it was also just a vehicle—nothing more than the means to a Point-A-to-Point-B end. And life isn’t only about points A or B or the journey in between. It’s also about what is beyond… what’s outside of the things our minds trap us into thinking.
wrote a most beautiful essay and poem on that yesterday… well worth reading if you have a couple of minutes.My vehicle died. But the dream I have did not. I’ll still get to New Mexico one way or another if that is what is to be. Obviously not in the timing my mind had planned on, nor via the vehicle I imagined I’d arrive there in.
Isn’t that just like life?
As I was wrapping up writing this essay, a quote by C. S. Lewis came across my Notes feed. It seemed rather apropos…
“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
See what I mean about a theme that seems to be following me?
I left something else behind today. Or rather, I decided to choose a different vehicle. I’d been writing letters to someone using my phone (in the Notes app)… letters I never actually sent. I typed the last of those letters today, deciding to start handwriting them in a journal instead. Same goal. Different vehicle. In this case, it is my phone I’m trying to leave behind… or be less tethered to.
I want my mental landscape to look more like the photo above and less like the bustling metropolis this electronic device I now hold sometimes feels like.
Don’t get me wrong. My smartphone has afforded me some truly wonderful things, some of which I have given examples of above… beautiful writing, thought-provoking quotes, gorgeous imagery. (There are so many creative and interesting photographers here on Substack!)
Via a couple of Instagram pages I follow and my classical music apps, my phone has brought me to some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever discovered. (You can scroll through my notes page here to find some examples of what I’ve shared.)
But I’m also craving a life that’s more Santa Fe than Information Highway (a road that truly never ends). Information is good. But I’ve been witnessing the example of others (whom I greatly respect) who have opted out/off of this highway.
Mine’s not a clean break. I’m not throwing my phone in the river after I publish this essay as I’ve been known at times to threaten doing. There is too much artistic beauty I can access through my phone to make that drastic of a move. But I want to focus more on the beauty of nature and even of things that cannot be witnessed or seen with our eyes… things (as Helen Keller once stated) that can only be felt with our hearts.
I think we can use both our hearts and our eyes to look at things online… to see things. But I want to start looking at more things offline again.
Despite what many of us tend not to think about (or what we forget to remember), there are still libraries around. There are still museums and concert halls. There are still stores that sell musical instruments and sheet music. There are likely at least one or two empty journals or sketchbooks somewhere in our homes. And even if not, those are readily available at local craft stores that still exist. There are walking paths everywhere. And for many of us, patches of earth in which we can plant something and watch it grow.
As for myself, I have a very large stack of books calling my name. One arrived just yesterday, and as I love knowing more about a person by reading the letters he or she writes, I’m looking very forward to reading Tolkien’s letters in this one…
But it’s just going to sit there on the stack, growing envious of my phone, if I don’t make a change.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I’m taking cues from my Santa Fe. But instead of having to let go (because I drove it into the ground), I choose to loosen my grip on the ways I’ve been using my large-screen smartphone. I’m still going to try reaching the same goals (one of which may at times be not moving at all and just sitting still), but I’m going take a different vehicle to get there.
2025 seems like the year that everyone started talking about cutting back on screen time or ditching their screens, apps and social media altogether. I saw a great surge of this theme here on Substack as the year began. I even witnessed my favorite Substack writer,
1, take a significant step away from his craft by choosing an indefinite break (or hiatus) from his newsletter presence. His decision is one of the inspiring examples I referred to above.When I started to notice all this talk of changing up the way we do art and the way we spend our time—more analog, less digital, more printed and less screen-viewed, more handwritten and less key-pad typed, more creating, less consuming, less scrolling, more doing, less watching others do all the doing, less feeling like we need to do anything at all—I couldn’t help but think of a quote from the documentary film I watched a few years ago. The film it’s from is called /the social dilemma_.
Here is the quote that, if I remember correctly, the film ended with:
“Do it. Get out of the system. Yeah, delete. Get off the stupid stuff. The world's beautiful. Look. Look , it's great out there.”
Ironically, I posted the quote along with some thoughts about it on my Instagram page and then proceeded to spend a significant amount of time in the app over the next few years. Nowadays, when I open Instagram, I rarely post my own work, and I spend more time scrolling through the infinite feed of others’ work, including “suggested” posts from users I don’t even follow (not to mention ads I never asked to see). In my defense, most of what I do share is photography I made while spending time in nature. But there’s still an unhealthy balance… or rather, imbalance.
As I said, I’m not walking clean away from everything I have access to via my phone. Some of the books in my to-read stack were books recommended to me by people right here on Substack.
Some of the music I listen to when I go running is music I discovered by others posting videos of their favorite songs or setting their Instagram reels to music they love or the music recommended by Apples’s classical music app on my phone.
I’ve bought art to frame and hang in my home by artists I discovered and who sell their work online.
So there’s a measure of value in what the digital world offers. Each person simply has to weigh how much and how to spend their currency of time and attention.
