WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.600 Imagine for a second right that you are the only 00:00:02.600 --> 00:00:06.219 son of absolute Hollywood royalty. Okay, so you're 00:00:06.219 --> 00:00:10.000 born in Los Angeles in 1940 Your mom is the actress 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.800 Edith Barrett and your dad is well He's none 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:15.339 other than the legendary horror icon Vincent 00:00:15.339 --> 00:00:18.660 Price. Oh, wow That is quite the shadow to grow 00:00:18.660 --> 00:00:20.719 up in. Right. I mean, the path for your life 00:00:20.719 --> 00:00:23.640 is practically already paved in red carpets and, 00:00:23.640 --> 00:00:26.640 you know, silver screens. The expectation, the 00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:29.079 sheer momentum of that world is just pulling 00:00:29.079 --> 00:00:31.280 you toward the spotlight. Naturally. But instead 00:00:31.280 --> 00:00:33.399 of stepping into that whole technicolor machinery, 00:00:33.500 --> 00:00:35.659 you just pack up, turn your back on Hollywood 00:00:35.659 --> 00:00:38.659 entirely, and flee to the stark, sun -baked desert 00:00:38.659 --> 00:00:41.000 of the American Southwest. Just a complete pivot. 00:00:41.280 --> 00:00:43.380 Exactly. You decide you're going to become a 00:00:43.380 --> 00:00:46.609 poet. and a fierce environmental critic, and 00:00:46.609 --> 00:00:48.710 eventually like the literary conscience of New 00:00:48.710 --> 00:00:51.649 Mexico. It's just the ultimate rejection of an 00:00:51.649 --> 00:00:53.670 inherited narrative, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, 00:00:53.990 --> 00:00:56.469 walking away from an engineered reality to find 00:00:56.469 --> 00:00:59.030 something infinitely more grounded that requires 00:00:59.030 --> 00:01:01.520 a massive leap of faith. And that is exactly 00:01:01.520 --> 00:01:03.619 the leap that Vincent Barrett Price, who went 00:01:03.619 --> 00:01:06.819 by V .B. Price, actually took. So we're looking 00:01:06.819 --> 00:01:09.780 at a stack of sources today centered around his 00:01:09.780 --> 00:01:12.540 life and work, largely starting with his Wikipedia 00:01:12.540 --> 00:01:15.420 biography. And the mission of this deep dive 00:01:15.420 --> 00:01:18.200 is to explore how a person's identity can become 00:01:18.200 --> 00:01:22.400 so completely. you know, inextricably intertwined 00:01:22.400 --> 00:01:25.200 with the landscape and the culture of a specific 00:01:25.200 --> 00:01:27.359 place. That's right. And we really want to look 00:01:27.359 --> 00:01:30.500 at how paying microscopic attention to your surroundings 00:01:30.500 --> 00:01:33.599 can actually transform you into a relentless 00:01:33.599 --> 00:01:36.439 advocate for them. Exactly. Because we are tracing 00:01:36.439 --> 00:01:40.049 a fascinating arc today. We will follow Price's 00:01:40.049 --> 00:01:43.150 journey from that 1940s Los Angeles childhood 00:01:43.150 --> 00:01:46.129 straight through to his arrival in New Mexico 00:01:46.129 --> 00:01:49.750 in 1958. We'll impact the massive literary ecosystem 00:01:49.750 --> 00:01:52.590 he built, analyze his really blistering heavily 00:01:52.590 --> 00:01:54.870 researched critique of the Cold War's environmental 00:01:54.870 --> 00:01:57.920 toll on the American West, and finally, Look 00:01:57.920 --> 00:01:59.799 at how we process the ultimate frontier, which 00:01:59.799 --> 00:02:02.040 is human mortality. OK, let's unpack this. We 00:02:02.040 --> 00:02:03.900 have to start with this Hollywood prince fleeing 00:02:03.900 --> 00:02:06.000 to the desert. So he's born in L .A., August 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:08.759 30th, 1940. Right. He makes this really pivotal 00:02:08.759 --> 00:02:11.099 move to New Mexico in 1958, which is right around 00:02:11.099 --> 00:02:13.039 the time he'd be heading to college. Right. Yeah, 00:02:13.039 --> 00:02:15.560 he's 18. And he ends up graduating from the University 00:02:15.560 --> 00:02:19.520 of New Mexico UNM in 1962. And the source material 00:02:19.520 --> 00:02:23.080 specifically notes here that Price came to deeply 00:02:23.080 --> 00:02:26.580 identify with New Mexico's, quote, isolation. 