art consultant

Hi Les,

Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I was locked in a portmanteau for creative reasons.

I think that twisting and turning passages painted pink may lead to chambers of purple.
Good idea. Sounds like you "got your Goat on"! Does your baby show little nubs
on head yet? If not, when?

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 desparate you architects get

because you put everything off until you Charretted an idea like unto death - til you
finally get consensus, and then, Hang On Saint Christopher! - you used up all your time,
and now you've got to do something, even if all your ideas are D.O.A. 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 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! It'll blow right by you. You're afraid. Paralyzed like. All you
need is coupla bare wires zapping you in a sensitive region to stimulate you to move! Kick
those instincts in place! 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, another finger in a dike and another on a trigger, 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. I practice special techniques that keep my oxygen as low as can be without sudden death.

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? Stop wasting oxygen on questions! Pure oxygen in your brain also leads to tastelessness. How? Well, 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? What does it taste 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 call people who breathe too much oxygen - them that take 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, or maybe another nose on the top of a long pole-like thing that would be above the flavor layer. But he didn't! We are specially 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 meat 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 - or gone. 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. But what about all those other people who want to see something so fine, so small? Well there isn't a lot of people who do. And them that say they do are airheads anyhow and they just don't know yet that they really don't. Most people don't care, honestly. Why? Regular folk want art with some flesh on its bones. They want visceral and humid and wobbly and squeaky. They want art that will knock them up and knock them down when it runs off to Mexicali with Gramma. They don't want to look at some skeleton art where all you can see is the leftover idea and some wispy hairs - where the "artist" tells you to "imagine the wind". Fie! They want the pencil and not the point! They want something juicy and nourishing that'll sustain them and increase their appetites. They want something they can hold in their hand, or stab something with - a tool they can understand, like a pencil or something wobbly like a big sandwich.

Two more things here, Les, begging your indulgence, kind man: 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, yep! 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. That's why
so many fine art people are so skinny and wasting away.

Also Les, the people who say they like fine art are actually handicapped in a way that most
regular folk are not. Poor things! Fine art people have narrowed-down taste receptors.
They were either born that way like with a birth-defect or their parents fell asleep at
the wheel and accidentally let them got too educated. Either way, its like the ancient Chinese
women's feet binding born small and tied up to stay small - kinda creepy and unnatural.
Maybe that's why fine art people walk funny? Fine art problems are both the result of nature
and nurture, you might say. Fine art lovers, they discriminate and make distinctions and
insist on exact definitions; and each time they do, a taste receptor dies. But it doesn't
hurt much, so they don't know. 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 - narrowing down their taste ability to almost nothing on
purpose? Sick puppies, that's who!

By the by, Les, for insurance purposes, I'd like to point out too, that fine art being so
slim and fine and all, is not going to stand up to any kind of weather without special
help all the time. Its like a sickly child that has to be nursed along until it can run and play
with the other kids, like God intended. Only thing is, 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 more unnatural and less flavorful all the time... Until one day it'll just disappear out
of its Sick Bed without a sound or smell. Poof! Just faded away. So Sad.

Here's a couple more problems: I'm right when I point out that with fine art you have what
they call an "original", right?. First, I want to know what they mean when they say "original"? If they mean "never before seen on Earth", I have to testify that I haven't seen
an original work of art since I was in second grade, and I've been here on Earth almost the
whole time, and paying attention all the while too! In second grade we made "original" art
every day! We never heard of any of the "isms" (including the critic-ism), so we didn't know
what we were or were not supposed to do. Bless our little hearts! We were true naifs. 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? Break it or lose it, and its gone for good - no WalMart on Heaven or Earth carries a replacement! Anyhow, seems to me that if it wasn't a mistake, they would have made more of them, right?

And then 'course, 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 through both barrels 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. Don't worry, I'll speak s-l-o-w-l-y, but loudly so you can follow.

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, which is 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