coarse art: 2007

Hi Les,

Since you're looking and asking around everywhere, I thought I'd let you know that I am available as an art consultant. I'm here to help! I know how desperate you architects get because you put everything off until you Charretted an idea like unto death til you finally get consensus and then, you used up all your time and now you've got to do something even if all your ideas are DOA. Stand back! I will defibrillate anything! Big jolts are often necessary - especially for firms like yours with an "artsy" reputation. I know how careful and slow you have to work so that nothing you do stains or wobbles that house of cards (so to speak) of yours. Lot of money riding on that arty reputation. If word got out that there was some kind of "problem" with your artiness, you all would be ruined. I know, believe me! I've been ruined several times now. I know too that slow and careful can't get the job done. It'll keep you from reaching out and grabbing Art by the horns when you should! You're afraid. Paralyzed like. All you need is coupla bare wires zapping you in a sensitive region to stimulate you to move! Then you'll jump! Then you'll make a grab!

Its never too late to be redeemed by someone or to save yourself with the proper equipment! Even Jesus made the lame walk and the blind see. Its just a matter of perspective and motivation. You know what a sharp guy I was and accustomed to working in high voltage situations, with one finger in the wind and another on the switch, so you can believe me when I tell you I will do what I say, because I never lie and I'm always right! Plus I have double, yes double, the amount of "taste" receptors available to me than people that get too much oxygen in their blood.

You see Les, its dangerous to have too much oxygen available to your brain. It makes your brain overactive, I mean too active – too much thinking. Like using a muscle too much you can strain it and permanently cripple yourself. But worse than that is that all that activity always leads to speculations and questions. Big questions. Questions that can't be answered by anyone. Except maybe God. And when was the last time God called you up and gave you the answers to any of your Big Questions, Les? Never did, did he? Pure oxygen in your brain also leads to tastelessness. Oxygen is too pure – it doesn't taste like anything! It is "tasteless" Don't believe me? Go up in the mountains til you get above the nice warm brown layer of air that you can actually see. Now, take a deep breath. What does it smell like? Probably nothing, right? See what I mean? No taste! In fact, I believe that oxygen actually absorbs meaningful taste molecules out of the air. It actually kills taste! And that is not good for the appreciation of art, I say! I call people with too much air in their heads "airheads". Besides, Les, if God wanted us to have that much oxygen in our brains he wouldn't have invented smog or flavors! Plus he would have put a couple more air holes on the top somewhere. But he didn't! We are made to dwell in air that is chock full of tasty molecules. Air you can see! Air you can almost chew! Air that is as full of flavor as anything made in the best New Jersey food plant! So you can't have art that is tasteless, its gotta have flavor to be enjoyable! Unless you like art that is no fun and no flavor. Run away fast from that, Les, if you ask me! That's why I support what I do, the non-thinking man type art. Art you can sink your teeth into like a sandwich. Art which is fair and libertarian and none of that rarey, airy, fairy "fine" art stuff that you can only sniff up above everything else like on a mountain top or an ivory tower.

Les, I know you agree with me and I share your fear when I say we (I mean you and your firm with me as the leader of our team) need to wake up about how to tell Art apart. For one, there's your Fine Art. Which is fine - like tiny or pointy and shaved away down to a little nub, like a pencil point or like a single hair. I know you know a lot about this, especially the pencil part. Its been worked at and ground down and smoothed off until hardly anything is left. Its small! Usually you can't see it from across the room or down the block. Sometimes all that's left is an idea - the rest of it is invisible. All the good parts were rubbed off and left behind somewhere. And only a couple of people at the most can look at it at a time. You need a microscope or a special instrument to see it - and years of training. What about all those other people who want to see something so fine, so small? Most of them don't care, honestly. Why? Regular folk want art with some flesh on its bones. They don't want to look at some skeleton art where all you can see is the leftover idea and some wispy hairs. They want something juicy and nourishing that'll sustain them and increase their appetites. Two things here, Les: ever hear that a good appetite is a sign of health? Well it is. If your dog isn't eating you think he's sick, right? Well, if your dog eats with gusto, you think he's feeling good, right? Well the same thing is true with people and art. Art with flavor increases appetite and health. Simple.

Another thing, Les: "You can't eat the scenery." Know what that means? Well it means that a pretty landscape is just an extra aesthetic idea that has no practical value to someone that has to eat to live. The key idea here is "idea". What is fine art full of? Ideas and not much else. So, what "you can't eat the scenery" means is that ideas are not nourishing - you can't eat them, they do not lead to an appetite and they do not lead to health. Simple.

Also Les, the people who say they like fine art are actually handicapped in a way that most regular folk are not. Fine art people have narrowed down taste receptors. They were either born that way or got too educated. They discriminate and make distinctions and insist on exact definitions and each time they do, a taste receptor dies. Finally after making finer and finer distinctions about what art is, they're left with only one very sharp and very fine receptor that they can use to see art. Who wants to be like that - narrow down their taste ability to almost nothing on purpose? Sick puppies, that's who!