The trifecta that is internet, smart devices and social media apps isn’t the devil. But I’m old enough to know that there was a time when we lived without these things. And I’m aware enough to know that if I don’t live the example of less time devoted to that trifecta and more time to all the things we used to do more of—seeing plays, playing board games, hiking, meeting for coffee, painting, hosting dinner parties, reading books, gardening, calling our mothers, cooking, volunteering, meditating, singing, writing, just to name a few of the countless other things we could be doing in place of what we do with our devices—then I can’t expect my thirteen-year-old son to get “out of the system” either.
Here’s the tricky part (for me, and so I imagine for others too):
We live in a new era where many of us still do at least some of the pre-internet things I listed above, but also one where it’s almost expected that we share those things with the rest of the viewing world. It’s easy for me, as a photographer who practices my craft for just creative outlet (as opposed to a profession), to fall into the trap of this line of thinking: Well, I have to show someone (or as many others as possible) my photography… otherwise, what’s the point of doing it?
It’s a question I have to ask myself twice. What is the point of doing it? Who am I doing it for? I can usually answer, first and foremost I do it for myself.
Art isn’t supposed to exist in a vacuum. That isn’t at all what I am saying. One definition I found for the word art (and I’m sure there are many) is this:
The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
I think it’s perfectly acceptable for people to want to share their creative expressions for others besides the artist to appreciate. Writing and photography, every bit as much as painting and sculpture, fall into this category—as well as a slew of other art forms. There is no getting around the fact that this is an age in which that sharing is done primarily online. But that becomes a double-edged sword, because we have to fight being pulled into the constant scrolling through and consuming of others’ works so that we can use these apps to share our own work, and yet, to call for a revolution of how we spend our time as humans (by scrolling less and producing more) would mean fewer people will see our own work which we share. And that only brings me back to, then what’s the point?
For me, the point is finding different vehicles. Instead of posting hundreds of my photographs online, I could enter one or two of my best images into a gallery showing, or perhaps I could sell framed prints of them at a local coffee shop. Instead of writing essays to work out my inner world, I could write letters to people who would enjoy reading on actual paper what I might have otherwise typed up as a post.
I have a full-time day job as a production artist, so it’s not a matter of livelihood for me. I’m fully aware that many artists are using social media as a tool to grow their business, and thus essentially have to share their creative work, which is the business.
So this is in no way a criticism of the use of any platform—even (and especially) the less social-media-esque platforms like Substack. Also, I happen to think that sharing anything anywhere (whether professionally or simply as one’s hobby) can sometimes be the one thing that someone needed to see/hear on a particular day. We’re all in this together, so I’m not at all dismissing the power of community and of sharing our inner worlds with others.
These are merely my thoughts about a change I sense (and many others have sensed) is brewing… one I hope turns into something that grows and takes hold… a shift back in the other direction, with the pendulum swinging away from a predominantly digital world that forgot everything else we had and still have out there.
Before the printing press, people used to write things by hand. Before the camera was invented, people created imagery with paint. Before YouTube, people bought tickets to concerts and plays. Before texting, people called each other on the phone. Before telephones, people wrote letters or walked across the street or even across town to talk to someone else. The “evil” trifecta I mentioned above isn’t really evil. It’s just another step in the inventive and creative steps humanity has taken along history’s timeline.
But it is clear that, with the ease of accessing what is available through this trifecta, we’ve become consumed with and somewhat addicted to the never ending road of technologically available information. For most, traveling this road is a pursuit of really good and admirable things, such as inspiration and a sense of feeling connected to something beyond ourselves. But for myself, I’m learning that the trifecta is the wrong vehicle in which to reach them.
So I am choosing to follow suit regarding the examples that have been set by others… not necessarily because it’s right for everyone, but because it seems like it is unquestionably right for me.
And I’d be lying if I said my therapist hasn’t recommended that I do so on more than one occasion.
I’m not your therapist. Nor am I an expert. I’m just an artist out here sharing my thoughts about it all, and I’m posing the questions to you as well.
What are you looking for and how are you getting there? Is there another vehicle that will get you to that destination? Is “there” even the place you should be going? Is “there” where you already are and you just couldn’t see it through all of the digital noise?
I’ve decided to contribute less to the noise and to listen more to all of the things that were available before I purchased my first smartphone. I’m looking forward to rediscovering those things, because I’ve actually forgotten what many of them are.
I wonder what it will be like to drink my morning coffee without the supplemental breakfast offered via digital feeds. I would say, “I’ll let you know,” but that would mean I’d have to… well, you know. : )
—
While I am in a roundabout way encouraging others to be on their digital devices less, I am also encouraging anyone who took the time to read this essay to visit and follow
’s fascinating Substack account. It’s one of the first accounts that I subscribed to here, and it has remained my favorite newsletter since that time. Though the writing/sharing there has been indefinitely paused, there’s a great deal of material that can be accessed and read from the past two and a half years, much of which I have gained valuable insight, information and inspiration from. I think any aspiring or professional creative would find the same. Some of the books in my to-read stack were recommended by him, and some are even written by him. And there is another excellent book he has authored in the works. So consider this my official recommendation to check out his writing.