00:02:26.889 --> 00:02:29.750 and eccentricity. Oh, I love that phrase. Right. 00:02:30.009 --> 00:02:32.150 He identified with its people, its traditional 00:02:32.150 --> 00:02:34.650 cultures, the architecture, the harsh beauty 00:02:34.650 --> 00:02:37.550 of the landscape. He didn't just, you know, relocate 00:02:37.550 --> 00:02:39.030 to get away from his parents. Yeah, it wasn't 00:02:39.030 --> 00:02:42.110 just a teenage rebellion thing. Exactly. He found 00:02:42.110 --> 00:02:45.189 a mirror for his own soul. Yeah. He found a geography 00:02:45.189 --> 00:02:47.849 that just resonated with his internal frequency. 00:02:48.169 --> 00:02:50.590 In a way, the studio backlots of Hollywood just 00:02:50.590 --> 00:02:52.949 never could. It's honestly like a reverse Wizard 00:02:52.949 --> 00:02:55.409 of Oz. How do you mean? Well, think about it. 00:02:55.469 --> 00:02:58.389 Dorothy gets sucked out of the drab black and 00:02:58.389 --> 00:03:00.969 white dust bowl of Kansas, right, and drops into 00:03:00.969 --> 00:03:04.229 this hyper saturated artificial technicolor dream 00:03:04.229 --> 00:03:07.169 world of Oz. Oh, right. Yeah. Price did the exact 00:03:07.169 --> 00:03:10.389 opposite. He left the manufactured, glamorous 00:03:10.389 --> 00:03:13.409 technicolor illusions of mid -century Los Angeles 00:03:13.409 --> 00:03:16.509 and deliberately chose the raw, stark reality 00:03:16.509 --> 00:03:18.189 of the desert. That's a great way to look at 00:03:18.189 --> 00:03:21.689 it. And the degree he gets from UNM in 1962. 00:03:22.210 --> 00:03:25.580 It's a BA in anthropology. which fundamentally 00:03:25.580 --> 00:03:28.500 dictates literally everything he does next. See, 00:03:28.560 --> 00:03:30.319 I have to push back on that a little bit. Okay, 00:03:30.340 --> 00:03:34.599 go for it. Does studying anthropology, the academic 00:03:34.599 --> 00:03:37.539 study of human societies and cultures, does that 00:03:37.539 --> 00:03:40.039 actually make someone a better poet? Or does 00:03:40.039 --> 00:03:42.819 it just run the risk of making their poetry incredibly 00:03:42.819 --> 00:03:46.360 academic and dense and dry? I see where you're 00:03:46.360 --> 00:03:48.659 going. Right, because you usually think of poets 00:03:48.659 --> 00:03:52.360 studying romantic literature or fine arts, not 00:03:52.360 --> 00:03:54.680 digging through the structural history of human 00:03:54.680 --> 00:03:56.699 migration patterns. Well, anthropology didn't 00:03:56.699 --> 00:03:59.460 make his poetry clinical at all. What it did 00:03:59.460 --> 00:04:02.189 was give him a really rigorous framework for 00:04:02.189 --> 00:04:04.729 observation. It taught him how to look at human 00:04:04.729 --> 00:04:07.430 history, built environments and natural landscapes, 00:04:07.849 --> 00:04:10.210 not as isolated backdrops, but as an interconnected 00:04:10.210 --> 00:04:12.509 web, like a web of survival and culture. Give 00:04:12.509 --> 00:04:14.490 me an example. Take his relationship with Chaco 00:04:14.490 --> 00:04:17.750 Canyon, for instance. He first visited this massive 00:04:17.750 --> 00:04:20.829 ancient Puebloan complex in New Mexico back in 00:04:20.829 --> 00:04:24.269 1961. Now, if you go as a tourist, you just see 00:04:24.269 --> 00:04:27.569 beautiful stone ruins. But if you go with an 00:04:27.569 --> 00:04:30.339 anthropological lens, you see the weight. of 00:04:30.339 --> 00:04:33.100 deep time. Oh, I see. You see how a civilization 00:04:33.100 --> 00:04:35.939 organized itself around the sun and, you know, 00:04:35.980 --> 00:04:39.120 the scarcity of water. And decades later, in 00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:42.459 1992, he published his seminal work of poetry, 00:04:42.660 --> 00:04:46.000 Choco Body, alongside the photographer Kirk Giddings. 