Reaction! Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return
The House of Eternal Return was nothing short of extraordinary. I was there for 6.5 hours and took only a 10 minute break. I was completely enraptured by the Selig/Pastore family story and overwhelmed by the plethora and detail of interactive, intergalactic lands extending out from a rather normal looking family home. But there was nothing “normal” about that house either. You could enter the house, see a kitchen, dining room table, a couple desk areas, but every space became a world of its own from the written stories on the tables to hallway lights emanating from inside a refrigerator. Come as an investigator looking to unpack the family story or come as an explorer (or both!) and you will be amazed. Just be sure to get there early :).
I cried while reading Piper’s diary. I sat in her and her husband Nicolae’s bedroom for probably an hour, paging through journal entries that gave me clues into the state of the Selig/Pastore family and how their son, Lex, had gone missing. I sat there for so long, that two parties came through murmuring about a statue until they realized it was me, a human being.
But what about the Selig/Pastore family. Are they human? Yes, but they were born of The Anomaly, which along with The Charter, has shaped humankind for eternity. Understand this, and you’ll begin to unravel the family’s relationship to the cosmos and how Lex is lost in Fog Space after experimenting with the very fabric of the universe, Sound.
I’ve split this article into two parts — Part I: the backstory and plot of House of Eternal Return followed by Part II: a reaction to the immersive art, where it helps but isn’t necessary to know the full story. Read whatever you fancy!
Part I
Backstory of The Anomaly and The Charter
There was once a single, sonic tone that represented all things. It was perfection itself. But perfection cannot stand the test of time, so from this unified sound, two forces were born: The Anomaly and the creatures of the shadows. The Anomaly is imperfection and uncertainty in the form of an eternally moving cloud of smoke and tentacles. The creatures of the shadows are black-suited bodies dedicated to keeping order and stillness. They band together to form The Charter, an inter-dimensional police force, to control the Anomaly’s chaotic essence. While The Charter and The Anomaly were born of the same tone, they now scream in harmonious pain, always at odds with one another.
The Charter knows there are only two likely outcomes from their relationship with The Anomaly — war or exile. But the lead agent understands that, like the creatures of the shadows, The Anomaly only wants to survive. While it spews directionless bits of itself into the ether, that is simply in its nature, nothing more and nothing less. As such, the lead agent proposes a compromise — The Anomaly lets them guide its essence so it can be formed with purpose and become more than it could ever be alone. This is the foundation of the Charter.
An ironic and heart-wrenching truth of The Anomaly is that, like the single sonic tone, it cannot last forever. As the lead Charter agent explains, entropy itself is containing her in a way that the Charter never could; she will die eventually after all of her essence has been exuded, leaving nothing but a dead battery. Beautiful and sad, the lead agent wonders, “how could it feel to slowly terminate yourself by creating what you love?”
The Charter does not control her essence directly but rather, wages a proxy war with The Anomaly by way of humans infected by her essence. The Charter uses hunger, disease, and brainwashing to pit humans against each other, killing millions in the process, and with that, disintegrating The Anomaly herself.
Though The Charter is ruthless and manipulative to no end, all in the name of order, the lead agent can’t help but yearn for unity once again. He even says he loves The Anomaly, though that’s not enough to change what it means for him to survive. Though they remain at odds, imagine if they were to join once more in a singular tone.
(I gathered all this from some of the documents you can read around the exhibit, but the most expansive information came from a series of 5 animated videos interspersed across multiple dimensions, like the one above.)
Plot of House of Eternal Return
This brings us to the plight of the Selig/Pastore family.
Emerson and Jean Selig are the parents of twins Piper and Lucius. Piper is married to Nicolae Pastore and they also have twins, Morgan and Lex.
They are of the Anomaly which means they are part of the force that is creative and chaotic in the universe. The Charter is not their friend, but only an active enemy to one family member, Lucius Selig, that is, until the very end. To understand that dynamic, let’s trace the events related to Emerson’s transducer.
Emerson has this transducer that’s gotten the family into all sorts of trouble over the years. For starters, he used it to immortalize their hamster, Nimsesku. It died then was brought back to life when Lucius and Piper were kids. Lucius, however, was caught in the crossfire of the transducer’s energy and became very sick and unconscious for days. He eventually came out of the incident with god-like powers. Lucius became an ego maniac, creating his own religion called Positive Mechanics and an inter-dimensional resort called Portals Bermuda. The Charter quickly learns of this abomination, and especially dislikes him “stealing” parts of dimensions to weave into his own resort. Eventually, The Charter locates him and blocks his mind from finding the resort or using his powers ever again. Lucius winds up squatting on Piper’s couch and luring her son, Lex, into reigniting Emerson’s old experiments to try to get his powers back. Lex tries the transducer on Lucius, but his powers do not come back; rather, Lex is sent into a sickness and fog like Lucius experienced as a kid and does not come out. He becomes lost in Fog Space, an intergalactic limbo.
