Intermission and Artifacts
Varhaus Background
Whew! I need a minute to breathe.
I’ve been going hard about this Varhaus story. Thanks a million for reading.
I’ve been living the story I’ve been telling you for ten years. It asks lots of questions. There are many themes. The problem that bothered me the until a couple weeks ago? I could not separate the themes and ideas from each other, or myself.
I have been writing Million Dollar Garage for one year, this week. Including Bento Wiz and this article, I have submitted 240 different pieces. 340 people subscribe to this publication, of which, about half are actively reading the Varhaus serial.
I thought I could attract more people in one year. Though I was working hard on the submissions and marketing (sort of hard on the marketing), and though I have been pretty darn consistent, I suspected something was missing.
There was something that you didn’t know that I had failed to say. My tone was off. Many times, what I thought to be good writing was essentially ignored.
I told you about the pop art gallery I made: Angels and Abstracts. It was great! However, the more people I spoke with, the more I felt like an alien. People are too busy to hear a difficult thing told the slow way.
I need to show people, not tell them. So I decided to build my dream, first on paper and then in actuality.
Varhaus is at once a story and a pitch. The question I ask myself is…
what if someone let me…
Artifact No. 1
Artifact No. 2
Here’s a little poem I wrote this weekend. No pic, just text. It was viewed a ton on facebook. It received little interaction. I believe that this natural gentrification. Not the pejorative, but the natural steps of renewal. I don’t intend to impugn any of the players in this cycle, only to say it is a cycle. Maybe the artist receives too much credit in this little ditty, but he is often forgotten.
Nobody in this town will believe me.
The artist comes first. Then the little coffee shop. The convenience store. A new builder trying his hand at making some domiciles. A brewery needing to spend resources on equipment and raw material, not NNN. Synergy of makers. Critical mass. Small development. Someone buys a city block because it’s still cheap. Rumblings of activity. A vlog article. Did you hear? City zoning to leverage taxation. Big bank takes little bank.
The artist walks to first base. The rest think they hit a triple.
They travel to new stadiums and try to duplicate the big inning without the lead-off hitter.
Artifact No. 3
Artifact No. 4
Here’s something not so nice. I have had it on my desk for almost 25 years. When I read it then, I thought: “yes! that’s how you tell them.” Now, while I still respect the argument, and FD is still the champion, It makes me cringe a little. Just a little.
“I will proceed to explain why I specially wished to make him look a fool. That my motive power is hate, I do not attempt to conceal. I have felt that before dying (and I am dying, however much fatter I may appear to you), I must absolutely make a fool of, at least, one of that class of men which has dogged me all my life, which I hate so cordially, and which is so prominently represented by your much esteemed brother. I should not enjoy paradise nearly so much without having done this first. I hate you, Gavrila Ardalionovitch, solely (this may seem curious to you, but I repeat)—solely because you are the type, and incarnation, and head, and crown of the most impudent, the most self-satisfied, the most vulgar and detestable form of commonplaceness. You are ordinary of the ordinary; you have no chance of ever fathering the pettiest idea of your own. And yet you are as jealous and conceited as you can possibly be; you consider yourself a great genius.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (1869) Ippolit Terentyev to Gavrila Ivolgin, Part IV, Chapter 2
Artifact No. 5
Artifact Zero
If you have not begun to read Varhaus, start here. If you know someone that may be interested, please share the story with them. They’re gonna need to catch up, find out how we do things around here, if they want to travel to NOLA with us on Sunday. Beignets and Beads for everyone!
I’m not sure how to answer the poll. I want to know more about all of it. But probably The Rosary Shed, because, well…you know.