00:04:46.199 --> 00:04:48.759 Wow. So it stayed with him that long. Absolutely. 00:04:49.180 --> 00:04:51.079 The anthropology taught him how to look at the 00:04:51.079 --> 00:04:54.000 bones of the landscape so his poetry could express 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:56.220 the heartbeat that was still echoing there. It's 00:04:56.220 --> 00:04:58.139 the difference between merely looking at a landscape 00:04:58.139 --> 00:05:00.389 and actually reading it. Precisely. Which brings 00:05:00.389 --> 00:05:03.029 up a question for you listening right now. Have 00:05:03.029 --> 00:05:05.230 you ever visited a place that instantly felt 00:05:05.230 --> 00:05:08.089 more like you than the place where you were actually 00:05:08.089 --> 00:05:10.649 born? That's a powerful feeling. Yeah, like a 00:05:10.649 --> 00:05:13.069 city, a forest, a coastline where you just stepped 00:05:13.069 --> 00:05:14.990 out of the car and thought, oh, this is where 00:05:14.990 --> 00:05:17.689 my brain finally makes sense. Because that is 00:05:17.689 --> 00:05:20.189 exactly what happened to V .B. Price in 1958. 00:05:20.569 --> 00:05:22.689 And because he looked so closely at the land 00:05:22.689 --> 00:05:25.310 for his poetry, he began to see the mechanics 00:05:25.310 --> 00:05:27.670 of how the modern state of New Mexico was functioning. 00:05:27.829 --> 00:05:31.300 Right. Deep observation, inevitably. forces you 00:05:31.300 --> 00:05:33.459 into documentation. You don't just passively 00:05:33.459 --> 00:05:36.139 observe a place you love and stay quiet about 00:05:36.139 --> 00:05:38.670 it when things start changing. which perfectly 00:05:38.670 --> 00:05:41.009 explains his evolution from just an observer 00:05:41.009 --> 00:05:44.990 to a really relentless journalist, teacher, and 00:05:44.990 --> 00:05:47.910 literary champion. Exactly. So he publishes his 00:05:47.910 --> 00:05:51.149 first poem in 1962, the same year he graduates. 00:05:51.689 --> 00:05:54.230 But by 1971, he starts a weekly column in New 00:05:54.230 --> 00:05:56.790 Mexico. And when I say he started a weekly column, 00:05:56.889 --> 00:05:59.170 I mean, he started a column that has run almost 00:05:59.170 --> 00:06:02.370 continuously from 1971 to the present day. It's 00:06:02.370 --> 00:06:05.110 wild. That is over half a century of weekly output. 00:06:05.370 --> 00:06:07.870 What's fascinating here is the sheer required 00:06:07.870 --> 00:06:11.129 to maintain a weekly column for 50 years. It's 00:06:11.129 --> 00:06:13.889 almost difficult to comprehend. Seriously. He's 00:06:13.889 --> 00:06:16.209 writing through multiple presidencies, economic 00:06:16.209 --> 00:06:18.810 booms and busts, the whole rise of the internet, 00:06:19.389 --> 00:06:21.629 and massive demographic shifts in the Southwest. 00:06:22.050 --> 00:06:24.069 Not to mention his other jobs. He served as an 00:06:24.069 --> 00:06:25.769 architecture critic for the Albuquerque Journal 00:06:25.769 --> 00:06:28.670 in the mid -80s and contributed regularly to 00:06:28.670 --> 00:06:31.389 the Albuquerque Tribune for 30 years until it 00:06:31.389 --> 00:06:34.209 closed in 2008. Yeah, and he co -founded the 00:06:34.209 --> 00:06:36.949 New Mexico Mercury online platform, where his 00:06:36.949 --> 00:06:40.680 Mercury Messenger column still runs. His output 00:06:40.680 --> 00:06:43.060 wasn't just about his own voice. No, and that 00:06:43.060 --> 00:06:45.139 is actually the most striking part of his resume 00:06:45.139 --> 00:06:48.100 to me Oh, yeah. Yeah as the series editor for 00:06:48.100 --> 00:06:50.220 the Mary Burritt poetry series at the University 00:06:50.220 --> 00:06:53.279 of New Mexico Press This was from 2004 to 2012 00:06:53.279 --> 00:06:55.980 He brought the work of more than 500 new mexican 00:06:55.980 --> 00:07:00.399 authors poets and scholars into print 500 yes 00:07:00.399 --> 00:07:03.319 Plus he was the architecture editor for art space 00:07:03.319 --> 00:07:06.000 magazine the editor of New Mexico magazine and 