During a recent trip home, I was a guest on the “Charlando Con La Gringa” radio show. Initially, I had pitched that show host Lisa Degliantoni invite my best friend and fellow El Paso native Andy Powers to be on the show since he’s had a successful acting career and is much more compelling than I am. But Lisa—gracious as she is—suggested that we both come on to the show together. The pairing ended up demonstrating a dichotomy about El Paso that I encounter and think about constantly, whether I’m here in El Paso or back in L.A., which is where I’ve been headquartered for more than a decade.
For years, I’ve been telling Andy about how my attitude towards El Paso has become much more positive. Some of this is due to maturity and to a greater appreciation of my roots as a result of geographic distance and perspective. A lot of it has to do with the quality of people I’ve been meeting, individuals who consistently demonstrate how much talent, generosity, kindness and creativity exists in El Paso. Since Andy and I are artists, for the sake of my argument to him I specify the painters, musicians, graphic designers, computer animators, poets and filmmakers I’ve come into contact with. Andy has always reacted to any positive thing I’ve had to say about our hometown with skepticism at best, and at worst the kind of ranting, reactionary and cynical polemic that I’ve also heard from not just other expats but current residents of the city as well.
While Andy and I were both in El Paso (something that hadn’t happened in a long time), I was determined to show him first-hand as much of the goodness I loved about this place as possible. But our schedules only allowed for a bit of this in between the pull to visit tons of family and friends and the unique way that time flows here (the slow-paced lifestyle belies how quickly and inexplicably chunks of hours can just escape you). So prior to our appearance on “Charlando con la gringa”, Andy and I went on a little tour of some El Paso spots that are special to me.
I drove us down Alameda and Texas so Andy could see the comforting old storefronts bumping up against colorful, clever renovations undertaken by earnest entrepreneurs. We had lunch at Café Mayapan so he could see an example of the effective grassroots empowerment efforts taking place. We then headed downtown to The Percolator for coffee and ran into Zach Passero—a Cathedral High School classmate of Andy’s—who was still high from the world premiere of his feature film “Wicked Lake” during the Movies Return to The Plaza Theatre Film Festival. Zach’s enthusiasm for his project and the fact that it was shot here in his hometown stirred a genuine inspiration that this veteran (read: jaded) filmmaker and entertainment journalist hadn’t felt in much too long.
Zach helped reiterate what I’ve long been telling Andy: there are amazing artists who, despite whatever teenage angst or youthful curiosity drove them away at first, have elected to live and work in El Paso—and they make for an invigorating community that is really appealing to those of us who work elsewhere. While it may be a thrill to find out you can carve out a life for yourself in a big, bustling metropolis—for, as Frank Sinatra sings about New York, “If I can make it there/I’ll make it anywhere”—there’s something about this city on the border, its position within the world and the people who reside here, that make it so much more special and indescribable despite all the words I’ve expended in my attempts as a lifelong writer.
After coffee, I drove Andy around downtown so he could see how things have changed, and while he was genuinely impressed to discover all the newness, it was the older things that touched him most. He couldn’t stop extolling the beauty and timelessness of the old downtown buildings—quintessential El Paso landmarks like the Kress building, Bassett Tower, and the countless smaller yet no less interesting edifices strewn between. It was as if he was seeing all of this for the first time even though this stuff has been there forever and mostly hasn’t changed at all since we were kids. Yet it all went taken for granted for years by my friend—and many others like him—who had just decided at one point in his youth to write off El Paso as a Podunk, dried-up hole with nothing to offer, especially in the case of an artist.
I believed that once, too. Now, though, I believe that my best years as an artist are ahead of me because of my appreciation for the place where I grew up. My work has so much more integrity because of that.
There’s more, though, than buildings and one-off special events that inspire me every moment I’m in town and give me fuel to keep going when I’m away. There’s the quality of time I described previously, the “mañana” mentality that many complain about yet many (including the complainers) savor. Compared to Los Angeles—where everybody’s always speeding off somewhere for no real good reason only to sit in dead-stop gridlock traffic for hours—this way of life is blissful.
There’s the honesty of the population; when I’m here and someone says they’re happy to see me, every bit of my consciousness knows that they really are happy to see me—they’re not just saying so to get something out of me or to make small talk. Again, I compare this to the way of life in L.A., where a lot is based on the facetious nature of Hollywood. Of course there are honest people everywhere (even in L.A.), but I’m not trying to prove a point about anywhere else. I’m trying to prove that El Paso, for all its foibles and idiosyncrasies, is overwhelmingly good.
