This is the Zilker Park Tree of Lights in Austin, TX. Now eclipsed somewhat in fame by our Trail of Lights, each Christmas Holiday season this ‘tree’ is lit up and the community is invited to dance and play and be merry beneath it. (Sidenote, this ‘tree’ is built on the ‘Moontower’ from the movie Dazed and Confused).

This is the view from below. The spiral is instantly recognizable to any Austinite as the tradition is to go inside and spin, spin, spin whilst looking up – and trying in vain not to fall over from dizziness afterward. Young children will often be held and swung in circles by their parents. There are bonfires and hot chocolate and pretzels and all sorts of merchandise to purchase and core memories to be made.

My core memories.

This place is special to me, and I pointedly take people that are important to me to see it. We spin together and we make memories and Life. Just as I did with my father before, my mother, my family.

The fragments you are gathering in ART& are bits of those. They are putting together a message that is larger than itself, larger than the screen. It cannot be combined within the game, but must live outside of it, here, in you and in me.

This is my heaven, spinning under these lights. I’d wager you have a version of the same. These things can be expressed and shared through words, images, the experience itself. They can be communicated, but live larger in ourselves than any communication can convey. Maybe we can share a sense of it.

And maybe that’s enough.

–Ledbetter, 2023