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:08.000 the city editor for the New Mexico Independent 00:07:08.350 --> 00:07:10.750 Think about this through, like, an agricultural 00:07:10.750 --> 00:07:13.670 lens, okay? Price wasn't just a farmer content 00:07:13.670 --> 00:07:16.329 to plant his own crops, you know, his own poems 00:07:16.329 --> 00:07:18.970 and columns. He looked around at the literary 00:07:18.970 --> 00:07:21.550 desert of the Southwest and realized that if 00:07:21.550 --> 00:07:24.069 the culture was going to survive, it needed an 00:07:24.069 --> 00:07:27.370 irrigation system. Oh, I love that. Bye. editing 00:07:27.370 --> 00:07:29.750 those magazines and curating that poetry series, 00:07:30.170 --> 00:07:33.649 he was literally building the aqueducts. He was 00:07:33.649 --> 00:07:35.470 creating the infrastructure and the economic 00:07:35.470 --> 00:07:38.910 conditions for 500 other voices to thrive in 00:07:38.910 --> 00:07:41.529 a landscape that the broader East Coast publishing 00:07:41.529 --> 00:07:43.970 world just completely ignored. Which explains 00:07:43.970 --> 00:07:46.389 how he managed not to burn out. It's like a marathon 00:07:46.389 --> 00:07:48.889 runner who decides to also paved the road they're 00:07:48.889 --> 00:07:51.389 running on. He wasn't just screaming into a void, 00:07:51.509 --> 00:07:54.550 he was cultivating a massive conversation. He 00:07:54.550 --> 00:07:57.089 was writing his own works, like Albuquerque, 00:07:57.310 --> 00:07:59.209 a city at the end of the world, which won the 00:07:59.209 --> 00:08:02.009 Free Francisco Adonacio Dominguez Award, while 00:08:02.009 --> 00:08:04.129 simultaneously teaching in the UNM School of 00:08:04.129 --> 00:08:06.149 Architecture and Planning and the Honors College. 00:08:06.209 --> 00:08:08.350 He was just constantly feeding the ecosystem 00:08:08.350 --> 00:08:11.750 he helped build. You know, when you spend decades 00:08:11.750 --> 00:08:14.750 building an irrigation system for a culture and 00:08:14.750 --> 00:08:16.769 paying that kind of microscopic attention to 00:08:16.769 --> 00:08:19.569 the health of a landscape, you inevitably start 00:08:19.569 --> 00:08:21.829 to see the poison in the water. You cannot be 00:08:21.829 --> 00:08:24.389 a fiercely protective local advocate without 00:08:24.389 --> 00:08:27.230 eventually confronting the macro threats imposed 00:08:27.230 --> 00:08:30.569 by outside forces. And this marks a massive pivot 00:08:30.569 --> 00:08:33.590 in his body of work. It really does. So in 2011, 00:08:33.789 --> 00:08:35.970 the University of New Mexico Press published 00:08:35.970 --> 00:08:39.269 Price's heavily researched book, The Orphaned 00:08:39.269 --> 00:08:42.230 Land. New Mexico's environment since the Manhattan 00:08:42.230 --> 00:08:45.210 Project. Such a heavy title. It is. And now, 00:08:45.210 --> 00:08:46.870 before we dive into the contents of this book, 00:08:46.889 --> 00:08:48.789 I really want to make it unequivocally clear 00:08:48.789 --> 00:08:50.809 to you listening. Yes, important disclaimer here. 00:08:50.990 --> 00:08:54.529 We are strictly reporting the historical analysis 00:08:54.529 --> 00:08:57.169 and the arguments presented in Price's text regarding 00:08:57.169 --> 00:08:59.250 the military industrial complex and corporate 00:08:59.250 --> 00:09:01.769 pollution. Right. We are not taking any political 00:09:01.769 --> 00:09:04.830 sides, nor are we endorsing a specific environmental 00:09:04.830 --> 00:09:07.730 platform. Our role today is just to synthesize 00:09:07.730 --> 00:09:11.490 how Price utilized years of his own journalistic 00:09:11.490 --> 00:09:14.250 observations and archival research to formulate 00:09:14.250 --> 00:09:16.809 his thesis. And the methodology behind the orphan 00:09:16.809 --> 00:09:20.110 land is staggering. I mean, Price analyzed half 00:09:20.110 --> 00:09:22.730 a century of newspaper articles, government reports, 00:09:22.809 --> 00:09:26.110 and environmental data to expose the toll of 00:09:26.110 --> 00:09:29.110 military munitions testing, uranium mining, and 00:09:29.110 --> 00:09:31.769 just unsustainable population growth. The scale 00:09:31.769 --> 00:09:34.850 of it is hard to grasp. It really is. Yeah. To 00:09:34.850 --> 00:09:38.230 understand the scale, The book documents 2 ,100 00:09:38.230 --> 00:09:41.289 waste sites at Los Alamos National Laboratories 00:09:41.289 --> 00:09:44.669 in northern New Mexico. 