Rose on Mo

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Varg

Chris Rose on Ashley…

Tribute to Ashley Morris the blogger next door

I read many more touching tributes to the Big Saint AshMo over the last week or so but I appreciate the sentiment. I just wish he would have left out the part about being found dead in a hotel room. Makes him sound like some wrestler and not a father of three getting his departed mother’s affairs in order. Your average reader isn’t going to think critically about that.

But thanks for recognizing Dr. Morris Chris.

Also, I guess “douchebag” is fine by the standards and practices of the Times-Picayune. I’d love to see more of its application in the Op-Ed pages.

Best line: “I had left the Drudge Report and Perez Hilton behind forever”

2 thoughts on “Rose on Mo”

dillyberto says:

April 16, 2008 at 10:01 am

I appreciate your heartfelt commentary on this one so close to home.

I don’t think Chris Rose gets out enough to write about the community.

I enjoy Angus more because I see him out. He is an a$$h0le who will share anything with other a$$h0les.

We must cultivate this Rose character now that we know he reads blogs.
Varg says:

April 16, 2008 at 10:29 am

The thing is, I don’t want the readers of his article thinking the “cranks and misanthropes” who blog are anything similar to the cranks and misanthropes who populate the commentators of your average Nola.com story. There is a certain amount of critical thought that goes into many blog posts. Of course, there are also childish Photoshops of Bears fans too! I guess what I am saying is being generalized as a misanthrope is a little off base, especially considering that I, like Ashley and many, many more of us, rail against the misanthropy of crooked and impotent politicians, bigoted citizens and criminally wasteful local, state and federal institutions. And we celebrate life in the process. That’s what I saw at Ashley’s funeral and what I see on an average day in the blogosphere.

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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.