diane keaton, stan and me

I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico a long time ago. 

time is interesting

you can bend it

you can fold it

and

you can learn that it is not linear. 

I’d say this was circa 1998.  My painter friend Stan and I were working in downtown Santa fe on a clear spring morning.  We were not painting this day. That morning we were putting up a sign for a business stan owned and I would help out from time to time. 

one day i will tell the story of stan talking to the rattlesnakes in the chamisa bushes on old santa fe trail.

so we were putting up this sign with a zia symbol and a perky woman with a hat and camera came up and was photographing the sign we had just installed.  ‘I like that symbol’ she said.  her voice recognizable at once to me her beauty hidden behind sunglasses and a great hat.

standing before us was the actress diane keaton.

stan however did not recognize her and started a conversation telling us both the history of the symbol and it’s presence in new mexico. 

stan was from the south he talked slow, deliberate and had a southern sweetness always present, even though he was full of truth and grit. to this day I have a reverence for people from the south …when I hear the drawl it reminds me of my artist friend now progressed beyond life.

Our conversation with diane went to other subjects and I could tell she liked this casual encounter with two men of the arts that were full of painterly information, we talked about maynard dixon and other artists of the southwest. 

we said our goodbye’s and stan and I went back to his truck, on the way I said did you know that was diane keaton we were talking with? he said ‘no’ “but I thought she looked familiar”. 

santa fe cool on a warm spring morning that was stan and diane keaton.

A sky so blue and earthen adobe walls. I can still see the sign long gone though fresh in my minds eye.  She never knew who she was talking with we were young then, Stan would become a great painter and I a fumbling yet relentless artist.  

I’m glad I have that memory of the three of us on that downtown santa fe corner in the yellow sun spring of new mexico.