2 ,100. Yes. And another 00:09:44.669 --> 00:09:47.190 400 waste sites at Sandia National Laboratories 00:09:47.190 --> 00:09:50.909 in Albuquerque. Wow. And Price stated in an interview 00:09:50.909 --> 00:09:54.590 on KNMETV's New Mexico in Focus that the Manhattan 00:09:54.590 --> 00:09:56.929 Project both transformed and deformed the American 00:09:56.929 --> 00:09:59.149 West. Transformed and deformed. Yeah, because 00:09:59.149 --> 00:10:02.289 it elevated New Mexico into one of the intellectual 00:10:02.289 --> 00:10:04.750 and scientific epicenters of the Cold War, right? 00:10:04.750 --> 00:10:06.970 Drawing the absolute brightest minds on the planet. 00:10:07.740 --> 00:10:11.039 But it came at a massive, often hidden environmental 00:10:11.039 --> 00:10:15.080 cost. It's like inviting a brilliant, world -famous 00:10:15.080 --> 00:10:17.539 scientist to be your roommate. OK, I like this 00:10:17.539 --> 00:10:19.559 analogy. Right, like they make you look incredibly 00:10:19.559 --> 00:10:21.679 smart to all the neighbors, but you eventually 00:10:21.679 --> 00:10:24.120 realize they're leaving toxic radioactive trash 00:10:24.120 --> 00:10:25.879 in your living room that will persist for 10 00:10:25.879 --> 00:10:28.539 ,000 years. Yeah, that's exactly it. If we connect 00:10:28.539 --> 00:10:31.019 this to the bigger picture, the core argument 00:10:31.019 --> 00:10:33.539 in the orphan land is that New Mexico serves 00:10:33.539 --> 00:10:37.139 as a microcosm of global ecological degradation. 00:10:37.039 --> 00:10:41.419 A microcosm. Yes. Price uses the state to illustrate 00:10:41.419 --> 00:10:43.980 the mechanics of how multinational corporations 00:10:43.980 --> 00:10:47.460 and military interests extract resources from 00:10:47.460 --> 00:10:50.559 local environments. It is a story about the systematic 00:10:50.559 --> 00:10:53.659 strain on a fundamentally limited resource, which 00:10:53.659 --> 00:10:56.320 is water in the desert and the persistent breaches 00:10:56.320 --> 00:10:58.919 of public trust. But I want to challenge Price's 00:10:58.919 --> 00:11:01.659 thesis here for a second. Go ahead. Is it really 00:11:01.659 --> 00:11:05.440 fair to judge the desperate you know, existential 00:11:05.440 --> 00:11:08.500 actions of the Cold War military industrial complex 00:11:08.500 --> 00:11:12.139 through the lens of modern 21st century environmentalism. 00:11:12.360 --> 00:11:14.700 It's a valid question. Because during the 1940s 00:11:14.700 --> 00:11:16.779 and 50s, the government felt it was literally 00:11:16.779 --> 00:11:19.080 fighting for the survival of the free world. 00:11:19.519 --> 00:11:21.259 Environmental impact studies weren't exactly 00:11:21.259 --> 00:11:23.779 the top priority when you're facing down the 00:11:23.779 --> 00:11:25.840 threat of global nuclear annihilation, right? 00:11:25.919 --> 00:11:28.059 Well, historians grapple with that exact tension 00:11:28.059 --> 00:11:31.120 constantly. But Price's critique, as outlined 00:11:31.120 --> 00:11:33.580 in the text, isn't just retroactive finger pointing 00:11:33.580 --> 00:11:35.840 at the panic of World War II. Okay, what is it 00:11:35.840 --> 00:11:38.559 then? He is analyzing the momentum of those initial 00:11:38.559 --> 00:11:42.070 decisions. The military industrial complex effectively 00:11:42.070 --> 00:11:44.370 viewed the American Southwest as an empty sandbox. 