Why I'm Not In PR

My alternate hed for this was: "Well, That Was Weird"

October 16 was my last post here, and that day I had a remarkable 38 views.  38.  That's like five times my normal rate.  It's back down to the normal half-dozen or so now.

On that day, I did a post referring to a post I did the same day on my "phlog," The Guy with the Leica.  I was actually pretty proud of that post, a series of pictures shot at Jimmy "The Boogie Woogie Man" Valiant's wrestling camp.  Obviously, I thought, someone hit that in a Google search on pro wrestling or something, and I had an unusual surge of viewers who normally wouldn't have seen my stuff.  Perfect sense, right?  Except that Guy wth the Leica had ... 0 (as in "zero") views that day.

So what does it mean?

Two days before that, I did a post on artist Cy Twombly's studio here in Lexington.  Is that what caused the jump?  Did I drive people to my site with a reference to Van Gogh?  Twombly? Lexington?  If so, why did it take two days?  Who Knows?!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I quit PR after one short year in that business.  I don't know why people do things.  I just know what interests me .... and if you read this, you're just along for the ride.

Another Project Slips By ...

There's a story that, when Van Gogh committed suicide, his landlord in Arles was furious.  It was bad enough that he had to put up with the crazy artist who's rent was uneven at best (Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime) but the lunatic had painted all over his walls.  In addition to everything else, now he was going to have to pay for all these crazy drawings to be painted over.

Van Gogh's bedroom, as he painted it in 1889.

In the 20th Century there was another artist, Cy Twombly.  He did significantly better than Van Gogh.   (At a Southeby's auction in May, a page full of scribbles done by him in 1971 over housepaint on a piece of card about 16 by 20 inches sold for a little over $2 and a quarter million.)  Twombly died a couple of years ago, and one would think the price would be significantly elevated as a result, but his work has sold in the millions for years.

For $2,285,000 this too could be yours.

Twombly was originally from Lexington, Virginia, where I live now, and he maintained a home here where he would spend anywhere from a quarter to half the year.  The rest of his time was generally spent in Italy, where he preferred people thought he lived full time.  All the same, he had a nice home here and even rented a local storefront as a studio, where he would work.

When he died in July of 2011, the gallery and lawyers swooped in.  They had his assistant seal the studio, and strictly forbade any photos of the place.  I nonetheless was fortunate enough to befriend his assistant, and did a piece for WDBJ in Roanoke on Twombly of which I am unnaturally proud.  (The link has long since aged out of the system, I'm sorry to say.  I have it on tape still -- yes, actual, physical tape -- and should digitize and upload it here sometime.)

Butch, his assistant, let me into the studio, and we filmed his interview there.  I was forbidden to shoot the studio, but I stood Butch so that in the background, on the wall, were marks ... the paint that had smeared off the edge of the canvas Twombly had tacked to the walls as he worked.

The Last Twombly Paintings

Some time later, the gallery people took everything away, and the storefront has been available for rent for months now.  And for all that time, I have meant to call the agent and ask to be let in, just so I could photograph those marks.  A part of me wanted to do it for posterity, and a part of me thought they might be interesting abstract artworks in and of themselves.

But as I have gone past in the last few days, workers have appeared within ...

Shot today with my iPhone as I passed.

I fear the tragedy of Arles is being repeated.  A new owner has been found, and the last marks of Cy Twombly (you can see some quite clearly to the right of the ladder on the right) will be gone.  Frankly, I never could quite think of how to start the conversation with the realtor.

Once again, I must learn: when I have these ideas, I need to act.

The Ghost in the Machine

So in my quest to continue posting frequently, and also to avoid continuing to clean up the house, I was going through my old posts, and I found the one about getting into Cy Twombly's studio after his death.  As I said in the post, it produced a nice little piece, one I was and continue to be very proud of.  Unfortunately for me, I left WDBJ shortly after I did that to go to work for the Fox 21/27 Morning News, and so my hopes to rack up a few prizes for it were dashed.  So it goes ...

Anyway, I have it still on tape for my personal use, but I haven't seen the piece for a long time.  It runs over four minutes -- exceedingly long for a TV news story -- and has no narrator at all, yet I think tells a good history in an entertaining way.

So as I was looking at the post, I noticed I had hot linked to the video playout at WDBJ7.com ... and I got curious.  Would it still be there?

It is.  The entire page comes up, complete with a freeze frame in the video player ... but it doesn't seem to play.  Curious. like the aftershadow in your eye after a bright flash.  (Or like the frozen figures in Ray Bradbury's story in Martian Chronicles.  You know, the reverse shadows of the people charred into the house walls after a nuclear attack?)

Guess I'll just have to dig out that tape sometime ...