That very specific and unusual sensation when you’re traveling for more than 48 hours in a row (Ridgway, Denver, Quito, Manta) and you’re almost constantly in motion, across state lines and countries and continents and hemispheres. Untraceable and everywhere and nowhere…
Colorado was as fun as it was beauitful. Denver reminded me of Portland, only higher. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time there, but the parts I saw were creative and memorable. I had two days between film festivals, so I stepped wayyy outside my comfort zone, joined the Couch Surfing site (I didn’t even know couches could swim!), and got a free night stay in Denver. Major kudos to Tony, a cool Vietnamese-American guy who let me crash in his comfy attic. Going up and down on a metal ladder made the experience that much more surreal and entertaining.
If you ever travel across Colorado, I very highly recommend the Bustang bus: they accept cash, the buses run on time, and – unlike Greyhound – there’s zero smell.
My Couch Surfing request in Grand Junction didn’t work out, so I got an AirBnB room at the edge of town. The following morning, trying to be a good tourist and sidestepping the road construction, I fell into a ditch and got covered in mud. After a quick detour to the construction site’s portapotty and a very slow-motion clothes change (just like that Deadpool trailer with the phone booth), I emerged in my spare pants. (Later on, a washing machine reatored my jeans and sweatshirt to their original condition.)
That did leave a lot of mud on my boots, though… For the rest of that morning, until my 1:30pm bus to Ridgway, the locals kept giving me the stink eye. Haters.
My phone, which is almost but not quite waterproof, got quite a bit of mud into every single port. It was a bit touch-and-go there, but the phone camera came back to life fast, and the phone’s speaker and microphone went on strike before resuming their duties. One helluva mud ditch, eh.
On the upside, I met my first-ever supervillain-coded person! The locals know her as The Crusher: she collects all their unwanted electronics and gadgets (mostly printers) and then disassembles them. The valuable bits go to industrial recyclers, while the rest goes to the plain old recycling. That’s something I’ve always been curious about (see my 2020 lockdown posts), and it’s beyond exciting to learn someone out there has actually made a business out of it. May your salvage be ever fruitful, Crusher.
I noticed something odd while wandering around the downtown Grand Junction, muddy boots and all. That town of 71,000 people didn’t have a single diner that served an old-fashioned slice of pie. When I asked the locals, they got the “Mandela effect” look on their faces before saying that no, there aren’t any slice-o-pie places anywhere in town. How bizarre. Feels like that’s linked to the disappearance of third space, a la “Bowling alone.”
I settled for a giant chocolate chip cookie at some hippie-themed coffeeshop. It wasn’t bad. The barista was fun and flirtatious.
And then, at last, a bus to Ridgway – a dark-sky town of 1,000 people. They arranged a free hotel for visiting filmmakers, which is almost unheard of in our community. Fun little town. Lots of public art. (But no sliced pie. The mystery deepens!) Great mountain views. A truly dark sky. A stargazing party on a Saturday night: the brightest Milky Way I’d ever seen, and lots of locals with their telescopes, letting the rest of us look at the distant nebulas and planets. (Here’s looking at you, Jupiter.)
The festival itself was… It wasn’t perfect. It had many glitches during the film screenings. Its director was sick and unavailable for the duration, so maybe that was why. The award ceremony randomly got rescheduled and held 30 minutes earlier than scheduled. I hadn’t expected to win, and I didn’t, but it would’ve been fun to cheer for my new filmmaker friendos… As it was, we all sat through a full hour of local improv (they were enthusiastic, but that’s a lot of improv, y’all), after which everyone just got up and silently walked away. That, in and of itself, felt like some postmodern art performance. When some of my new buds explained the actual award ceremony had happened 90 minutes ago, I called them liars until finally conceding that yes, the facts did seem to fit their quaint narrative. Ah well.
But that was on sunday. On Saturday night, my short film’s screening had gone fairly well, and since I was the only filmmaker in attendance for that block, the Q&A section was entirely mine. That’s pretty rare, eh. I took the opportunity to edumacate the small but lively audience about all the cool public domain videos they could use for their own filmmaking experiments. The anxiety of small glitches had gotten to me, so I was in my “talking fast and gesticulating and grinning” mode rather than the “cool and suave foreign filmmaker” persona. For what it’s worth, the audience seemed to understand and appreciate my words. With any luck, I’ll get a do-over next year. Live and learn and improve.
After the non-award award ceremony, I used my political science skillz to corral all the remaining filmmakers into an afterparty at the hotel’s bar. (Great loaded fries!) That experience, with just the six of us sitting and sipping beer and talking about filmmaking, was the single best part of the festival for me. (Though, once again, the locals’ hospitality was wonderful.) We all headed back to bed once the bar closed for the night at 9pm. (Small town, eh.) Much fun was had.
And so my first-ever Feral Artist Nomad odyssey ends. Three back-to-back film festivals, two weeks, many new friends, an offer to crash at a new buddy’s place if I get into the Durango film festival. (I submitted my comedy sci-fi film just ahead of the final deadline. Toes and fingers crossed!)
…sometimes, I go two whole days in a row without thinking about her…
Typing this up on the bus headed to Denver – a long ride, but cheap, and with beautiful views. From there, a red-eye flight to Ecuador by way of Atlanta, and a night at a motel right across Quito’s bus station, and a looong ride to a beach town where my Workaway volunteer hosts await – because to hell with Canadian winters.
But that’s a whole different adventure.
Onward.
Grigory Lukin.com 