00:11:44.529 --> 00:11:46.809 They looked at the vast expanses of the desert 00:11:46.809 --> 00:11:50.210 and saw a void where they could test their weapons 00:11:50.210 --> 00:11:52.909 and bury their waste. They didn't have his anthropological 00:11:52.909 --> 00:11:56.809 lens. Exactly the point. They lacked the anthropological 00:11:56.809 --> 00:11:59.149 framework Price had cultivated. They didn't see 00:11:59.149 --> 00:12:01.549 the ancient indigenous cultures that had stewarded 00:12:01.549 --> 00:12:04.409 the land for millennia. And they completely ignored 00:12:04.409 --> 00:12:06.990 the profound fragility of the desert water table. 00:12:07.169 --> 00:12:10.169 Wow. And Price argues that this empty sandbox 00:12:10.169 --> 00:12:12.350 mentality didn't just stop when the Cold War 00:12:12.350 --> 00:12:15.210 ended. It established a really dangerous precedent 00:12:15.210 --> 00:12:18.190 for development planning that persisted for decades, 00:12:18.750 --> 00:12:20.970 basically normalizing the sacrifice of local 00:12:20.970 --> 00:12:23.429 ecosystems for the sake of abstract national 00:12:23.429 --> 00:12:26.070 or corporate interests. So he's truly documenting 00:12:26.070 --> 00:12:28.590 the physical life and death of his state's environment. 00:12:28.690 --> 00:12:31.230 He is. And the passion and rigor behind that 00:12:31.230 --> 00:12:34.269 journalism is exactly why he won the ACLU -NM 00:12:34.269 --> 00:12:36.470 First Amendment Award for Excellence in Journalism 00:12:36.470 --> 00:12:39.820 in 1996. And later, he won the Paul Bartlett 00:12:39.820 --> 00:12:42.240 Ray Peace Prize for lifetime achievement. All 00:12:42.240 --> 00:12:44.580 deserved. Yeah. But as we move into the later 00:12:44.580 --> 00:12:46.860 chapters of his life, the focus of his writing 00:12:46.860 --> 00:12:50.059 undergoes this really profound, deeply personal 00:12:50.059 --> 00:12:53.279 shift. It does. After spending decades fighting 00:12:53.279 --> 00:12:55.620 for the macro survival of the environment and 00:12:55.620 --> 00:12:58.580 the civic soul of Albuquerque, the lens pulls 00:12:58.580 --> 00:13:02.240 focus. Yeah. It moves from the massive geopolitical 00:13:02.240 --> 00:13:04.960 fallout of the atomic age all the way down to 00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:07.690 the micro survival of the individual. His work 00:13:07.690 --> 00:13:10.690 becomes a reflection on mortality, intimate collaboration, 00:13:11.269 --> 00:13:13.850 and the concept of rebirth. So what does this 00:13:13.850 --> 00:13:16.690 all mean? How does this shift manifest? Well, 00:13:16.750 --> 00:13:19.289 a massive part of this introspective era is directly 00:13:19.289 --> 00:13:22.470 tied to his wife. Rene Price. Right. They were 00:13:22.470 --> 00:13:26.110 married in 1969 and were fierce lifelong collaborators. 00:13:26.830 --> 00:13:28.850 Rene was an accomplished artist and starting 00:13:28.850 --> 00:13:31.409 in the early 1970s their professional and personal 00:13:31.409 --> 00:13:33.809 lives just merged completely. They worked side 00:13:33.809 --> 00:13:35.750 by side at Century magazine which he founded 00:13:35.750 --> 00:13:38.610 in the 80s. Yes and she created the visual covers 00:13:38.610 --> 00:13:41.450 for the majority of his books of poetry. Their 00:13:41.450 --> 00:13:43.629 disciplines were in this constant dialogue like 00:13:43.629 --> 00:13:46.830 his 2005 book of poetry Death Self prominently 00:13:46.830 --> 00:13:49.090 features her paintings. She wasn't just decorating 00:13:49.090 --> 00:13:51.789 his books, you know, her visual art was providing 00:13:51.789 --> 00:13:55.090 the atmospheric context for his words. They built 00:13:55.090 --> 00:13:57.789 this shared, unified legacy until she passed 00:13:57.789 --> 00:14:00.629 away in 2019. And the loss of a partner of 50 00:14:00.629 --> 00:14:03.409 years, I mean, that completely reorients a person's 00:14:03.409 --> 00:14:05.909 universe. Completely. In January 2021, at the 00:14:05.909 --> 00:14:09.730 age of 80, Price appeared on the KNME TV series, 00:14:09.990 --> 00:14:12.509 Caloris. Yeah. And he didn't go on television 00:14:12.509 --> 00:14:15.389 to talk about civic architecture or uranium mining. 