Ah, the star attraction of the trip. And, not to bury the lead - it was awesome. First though, we got up and had a nice slow morning where I got a little work done on some personal projects, then we wanted some quick food so we ended up at Scholtzsky’s, of all places. I haven’t eaten Scholtzsky’s in 10 years and it still tastes exactly the same. Like I said last post, for some reason Santa Fe has all Austin area fast food.
Santa Fe itself seems nice enough. The desert has never been my speed, and we didn’t have much time to look around, but what I saw of it seemed like what I expected - southwestern scrub, nice people, small town vibe, lots of green chiles.
But, oh - Meow Wolf! How I love thee. Just for existing you get a million points. I actually had set my expectations somewhat low; having been to Omega Mart and Convergence Station, I had been told that HoER was going to be smaller and less ambitious because it was, after all, their first one. But I think that’s not what I experienced; first of all it’s physically much larger than I expected and honestly just the size of the other 2. And the visual impact of the house inside the exhibit is stunning; you are presented directly with the very front of a suburban house, mailbox and all. There’s lots of ways through the story and the art, physically and narratively, and we took them all, dancing from room to room. We were there over 4 hours and it never dragged or felt forced; even to the very end we were finding new nooks and crannies and uncovering new details. Here’s some things that HoER does well: first, the visual and visceral impact of a “setting gone wrong” with the “normal” layer laid on top of a weird extended universe is something Meow Wolf does better than anyone. The house feels simultaneously super normal and also really out of joint. You’re in a very normal suburban living room, dining room and kitchen but, like, it’s all terribly wrong and the physical sensation of the mystery is conveyed really well. Whether it’s the mirror that shows a haunted ghostly image of the missing family, or the melted wall paper, or, of course, the famous refrigerator that opens to a gleaming white tunnel to other dimensions, the whole thing is very stunning. And the art, of course, is top notch. It goes from normal to slightly odd but narratively connected and then all the way into just “art for its own sake” done by local artists. There was a Southwestern hallway that we both loved, a kind Alice-in-Wonderland-meets-New Mexico place with twisted walls and a spinning staircase. The story was compelling, too: a missing family, weird agents of a dystopian Order, the chaotic and unknowable Anomaly that might have taken them; a genius child, a weird egotistical uncle, neighbors worried about the noise, home movies playing on the TV. The initial impression of the story was phenomenal.
A quibble I would have - and it’s the same quibble I had at Convergence Station - is that the story, while awesome, kind of…doesn’t go anywhere. I don’t want to spoil anything but there’s a lot of questions and ultimately not a ton of answers, and a lot of the story leads just kind of fizzle out. I realize that’s just the Meow Wolf Way, and I’m kind of getting used to it, so I wasn’t nearly as disappointed, but if you really crave narrative closure, you’re not going to get it here. You have to just immerse yourself in the feeling of the place; that sense of parallel universes, of joy and agony and loss and betrayal and also just confusion.
And the physicality of the place! At one point you slide down through a dryer into a sort of “dryer dimension” with a video of tumbling socks. Another area is just an old RV/trailer parked in a kind of desert dimension, with a radio playing haunting dispatches from another dimension. There’s a video arcade with working games, the husband’s study with puzzles to solve, etc., etc. You can get lost looking for their eternal hamster, or reading through the mother’s journal and her slow slide into a kind of artist malaise. You can walk through the closet into a space made entirely of candy cupcakes.
Even if the execution was really terrible, I would love it just for what it was trying to do. But it’s not; it’s really well done, and done with a ton of heart. You care deeply about Lex, the missing kid, and Morgan, her sister lost in her memories of him, and the Grandma, who mysteriously might not be human. Much like the other Meow Wolf locations, there are two parallel stories; the “normal” one and the “parallel universe/metaphysical/battle for good and evil” one, and they intertwine not just narratively but physically. Which is what makes it slightly disappointing that there isn’t really enough of a payoff. But that’s OK.
At one point near the end, we realized that we had forgotten about the app, and the app wanted us to revisit all the spaces we’d already physically been, and it was like a weird scavenger hunt trying to remember where everything was.
The exhibit is, in some small ways, not quite as polished as the other two I’ve been to. There was no internal physical phone system, for example. And the app was a little tacked-on and there were still remnants of old clue systems that didn’t seem to go anywhere anymore. But these are small quibbles; being able to climb up treehouses and visit other dimensions is so awesome that I couldn’t wipe my smile off my face the whole time. They’ve done the (almost) impossible; build a space for adults and kids simultaneously, and build a kind of “gateway drug” for folks that don’t think they would love Alternate Reality Games and weird parallel physical narrative storytelling but then get hooked, while still catering to people like me who crave all the weirdness they can bring and then some.
3 down, 2 more to go! Then they open 2 more! I can’t wait.
Oh, and on the way out, we did get to go Waffle House! And yes, it’s awesome.
