Santa Fe has much to offer when it comes to art, as described in my previous blog entry. The first attraction I visited was Meow Wolf, a surreal, immersive art collective, where nothing is as it seems. The installation currently present is the House of Eternal Return. It’s like the Twilight Zone meets Alice in Wonderland.

What is Meow Wolf & the House of Eternal Return?

The backstory indicates that it’s a 2-story Victorian house harboring a secret that led to the Selig family’s disappearance, perhaps into another dimension of the universe. While the house seems like any other from the outside, it is riddled with wormholes to an alternate universe. Many portals and paths loop back into the house and back again, hence the name. The same pattern also happens in the backstory, where information loops back onto itself, while at the same time, applies to other information as well.

There are clues that give insight onto what may have happened. The visitor can go through diaries, letters, photographs, and lab handbooks inside the house, while exploring hidden passageways, nooks and crannies, rainbow caves, and even treehouses–all while charter agents in white lab coats are watching you.

It’s very easy to miss passageways or details, so you’ll come back hours later to discover them. For example, this black-and-white dining room was right under my nose for hours, because the door blended in with the wall. Seeing a doorknob piqued my interest. I’m not sure what this dining room has to do with the backstory, but it sure is a neat place to sit. Also, they’re not shown here, but there are monsters inside those cabinets.

Unraveling the mysteries of the House

Another time, I saw a safe and couldn’t open it because I didn’t have the code. A couple hours later, I flipped through someone’s planner and found the code purely by accident! It took another half an hour to find the safe again. The code worked, and the safe revealed another piece of the puzzle.

There’s also another safe in the office of the house, which seems to be the main one. The code seems to work on both safes.

It’s so easy to spend literally all day piecing together information of what happened to that family in the house. If you want to decode all of the clues and codes, you will practically need to move to Santa Fe and get an annual pass. A mystery like this one could take days or weeks to solve, with overwhelming amounts of information to sort through. Even if you succeed, it’s your–and only yours–interpretation alone. Nobody is right or wrong about their interpretations, because there are so many. The House of Eternal Return is designed to be open-ended like that. There are no formal endings to the story or mystery; it is what you make of it.

But remember to take care of yourself…

I got pretty hungry and didn’t want to eat, because that meant I would have to leave. Admission is an all-day pass, and there are food trucks outside, but it’s hard to break out of that entranced zone. The best comparison is like playing a video game, except that you are physically immersed in the game. You hear of those gamers that don’t take care of themselves because they’re so wrapped up in it… That was me at Meow Wolf. Maybe someone else may not view it as a “trap” the same way I did. It surely left an impression.

As an aside, Meow Wolf also hosts shows and events regularly. I haven’t been to one, but it has become a performance venue as well.

Being inside your own mind

At the same time, it felt like my home planet. I never wanted to leave. It felt like being inside my own mind. Maybe that’s why it was all intuitive.

Santa Fe has an art scene that caters more towards the upscale. And then there’s something like Meow Wolf. This has been the highlight of my visit, and I will definitely be back!