00:14:15.809 --> 00:14:18.029 He went on to discuss the most universal human 00:14:18.029 --> 00:14:22.350 experience, dying. grief, and the agonizing process 00:14:22.350 --> 00:14:24.809 of coming back to life. He actually read from 00:14:24.809 --> 00:14:27.210 an unpublished poem titled Travel Notes on Coming 00:14:27.210 --> 00:14:29.610 Back to Life. Which is just beautiful. And his 00:14:29.610 --> 00:14:32.129 recent bibliography is entirely defined by this 00:14:32.129 --> 00:14:34.789 exploration of the internal frontier. He published 00:14:34.789 --> 00:14:37.129 a collection of selected poems spanning 2008 00:14:37.129 --> 00:14:40.389 to 2020 called Polishing the Mountain or Catching 00:14:40.389 --> 00:14:43.870 Balance Just in Time. In 2020 he released Innocence 00:14:43.870 --> 00:14:46.740 Regained. Christmas poems. Oh, which was a compilation 00:14:46.740 --> 00:14:48.919 of 50 years of intimate work. Exactly. And it 00:14:48.919 --> 00:14:50.779 became a finalist for the New Mexico and Arizona 00:14:50.779 --> 00:14:53.600 Book Awards. Yeah. And then came Lucretius and 00:14:53.600 --> 00:14:56.779 the Logic of Venus in 2023. And his upcoming 00:14:56.779 --> 00:14:59.779 poetry volume, which is scheduled for 2025, is 00:14:59.779 --> 00:15:02.700 titled... Orpheus the Healer. The mythological 00:15:02.700 --> 00:15:05.220 weight of that title is staggering. It really 00:15:05.220 --> 00:15:08.320 is because Orpheus is the legendary poet of Greek 00:15:08.320 --> 00:15:11.580 myth who is so consumed by grief that he literally 00:15:11.580 --> 00:15:13.639 travels down into the underworld to try and bring 00:15:13.639 --> 00:15:16.659 his wife, Eurydice, back to the land of the living. 00:15:16.759 --> 00:15:19.679 Right. His music is so beautiful, it temporarily 00:15:19.679 --> 00:15:22.600 suspends the torments of hell. You simply cannot 00:15:22.600 --> 00:15:25.000 separate a title like Orpheus the Healer from 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:27.600 the loss of Witte and Price's own meditations 00:15:27.600 --> 00:15:30.419 on attempting to heal through the power of verse. 00:15:30.620 --> 00:15:33.659 It's incredible. It proves that while Price really 00:15:33.659 --> 00:15:36.200 cherished the isolation of the desert, his art 00:15:36.200 --> 00:15:38.799 was fundamentally born of connection. Yeah. He 00:15:38.799 --> 00:15:40.679 was in constant conversation with the physical 00:15:40.679 --> 00:15:43.159 landscape, with the 500 authors he shepherded 00:15:43.159 --> 00:15:45.779 into print, with the thousands of citizens reading 00:15:45.779 --> 00:15:48.539 his weekly column, and most intimately with his 00:15:48.539 --> 00:15:50.980 wife. The legacy he built is a testament to the 00:15:50.980 --> 00:15:53.840 power of deliberate sustained attention. Which 00:15:53.840 --> 00:15:55.940 makes me wonder, and for you listening, think 00:15:55.940 --> 00:15:58.519 about this. How do the people you collaborate 00:15:58.519 --> 00:16:00.440 with, whether that's in your career, in your 00:16:00.440 --> 00:16:02.980 creative pursuits, or just in your daily life, 00:16:03.440 --> 00:16:05.539 shape the legacy you will eventually leave behind? 00:16:05.740 --> 00:16:09.299 Because Reni literally illustrated VB's words, 00:16:09.799 --> 00:16:12.320 intertwining her vision with his voice forever. 00:16:12.480 --> 00:16:15.320 Yeah. Let's take a step back and look at the 00:16:15.320 --> 00:16:16.980 entirety of the terrain we've covered today. 00:16:17.080 --> 00:16:19.460 You've covered a lot. We really have. We started 00:16:19.460 --> 00:16:22.200 with a young man born into the artificial glow 00:16:22.200 --> 00:16:25.279 of Los Angeles royalty. We watched him flee that 00:16:25.279 --> 00:16:28.519 manufactured reality for the stark unforgiving 00:16:28.519 --> 00:16:31.940 truth of the New Mexico desert in 1958. Right. 00:16:32.539 --> 00:16:35.039 We saw how a degree in anthropology equipped 00:16:35.039 --> 00:16:37.360 him with the framework to read the deep history 00:16:37.360 --> 00:16:39.919 of his new home, transforming him from a passive 00:16:39.919 --> 00:16:42.720 observer into a foundational pillar of a regional 00:16:42.720 --> 00:16:45.539 literary ecosystem. A literal aqueduct builder. 