I'd like to point out too, that fine art being so slim and fine, is not going to stand up to any kind of weather without special help all the time. Its like a sickly child and has to be nursed along until it can run and play with the other kids. Only fine art will never get healthy and never run with the other kids - it just keeps getting slimmer and finer and more see-through and less flavorful all the time... Until one day it'll just disappear out of its Sick Bed without a sound or smell. Just faded away. Sad. 

I'm right when I point out that with fine art you have what they carelessly call an "original". First, I want to know what they mean when they say "original"? I haven't seen an original work of art since I was in second grade. We made it every day! Now that was original art! We had never heard of any of the "isms", so we didn't know what we were or were not supposed to do. Bless our little hearts! Besides, if they mean by "original" that it's the first one made or the only one made, I know I speak for millions when I say: who wants to have something there's only one of anyway? If it wasn't a mistake they would have made more of them, right? 

And then there's your Coarse Art. Its easy to see, its tough and weather is good for it - weather is actually part of it - the worse the weather, the better the art! Coarse art, as you may know from your studies is present all around us, everyday, like Phlogiston which is the stuff between all stuff that keeps everything separate. It is not elitist - its the same for you as it is for Jackie Chan as it is for a George Bush - no matter about your bad education, lack of social status, level of intoxication or degree of personal hygiene, coarse art is readily available, if you're willing to take it in and live full and free. It is the very fabric of our lives. We can't live without it because it IS us, in fact! It is what we eat, wear, breathe, the noises we make, our skin conditions, everything we use (and abuse), everything we create that there is more than one of, it is where we walk, what we emit, and what we actually think and sometimes accidentally say and what we do say that we don't mean, and it is Freudian Slips, banana peels and Tourette's Syndrome and toupees too. You get the idea, I bet. But if you're feeling slow or your grip is weak, we'll talk about it more later when you're feeling better.  No matter about how well you don't understand the truth about art, Les, the point is and all you really need to know is that I understand it, and I am the expert, and I am selling it! 

You may ask, "Well, Hank, why should I buy this coarse-art from you when I can go pick it or grind it for myself if it really is everywhere around me?" The answer of course is that you can! Go ahead! If you have the time and your head is set on straight and you know how to look. But my humble opinion is that it'll take you years to get to where I am now. After all, you're a trained architect for cripesake! You've got to unlearn quite a lot to even begin! You're not just a late starter, but with all that mind-channeling that's happened to you, you're almost hopelessly handicapped. Its like you have one hand and one leg tied behind your back and you wear glasses that have tape on the lenses with only tiny little pinholes to see out of. And you think you can start running through the night woods of coarse art? You're going to faceplant into a tree right off! And then you'll be down and out of the game! To pursue coarse art collecting properly you've got to able to run full speed in the dark no matter where you get taken - to find the forest in spite of the trees, up the creek, strung out, broke, hung up on, holes in your soles and threadbare soul. Angels get scarce and mean. It is noisy and confusing and thirsty work (and as you know, most places, bars don't stay open all night when you most need them). You up for all that? Then go ahead! I'll try not to laugh if I see you laying dazed on the ground, lost and sad. Or, you can choose me to lead you by leash and the one small taste receptor I detected remaining left to you to the paradise of coarse art that usually only animals can experience in a meaningful way. 

I will customize a coarse art collection for you of any size/amount/density/albedo and proclivity/perversion/rarity that you can afford. My rates are based on volume: 0 - 1,000 is $1,000.00; 0 - 5,000 is $4,500; 0 - 10,000 is $8,500; and so on. 

As you can see, the more you buy, the more you save! Think of the backslapping you'll get from your comrades at work when they understand the breadth and depth of your taste, thrift and good sense! You will be like an ocean of wisdom to them! They are just like little krill and you carry them where you want. Awesome! So sharpen up your Spectrograph, squeegee off your night vision goggles, drink plenty of fluids, don't eat for 24 hours prior and get your "goat on" for some COARSE ART COLLECTING!!! Awright!  And remember: if you stop and smell the roses, that ain't oxygen you're finding so agreeable! Its flavor! 

Yer humble merchant, Henry of Hanging Swamp

List of criteria for appropriate, non-hurtful, renewable, sustainable, useful technology:

*a new tool should be cheaper, smaller and better than the one it replaces, but only if the tool it replaces needs improving.

*a new tool should use less energy - that energy should be renewable - and definitely not battery operated.

*a new tool should ideally be user-repairable, and definitely not disposable or of very limited life-span, or cheaply made.

*a new tool should come from a small local shop.

*a new tool should not replace or disrupt any good tool that already exists.

*a new tool should not disrupt family and community relationships especially those that embrace all other species and the
ecosystems on which they, and we depend.

*a new tool should take into account the interests of at least the next seven generations.

These are not really just Rules For Tools. They can serve as a template for everything we use and everything we do. Apply these criteria to your everyday life - especially when contemplating shopping - including food shopping. If we all ran through this list every time before we bought anything how might things be different? Better? It is an interesting exercise to see how many of these criteria one can achieve. It is also interesting to note how many of these criteria apply to any of the things we use. Is there anything in your life that conforms to ALL of these criteria? Should these criteria be applied to aesthetics?