Life Imitating Art Imitating Life
or Art, Memory, and Other Things I’m Still Editing
The story so far… I had spent a week in LA visiting former students, seeing the sights, and getting a firsthand glimpse into the New World that is the US today. Now I'm in the Coachella Valley with my daughter—a Canadian festival director—exploring Desert X, the biennial contemporary art exhibition that brings together acclaimed artists from around the world. Their works engage directly with the desert environment, sparking dialogue about land, climate and identity.
Friday March 21st
I left you as my daughter and I ‘ommmmmed’, in the shadow of a public art ‘Living Pyramid’ – a Desert X installation - at the end of a public yoga session at the Annenberg Sunnylands estate in Palm Springs. I may have imagined it, but I fancy the group ‘omming’ of 200 yogis gave an extra strength and vibrancy to the Living Pyramid. After we had ‘namaste’d’ we drank a large quantity of water and set off to see two more exhibits/installations presented by Desert X.
The first, ‘Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams’ was physically sinous and seemingly needed nothing to improve the beauty of its shape and texture set into the landscape...
BUT – the artist had used a new technology to etch invisible words into metal discs so that when the disc was manipulated to catch the sun, those words were projected onto the undulating walls. As a writer and not a visual artist I felt slightly smug that, as powerful and beautiful as the built installation was, the written words added a rich depth and texture to the work.
Onward to ‘Plotting Rest’ – pure architectural form expressing concepts of shelter, freedom and expansiveness. As I stood looking at the interlocking shapes of strength and fragility I realized that, although there were no words here, there was a narrative, told purely through ever changing shadows on the ground. This artist used only shape and light to tell his story. Not so smug now.
After these two huge and inspiring pieces of art we were fulfilled – ready to hike in nature’s own gallery for an hour or two, before heading back to our billet to work: me, editing my book; my daughter, refining the lineup for the Festival she’s curating. Sitting down to write, it was hard to take myself seriously as an artist. The works we had seen that day were so overwhelming– I could never hope to evoke that sense of awe with words. I allowed myself to be distracted by the hummingbirds flitting around my head. So busy, so pretty – they didn’t care that they weren’t eagles. Lesson accepted. If not entirely learned.
Saturday 22nd March
I'm visiting my friend Nelda at her home in La Quinta—to go for a hike and check out Art on Main Street - “a vibrant outdoor art exhibition showcasing a diverse range of art pieces by local and regional artists.” It's a surreal, almost meta experience. There are so many layers. Nelda and I were close friends back when I was in school in Palm Springs in the late '60s. Over the years, I’ve returned—for a high school reunion, during holidays when I worked in the US, often reconnecting with Nelda and other women from our old group.
My book—a fictive memoir—borrows bits and pieces from those visits, from the women’s stories, and from my imagination. After working on it for the last four years, I can no longer clearly separate what's real from what I invented. I find myself constantly censoring myself mid-sentence: Did that really happen, or did I make it up?
To make things even more confusing, I gave myself a daughter in the book—a mash-up of my two real daughters, stirred together with more fiction. So now, walking around La Quinta with an actual daughter by my side, it feels like I’ve wandered into a parallel universe. I'm living in my book. Or my book is living in me. Hard to say. And so, standing there amid the sunshine and the surrealism, I make a solemn vow: from this point forward, it’s all fiction. Everything. Pure, unapologetic invention. Much easier that way.
Sunday 23rd March
I return to my edits, my daughter to her festival planning. Later, we set out to find another installation—this one hidden in the desert, its location revealed only through coordinates on the Desert X app. It feels like a treasure hunt.
Once we’re close, it’s impossible to miss: a contemporary, timeless Stonehenge for the 21st century. Simple, monumental, staggeringly ambitious. Humbling in the vastness of the landscape.
Monday 24th March
We take on a long hike into the Indian Canyons and encounter more breathtakingly ambitious sculpture—this time, nature’s own. Life imitating art imitating life.
Tuesday 25th March
We make our final stop to complete our Desert X circuit: the witty, clever, and inventive Soul Service Station. Signs framed in old tires lead us to a service station and petrol pump, its nozzles replaced by seashells. Hold one to your ear, and you hear poetry by Los Angeles poet Harryette Mullen.
With this piece, it feels like we’ve come full circle—back to words, enriching and illuminating the artist’s message.
Wednesday 26th March
My daughter and I part ways—she back to Canada, I back to London. As I write this, I feel a quiet sense of embarrassment at how fortunate we’ve been, wrapped in a warm, golden bubble while the world beyond us is in turmoil.
Over these ten intense days, we’ve been immersed in art, in nature, in our work and in each other. As we wandered between the installations, we talked about land and politics, about storytelling and curation and how art can reflect its surroundings rather than impose on them. She’s curating festivals, making bold decisions. I’m still deep in the thicket of edits on a book that blurs fact and fiction so completely, I sometimes lose track of what actually happened.
This trip, like my writing, exists in a layered space—part reality, part imagination, part memory. And being here with her—walking through vast, open landscapes, sharing ideas and then returning to our separate screens and our separate work—has felt like its own kind of collaboration.
I don’t yet know how to give back, or what to do with the privilege of this experience. But I promise myself I’ll carry the richness of it forward—and do my best to make it count.
What amazing things you got to see! It sounds like it was a really great time. I would love to have such an escape from life and work right now. Thanks for sharing!
I’m so glad you pointed me to your essay, Jennifer. Reading it, I felt like I was there with you. And I also felt the sharp contrast—how I wasn’t. That old longing stirred again—the longing to be anywhere but here. To be in a space where something like that breathtaking, expansive art is even possible.
Because honestly, in Germany, I don’t feel that space. Not physically. Not mentally. There’s little openness to allow something so monumental to be installed in a landscape that looks empty only at first glance—and yet holds everything. Maybe we just don’t have those wide, open places. The ones where you can be alone and see for miles, without a fence, a house, a tree, a forest, or a hill in your line of sight.
Where I live, everything feels miniature. Confined. Compressed. And with that comes rigidity, order, regulation—walls, both literal and invisible. There’s no space to expand beyond the horizon. Not in the landscape, and even less so in the minds of most people around me.
And yet—I’m someone constantly spilling over borders and edges. I don’t fit in forms or spaces built to contain. So when I imagine standing there where you stood, something in me exhales. My heart grows wide. My soul sighs out. My mind softens into that openness.
That’s when it becomes a soul service station for me too. Not just art, but a place that nourishes every part of me—soul, mind, heart, and body.
As I said, my heart doesn’t beat German. It beats North American. And I’m not trying to romanticize—I’m just telling the truth of where it comes alive.