00:16:46.059 --> 00:16:49.779 Yes. We tracked the mind bending stamina of a 00:16:49.779 --> 00:16:53.740 50 year column. We unpacked his unflinching methodical 00:16:53.740 --> 00:16:56.539 exposure of the atomic age's toxic legacy in 00:16:56.539 --> 00:16:59.559 the orphaned land. And finally, we witnessed 00:16:59.559 --> 00:17:02.710 a poet turning his gaze inward, utilizing the 00:17:02.710 --> 00:17:05.329 mythic power of his craft to navigate the deepest 00:17:05.329 --> 00:17:08.710 grief and his own mortality. It is a master class 00:17:08.710 --> 00:17:10.970 in what happens when a human being refuses to 00:17:10.970 --> 00:17:13.390 look away. Yeah. And that brings up a final thought 00:17:13.390 --> 00:17:16.549 to consider. Early on in this deep dive, we noted 00:17:16.549 --> 00:17:19.329 that the source material emphasized Price's identification 00:17:19.329 --> 00:17:21.549 with New Mexico's isolation and eccentricity. 00:17:21.650 --> 00:17:24.049 Right. Well, we live in a modern world that is 00:17:24.049 --> 00:17:26.490 aggressively hyper -connected. We are driven 00:17:26.490 --> 00:17:29.029 by algorithms designed to smooth out our rough 00:17:29.029 --> 00:17:31.809 edges, encouraging us to just blend in, follow 00:17:31.809 --> 00:17:34.329 the prevailing trend, become easily categorizable 00:17:34.329 --> 00:17:36.750 data points. Definitely. It is, in many ways, 00:17:36.930 --> 00:17:38.990 the digital equivalent of the suffocating Hollywood 00:17:38.990 --> 00:17:41.509 machine price ran away from in the 1950s. The 00:17:41.509 --> 00:17:43.910 pressure to be universally palatable today is 00:17:43.910 --> 00:17:48.210 immense. So the question becomes, in our algorithm 00:17:48.210 --> 00:17:51.420 -driven reality, is finding our own personal 00:17:51.420 --> 00:17:54.579 New Mexico -like, a physical place, or perhaps 00:17:54.579 --> 00:17:57.460 just a fiercely protected mindset of deliberate 00:17:57.460 --> 00:18:00.460 isolation and eccentricity, is that the absolute 00:18:00.460 --> 00:18:03.519 prerequisite for cultivating a voice that actually 00:18:03.519 --> 00:18:06.539 matters. If you never disconnect from the relentless 00:18:06.539 --> 00:18:09.160 noise of the consensus, can you ever observe 00:18:09.160 --> 00:18:12.240 anything deeply enough to write about it with 00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:15.000 conviction for half a century? That's a great 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:18.619 point. You cannot write Choco Body or investigate 00:18:18.619 --> 00:18:21.380 the orphan land if your attention is constantly 00:18:21.380 --> 00:18:23.539 fractured by a social media feed. Right. You 00:18:23.539 --> 00:18:25.400 have to be willing to be a little eccentric. 00:18:25.579 --> 00:18:27.779 You have to be willing to sit in the quiet and 00:18:27.779 --> 00:18:30.079 read the bones of the landscape. Exactly. So 00:18:30.079 --> 00:18:31.980 tomorrow, when you walk out your front door, 00:18:32.299 --> 00:18:33.960 take a moment to look a little closer at your 00:18:33.960 --> 00:18:36.779 own surroundings. Look past the obvious everyday 00:18:36.779 --> 00:18:39.759 utility of your environment. Notice the architecture. 00:18:40.160 --> 00:18:42.299 Consider the hidden history buried in the dirt 00:18:42.299 --> 00:18:45.460 beneath the pavement. recognize the people actively 00:18:45.460 --> 00:18:48.559 shaping it. Because as the son of Hollywood's 00:18:48.559 --> 00:18:51.480 greatest horror villain proved, the most terrifying 00:18:51.480 --> 00:18:53.740 and beautiful things in this world aren't found 00:18:53.740 --> 00:18:56.359 on a silver screen. They are revealed when you 00:18:56.359 --> 00:18:58.799 finally decide to open your eyes to the stark, 00:18:59.200 --> 00:19:01.339 unvarnished reality of the place you choose to 00:19:01.339 --> 00:19:01.720 call home.