love in georgia o’keeffe’s country

When I got to New Mexico that was mine. As soon as I saw it that was my country. I’d never seen anything like it before, but it fitted to me exactly. It’s something that’s in the air, it’s different. The sky is different, the wind is different. I shouldn’t say too much about it because other people may be interested and I don’t want them interested.

georgia o’keeffe writes about new mexico with love and a strange air of possession. i, like many others, find myself puzzled thinking about her affective relationship with a land so deeply and obviously tied to indigenous and pueblo cultures. northern new mexico is o’keeffe’s country, a claim made strange by the fact that she was born and raised in wisconsin, then educated in the art institutes of new york city.

the road to abiquiu, NM. photo taken by me this summer

Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.

but i hesitate, too, to condemn a person whose relationships to the land i do not pretend to understand. does being born in wisconsin imply an inability to ever authentically appreciate another state? in some ways, i am sympathetic. there are places i’ve spent the majority of my life in, only to feel perpetually excluded as a tourist. unlike new mexico, however, the insular local cultures of these majority-white towns are not actually reflected by authentic ties to the land. in one particular town where nobody was actually native, i soon discovered that being a “local” wasn’t about having shared a childhood with your neighbors, but simply looking like them.¹even so, i cannot imagine claiming a place as “mine,” let alone somewhere like new mexico (which is as culturally un-mine as it is for o’keeffe). why does feeling moved by something make it hers?²

in thinking about gatekeeping, sincerity, and permanent visitation, i’m reminded of music listening culture. so many people want to lay claim to an artist or an album. who introduced who? who listens more? who is receiving the music in the most profound way? there is some strange notion of a first listener, someone who owns the sound more than any other. i find myself falling prey to these thought patterns. even when intentionally sharing music, i sometimes imagine myself as original and therefore different. i’m pretty ashamed of this; in wanting to be beautiful by association, i inject myself into something original only to its creator. i think now of georgia o’keeffe, and i wish to root my love in sharing, not ownership.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Abiquiu Mesa I, 1944-1945. Graphite on paper, 5 9/16 x 17 7/16 inches, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation and The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.