I Have Paid A Dear Price…

Posted on August 15, 2007 by Varg

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… for my tendency to rely on electronic media.

See, I haven’t read the Gambit in weeks. I read Nola.com instead of the Times-Picayune (the Web site is a sorry excuse for the real thing I know). Offbeat? I grab it when I see it. Where’ Yat? Where Y’aint!

Yes, I get my news from the old feed reader and Google. And I normally get it ad-free. Which means I often don’t know who’s coming or going in town.

And now I have paid an awful price for it. See, Neko Case played the other night and I have wanted to see her for years. Just after I moved back to New Orleans from San Diego, her album Blacklisted (so named because she is banned from the Grand Ole Opry) was the soundtrack to my errands and job shopping, it typified the zeitgeist.

Where does this mean world cast its cold eye
Who’s left to suffer long about you
Does your soul cast about like an old paper bag
Past empty lots and early graves
Those like you who lost their way
Murdered on the interstate
While the red bells rang like thunder

I have even considered driving hundreds of miles to catch a show. I love her wailing voice, her literate lyrics, her pin-up body, her brilliant hair. And how invigorating it would be to see the whole package in a small venue? Like Republic for example.

But I never even knew she was coming. And she played that show without me. She came. She went. And I’m still stuck in electronic media. Tonight she’s way up in North Carolina. Far, far away.

I guess I need to get out and press the flesh. Hope I don’t get shot. I hope I don’t melt. I hope I don’t get washed away by a tropical storm.

1 thought on “I Have Paid A Dear Price…”

RoRo says:

August 17, 2007 at 2:05 pm

Bummer, dude.
Sorry ya missed her.

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Rejoice!

I say that a lot. I sign many pieces with it. I do this because I believe our lives are a true happenstance. A brilliant occurence from nothingness. We are so rare. We are so unlikely. And simply being born isn’t enough. From there we must survive, endure. So each morning, after our Sun departs and is reborn again. Please, for the sake of your ancestors and the Universe in general, hoist that cup of joe up and say, “Rejoice.”

Ours is a soulful existence. No matter how many McMansions, polyester fabrics, auto-tunes, modified foods and social networks we surround ourselves with, we are all still native, passionate beings made of ancient matter. We are organic and we have soul.

Wood also has a warm, soulful quality. Wood has a memory. It retains smells, traumas, events. It even has a calendar. This is why I have chosen it as my medium, for its old soul. I like to think the wood in my work is in its third incarnation. First a tree, then a home and now art. If you have a room that needs a little soul, get a piece. A room can never have enough soul.

My inspiration and subject matter comes from many sources, among them: Humanism, old ballads, trickster tales, flora and fauna, science, myths and folklore, stringed instruments, brass bands, amber spirits, lady vocalists, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Some of my pieces are there just to make a short, simple statement about what’s important in life. Some are more diffuse and abstract in meaning. A personal drama, an enduring line from a poem or novel, a poignant song lyric, the legacy of an important person, a fleeting thought … these are the subjects of my art.

I use hearts often because they are a very abstract way of depicting the human soul without also employing the very subjective human form. The symbolic heart is an apt representation for a person’s experience and essence. A body can immediatly conjure happiness, sorrow, youth, age, anger, bliss. These emotions can get in the way. Sometimes it’s simply about the experience.

I am the son of a sailor and a social worker, the grandson of a gypsy, a dancer and a nurse. I spent my youth moving from port city to port city, watching a lot of road go by and reading World Book Encyclopedia. After my parents settled down on the Gulf Coast, I was a miscreant youth, destroying cars and taking the wrongs things too seriously and the right things not serious enough. Eventually I began replacing my imagination with experience.

I will use any salvaged wood but prefer swamp cypress and longleaf heartwood pine.

I despise waste. Particularly the waste of organic matter. Trees are magnificent. They were here before we arrived and they’ll be around after we are gone. I’m making an effort to save as much wood as possible. Creating art is fun too. But beyond communicating with folks, but beyond making money ad providing for myself, beyond rescuing flooded parts, beyond reveling in the ethereal aroma of heartpine that hasn’t seen the light of day in 400 years, beyond all that, I am trying to make a simple comment on waste.