Eternal and Returning

by Ali Rubinstein, Carl Christensen and Jim Ward

Five years ago today, something happened. Something that the three of us had no idea would impact our lives forever. Heck, we weren’t even there. House of Eternal Return opened. And this crazy, scrappy, chaotic, beautiful, soulful, creative company named Meow Wolf rose in the midst of one of the world’s great art cities and shoved a new psychedelic immersive social impact art project right in its face.  

You all know the rest. House of Eternal Return bent minds. Made the establishment blink. Proved that people needed creativity and the power of imagination. Showed that Meow Wolf could serve it up piping hot.

But more than anything else, the opening of House of Eternal Return changed lives.

It changed our lives. Because the creative vortex in Santa Fe caused by House of Eternal Return had the gravitational force of five neutron stars that sucked us up into its miraculous black hole of inspiration and the next thing we knew, we were a part of it.

A Disney vet who saw, through the brilliance of HOER, that freedom, discovery and exploration could be a whole new way to generate experiential joy. A Goldman Sachs financial geek who found a home that desperately wanted his brand of thinking. And a venture capitalist who finally found a company with enough cajones to want to subvert the world as we know it.

We came to Meow Wolf. We had to. There was no choice.

And once here, we met the most amazing and inspirational people we will ever meet. A team that attempted to do the impossible by opening back-to-back exhibitions beyond HOER in Las Vegas and Denver. A team that has endured a journey that would end as failure for other mere mortals. A team that has demonstrated resilience and an ability to regenerate like a starfish over and over and over again. A team who lost many along the way but still remembers them as a critical part of the Meow Wolf success. A team that, despite a pandemic, still found the ability to express itself through art and audacity.

All of you who are part of the Meow Wolf family have taken a chimerical and kaleidoscopic ride, mainlining the wellspring of the very power of House of Eternal Return and turning that into a psychedelic trip of brilliance that is unsurpassed. Be proud on this day. Heck, be proud every day.

The 5th Anniversary of the opening of House of Eternal Return is a testament not only to those Founders and original generation of artists who had the vision to rift time and space, lure a brilliant author to take a major leap of faith and push their chaos unto the world, but to all who have come since then, wondered about the Selig family and added their own personal motif to the Meow Wolf dissonance.

HOER has touched us all. We, the OCEO, are grateful to have heard the siren call.  We’re lucky to be part of this parallel universe that is creating a bold new history.

Thank you to the Founders for your origin, your truth and your brilliance. Thank you George R. R. Martin for jumping with no parachute. Thank you Meow Wolf family for your perseverance and your belief in magic.

Thank you House of Eternal Return. For giving the three of us redemption by absorbing your warped and mysterious aura. And for truly being authentic to your spirit: ever eternal and triumphantly returning, in the face of a pandemic, allowing us to be the defiant optimistic fools we’ll always be.