Sure, not everything is as naively optimistic as I might come off sounding. I’ll acknowledge the negative—the apathy, the audience (or lack thereof), and the minimal support system that exists for artists compared to other cities the size of El Paso. However, I am not speaking about other cities when I talk about the good of this place. There is uniqueness that should be prized and championed primarily because, while coming off as annoyances or stumbling blocks, they are actually what make El Paso unlike any other place.
Sure, you might have to have a “real” job if you’re trying to make it as an artist in El Paso, but this is no different from Los Angeles or New York or Chicago or London or Paris or any other “more ideal” city in the world that artists flock to in hopes of achieving their dreams, only to settle for a year (or ten) of waiting tables, earning $10 an hour as an administrative assistant, or undertaking any other kind of non-artistic or “menial” job in order to make ends meet. For even though Andy and I are artists, we’ve been taking on other jobs to support ourselves all this time we’ve been artists in other cities and there’s nothing that would be different about that in El Paso. There might be a difference in the way we’d go about our art and possibly the way our art would be practiced, but the general survival strategy that allows us to make our work is the same wherever we are.
“Ah, but there’s more opportunity in those places,” you retort, which I’ll acknowledge with a touché. Goodness knows it hasn’t boosted morale to see scores of El Paso’s galleries, live music venues and communal/creative spaces go under over the past few years. It’s easy to interpret this sort of trend as the municipal government not caring enough to preserve culture, as the citizens prioritizing almost anything else over appreciating, seeing, listening to, experiencing and/or purchasing art. “What would I do if I moved back here?” Andy mused while we were driving around on our little tour. I could’ve said that waiting tables in El Paso was the same as doing so in NYC, but I knew his question spoke to a broader issue; namely, that of the kinds of work as an actor he has possibly open to him in a big city versus the outlets for his art that El Paso can offer. This is where subjectivity comes in and my argument, for all its hopefulness, has to concede to the reality of each individual and their circumstances. However, I’ll reiterate that if anyone can make a go of it, an artist can.
While at Bassett Place people-watching (as I’m wont to do whenever I’m here), I saw little girl in a Saint Patrick elementary school uniform who reminded me of the time when I was dressed the same way. I remembered the big dreams I had of living in Los Angeles all the time, not just zipping there for an all-too-short summer vacation. I remembered how much I longed to be a real writer and how it felt like I’d die if I couldn’t do that—while at the same time I was convinced it was impossible to do something like that in El Paso. Since those days of running around the Saint Patrick’s playground, I’ve done well for myself. I write, I make a living and I’ve expertly navigated the wacky wilds of Los Angeles for more than a decade. And while every day is a tug-of-war over when to move back home and give myself fully to the place I love best in the world, I am more at peace than I ever have been about El Paso. Its faults, while frustrating to not just me but also many others, can often be saving graces.
In line with that theory that only the ones you love most can let you down the worst, I believe that a lot of the frustration El Pasoans have with our city is springs from the fact that we love it so much and believe it could be doing so much better. Maybe one of the reasons why certain people fling themselves so far away from it in an attempt to prove whatever it is they need to prove about their work and their career and purpose in life is because they know they have some a solid base to come back to—they will always be welcome back to it no matter what. That’s the kind of great place El Paso is.
One of my greatest regrets as a kid was never getting to see my favorite band The Police live in concert before they broke up; like so many other performers, they never made it to El Paso. But thanks to their decision to reunite in 2007, I spent more than a year following them and fulfilling one of my biggest childhood dreams. It was fitting, then that I listened to their sublime track “Secret Journey” while driving down Montana, taking in another gorgeous EP sunset. “You will see light in the darkness/You will make some sense of this” sang the song, which made me remember how strife can fuel one’s creativity and one’s sense of purpose. Perhaps what many artists like myself are feeding off of is the back-and-forth struggle of “Should I stay or should I go?”
That dilemma has become necessary for me and in a way is perhaps also necessary for artists in El Paso. They work all the harder in response to the lack of support, which also goes for those who appreciate art as well. Those patrons seek out and support the artists they have all the more because there are fewer rather than too many. Look at the positive and let all the little shining lights add up to one big, brilliant good thing, rather than continuing to rip the city apart or believe that it can only change due to a singular massive overhaul that’s really unfeasible.
For the most part—especially when it comes down to creativity and inspiration, which is the way life does for an artist—the bad and the good are a matter of perception. For eons, artists have been making lemonade out of lemons. If they can do it here, they can do it anywhere—and it’s that mode of thinking that turns El Paso from a place where nothing’s possible to the place of boundless opportunity.
So as I end this series of thoughts, I realize that the title I chose wasn’t necessarily fitting. For artists—those best at using their imaginations to overcome the impossible—making El Paso a better place may not be about demanding change or undertaking action (apart from the work you’re already doing, of course). Rather, it’s about improving your attitude towards the city that begat you and your art.