You can imagine Piper’s anger and frustration with Lucius. She has now lost her one and only son and does not hold back in her diary. She demands her father Emerson help bring Lex out of this, and he gets right to it. But what he isn’t sure of is how. He may have brought Nimsesku back from the dead, but did he steal someone else’s hamster in another dimension to do so? The space time continuum is fragile, but he understands the serious bond between a mother and a son and won’t stand in between that. He sets up his transducer and they commence an “eternal return” event where the family gets sucked into the void to find Lex. In the final video about The Charter and The Anomaly, the lead Charter agent watches Piper unite with The Anomaly where she appears to disintegrate while she moves away, into the force through their refrigerator. Does this mean Piper is gone? Does this mean Lex is forever lost to Fog Space? Or will Anomaly shoot them back to earth as new essence and begin a new story?
Closing in on the event, The Charter had started keeping a close eye on the entire Selig/Pastore clan. The Charter is not able to stop the portal from opening and sends an agent to investigate the area once they are gone. The agent is overcome by the feeling and sounds of the home. He even removes his suit though the creative chaos corrodes his skin. He can feel the family at the dining room table, hear their voices. He follows one to Emerson’s desk where he finds a lit key hole and when he looks inside he is seemingly moved to madness, experiencing something he can’t put a word to, something beyond chaos, beyond The Charter and The Anomaly.
I believe it’s unity, it’s love, it’s what the family was building together that is stronger than the two forces born of the singular, sonic tone.
Part II
Reaction!
As a former theatrical sound designer and a lover of music, I really enjoyed that Sound was the foundation of the universe and how Nicolae, Emerson, and Lex utilized it to travel and discover intergalactic, ancient voices around them. Each space within House of Eternal Return had its own sonic vibes which mirrored or elevated the mood of the room. One that stands out to me is the freaky electronic music within a room of what I took to be, space animals materializing on Earth.
The main reason it stood out is because the catchy, kind of frenetic sound of the exhibit was opposite to the areas you could enter from. It immediately captured me and made me smile.
I wondered if the family’s hamster once entered Earth in a similar fashion, materializing from the ether until it took the form of Nimsesku’s dead body over 40 years ago.
Another room that was great for both solace and sound had Nicolae’s laser harp. You could find a smaller version of it in his bedroom upstairs, but the one I’m talking about is near the cereal alleyway and stage. The room was pitch black except for the laser harp itself with a central crystal that partially lit the room and strings of red lasers extending from the ceiling to the floor. Play the harp by running your hand through the lasers. I didn’t try this, but I’d bet it’d respond to you “plucking” the strings with your fingers.
A clip of Nicolae and Lex speaking was also playing in the room. While I didn’t catch what they were talking about, it made the room feel like one of their experiments. Nicolae had been showing Lex how to safely enter Fog Space using an interface he built with Emerson’s help. The reason you could see the lasers is because of fog in the room. Perhaps this room itself was Fog Space and Nicolae had been building the laser harp in another dimension.
I bet most people entering House of Eternal Return are aware of the tiny slide in the dryer and the portal within the refrigerator. Those photos have been all over the place online. While those were fun to experience in real life, what was really mesmerizing was the world the refrigerator led to: Portals Bermuda.
Portals Bermuda was a spiritual-cult resort founded by Lucius that spanned multiple dimensions but was ultimately cancelled by The Charter. That doesn’t mean, however, that it can’t be explored anymore. Enter the refrigerator and you’ll come across a hologram who details each portal you can enter: St Malibados, Todos 7, Murok-Inoo, and Viridian Heights. Exit the gateway and you’ll find each of them.
Enter St Malibados and you’ll notice something is wrong. The art seems to be melting from the wall and the vegetation is very dark — this is supposed to be the land of 10 beaches??
Enter Todos 7 and you’ll be in the arctic with a friendly looking Yeti.
Enter Murok-Inoo to find Lucius Crystals in what looks to be a Southwestern desert.
Both Murok-Inoo and Viridian Heights merge into a spectacular spacey forest where the world is your oyster. Tap on shells to change their colors and scale trees to find new dimensions.
What I gathered after experiencing the breadth of the space was that the house had been torn apart when the family chose to enter Fog Space to find Lex. The “Eternal Return” event ripped their house into multiple dimensions, which explains the presence of Portals Bermuda, extraterrestrial biology, and tons of artistic styles strewn all over the place. If the space and time continuum is fractured, why wouldn’t there be a room of ice-cream looking creatures, a kitchen straight out of those old Mickey Mouse shows, and a black fem universe, ya know?
I hope your takeaway is that, if you haven’t experienced House of Eternal Return, you book a trip ASAP. I truly think this is a place that anyone can enjoy whether you want to dive into investigating the family or simply frolick from room to room enjoying the multi-sensory experience. I will definitely be back.
