One of the things that’s great and maddening about creating anything artistic is you never know what might happen with it.

Something, nothing or anything in between. 

A script for a play, movie or television series can sit in a drawer.

A song might never be heard.

A painting or photograph might never be seen.

A novel might never be…

Well, you get the idea.

Of course, all of these things meet the eyes or gaze of at least one person, the artist.  And usually a bunch more.  But after that, it’s anyone’s guess.  The number could be in the hundreds, thousands or millions.

This weekend I went to something pretty much indescribable.  Though, not really.  Simply put, it was…

An amusement park.

Well,  an art installation that featured parts of an amusement park that was last seen in 1987 for a few months in Hamburg, Germany.

Actually, that’s the only time it was EVER seen.

But now there were fun-houses, Ferris wheel rides, painted backdrops, sculptures, ornate masks, vintage posters, games and T-shirts, as well as merry-go-rounds, mock enchanted trees, a shooting gallery and even a fake wedding chapel.

Sounds a bit… juvenile?……pretentious? ….Avant garde?

Or something that some of you might be interested in but likely nothing most of you would get up and out of your homes in order to go see.

Now, what if I told you that:

Drake (Note: Yeah, that guy.  The rapper) and his production company spent about $100 million to get this thing out of storage and refurbished in order for it to be displayed until mid-May in Los Angeles?

And then, what if I added that the designers of these colorful, life-size amusement park doo-dads, stuffed into shipping containers and crates and stored in  a 50,000 square foot warehouse in Germany and then Texas for three-and-a-half-decades, unseen by anyone, were designed by such renowned artists as:

Salvador Dali

Keith Haring

Jean-Michel Basquiat

David Hockney

Roy Lichtenstein

As well as:

More than a dozen others of European and American renown?

And…

Featured original music from both Miles Davis and Philip Glass.

Would it now suddenly all seem A LOT more interesting???

Yeah, it did to me, too. 

It made me want to go.

Having spent several hours there, feeling like a kid again, it all made me wonder about….

Actually, let’s just say it made me wonder.  Created wonder.  Prompted cynical ole’ me, after a few hours, to leave there in

Wonder.

I can’t begin to tell the tale of how all this stuff got locked away for 35 years while a single painting from any one of the artists I chose to feature on separate lines above has sold in the mega millions.

Though it did prompt me to ask this question:

If the work of great KNOWN artists can be so easily packed away and forgotten, can you imagine how much other INCREDIBLE stuff has been locked away, not displayed, or has been left lying around or unnoticed right in front of all of our collective societal eyes???

And just when I thought it was impossible for me to be left in any more WONDER.

You can’t reference Luna, Luna without giving credit to Viennese multimedia artist Andre Heller, who came up with the idea and spearheaded a way to assemble the concept and players all those decades ago:

But here is a link to a 2022 NY Times Magazine article that details its origin story and the road to bringing it back to life far better than I could.

And another to the refurbished ORIGINAL, NOW ON DISPLAY IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES, and how to see it. 

You might not believe an amusement park like this can actually exist, or has ever existed, but it does. 

Nor —

Can you believe that you will only get to see it after 35 years because of Drake, but that is also true.  (Note: No, it does NOT matter if you don’t listen to his music, or hate his music, or don’t like him, or are somehow morally annoyed by his recent online D pix going viral (seriously?).  Here is merely a conduit here).

It’s not yet official, but if you can’t get to L.A., a guy who worked there told me it’s likely the whole thing is headed up to San Francisco, and then to New York, in the next year.

Here’s some photos of me and my friend Neil goofing around:

More importantly, here is a recent Luna, Luna piece done for CBS Sunday Morning that will actually take you inside and show you around real time.

Think of it all as a much-needed SMILE break.