What Happens In Vegas Creates Echoes . . .

Wherein your humble author wanders around Vegas for a few days, catches a show, and returns with some thoughts.

I’ve been totally distracted by Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality this morning. Guidara took over the iconic Eleven Madison Park restaurant in New York City when it was a struggling two-star brasserie, and over the next decade, transformed it into a dining experience that was gleefully called “the best restaurant in the world.” This book is the stoy of how he did it. Well, transformed into life lessons that we can all appreciate.

Will Guider’s Unreasonable Hospitality, a fascinating read about going all in.

Like I mentioned, I keep opening the book and reading a few pages. Like, his note on the dessert cart. No one likes to order dessert in a restaurant because we all know A) it’s calories no one needs (unless it is creme brulé), and B) it adds another three-quarters hour to your dining experience. Guidara couldn’t do anything about A because, duh, it’s dessert, but he solved the B problem by putting the sweet goodies on a cart and rolling it up to the table. “Oh, that one looks good.” Boom! “There you go.”

That bit and the Once Inch Rule and the differences between frugality and necessity are giving me some things to think about today.

Well, more things to think about. My head is already quite full.

Yes, it looks like someone left a marble lying near the Strip, but Las Vegas’s The Sphere is a non-stop light show and not always in a good way.

I was in Las Vegas last week for 20Books to 50K, the yearly conference where indie writers get together and reinvent the business. I’ve known about the conference for awhile, but haven’t made the effort because . . . well, because I was caught up in the old ways of doing things, which haven’t been working out all that well for me recently. And so, yeah, midday on the second day, my brain blew a gasket and I had to go sit in the corner and regroup.

And then I went to a show, and then I started back in with the basics. And there’s a lot to process and figure out. But that’s the work, right? Always figuring out how to get better at doing things.

The theater for Ká is filled with three layers of gantries and walkways which provide for an immersive experience.

I saw Cirque du Soleil’s Ká, which follows a loose story about a pair of twins who get separated, and over the course of many adventures, find another again and help resolve some differences between several warring factions. The theater is amazing. The sets is amazing. The aerialists, acrobats, and dancers were all amazing. I mean, it’s Vegas. This sort of spectacle is expected, but this show has been running for twenty years. Twenty! And they did things with sets and lights that made me giddy with delight.

As I turn more and more into an old man waving his cane at the world, I find myself less and less interested in climbing all the way up to the roof in order to shout at y’all about how cool a thing was. Your experience won’t match my experience, especially if I’m all “yougottaseeit! yougottaseeit! go! go! goseeit!” I needed an escape that evening, and Ká provided—immensely—and my head still sings with the delight it provided me. But I’m not sure I’m capable of properly communicating my experience. Nor am I sure I need to try.

All of which is to say: your mileage may vary, but seriously, yougottaseeit.

Neu retro jazz lounge music is all you ever need to escape the hustle and bustle.

Walking around the Strip can be a tedious exercise is people-dodging, but I found Sparkle Division’s Foxy a delightful diversion as I was ducking and dodging. William Basinki has been making hauntological records for many years, exploring the lingering decay of tape hiss from thirty years ago. Sparkle Division, a collaboration between Basinki and his new studio assistant, is a loungey, jazzy thing, but with some bristling drum and bass and a more than a touch of insouciant glockenspiel. Foxy reminds me of the Señor Coconut records Uwe Schmidt did after moving to Santiago, Chile. It’s Latin-infused cocktail music as you dust up the floor with some disco-tango cha-cha-cha.

And I’ll leave you with some pictures of carpets and wallpaper and other textures because I like noticing how the environment has been crafted to color your mood. And I like thinking about the entirety of the experience. You know, the unreasonable bits.

The carpet at the Bellagio Casino.

Hotel room wallpaper.

The elusive writer, reflected in the outer walls of The Cabinet of Curiosities, one of those bars which you have to explore to find . . .