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2023.06.03 08:38 blaringbrunch4331 Jackson Memorial Funeral Home Recent Obituaries
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2023.06.03 08:06 ChanRob69 Is this normal? I've never taken a bereavement, but they need proof before it's even approved?
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2023.06.02 21:29 Nruiz43 I lost my best friend and it's all her fault
First off, I've (31m) never posted anything on Reddit before, I've only ever been a phantom browser (or listener for the few of us who listen to Slash), so if there are formatting errors, or if I've mucked this entire post, forgive me; but that's not what I'm here for so get bent, I'm dying to unload all of this. There's a lot to unpack here, so please bear with, and without further ado:
I'm currently dealing with the loss of my best friend James (27m) who successfully completed suicide a few weeks ago. I'm so unbelievably angry at his loss as he was one of the brightest most intelligent people I've ever known. A person who was too smart for his own good regularly led him down a dark path that I've talked him out of several times in the past. Before we get into the heart of the matter, I'd like to provide some insight to when it all started.
I've known James from our time in the Service together, when we were both assigned to perform military honors for veterans. We met back in 2016, and I'll admit, at first I was standoffish as I am with most new people I meet. After a few weeks we bonded over our disdain for the training regimen and requirements for new Honor Guard(HG) trainees. I wouldn't say we became fast friends, but we deepened our relationship over time with big dreams and even bigger goals. Talking about cars, preferably JDM, guns, technology, games, anime; actually, just everything. This man knew a lot about everything, and we found in eachother kindred spirits. Although he was much better at knowing what the best (in his opinion) of the best was, and what I should focus my efforts or should buy, and I trusted his knowledge. He really was the best.
We maintained a pretty good relationship over the next few years when I left the service in 2018 and moved back home to Ohio and he was left back in Illinois to finish out his service commitment. And during that time, we talked regularly, if not every day, then every other day. With some spotty communication between, we're guys, talking all the time isn't always necessary, and it got to the point of regular check-ins and talks about life and the bullshit going on. Mine being the transition from the military to civilian life, and his, just regular bullshit within the service, and whatever car he was dealing with at the time.
It wasn't until 2019 when things started to unravel, and he decided he wanted to be in a relationship with a woman Brenda (27f) that he'd met at the airport. I'm not sure when he had, but it might've been a few years to a few months prior to the autumn of 2019. The only significance of Brenda was that James had managed to hook up with her AT THE AIRPORT. I dogged on him for being such a smooth talker and having the ability to do that. To my knowledge, it was a one and done thing, but he maintained contact with her, which led to them developing a relationship, and being "official" the autumn of 2019.
After three months, a total of 90 fucking days, this man was smitten. To the point of which he was so torn up about her getting cold feet and breaking up with him. Something I've never seen before from this man who basically had a revolving door with women in the past. I had to talk him off of the figurative ledge because of how much he felt he gave her. Nonetheless, they ended back together, and he moved her into his house to live with him and a long-time roommate Neil (25m). James introduced Neil and I and we've been pretty good friends, but nothing as significant as James and I. Either way we were all pretty close, and both Neil and I advised against staying with Brenda, as she was, as far as we could tell, unbalanced. That was putting it lightly.
This cycle of being together and not being together, and getting angry over petty things, begins to impact the relationship between James and I. To the point where I can't just talk about the bullshit between him and Brenda. So I stopped talking to him for a few months in 2020 and tell him off about how I can't listen to him bitch about his girl anymore.
Either way, we begin talking later on in 2020 and things are friendly as usual, with the exception that we don't really talk too much about Brenda anymore. Which is a nice change of pace. Anyway, from the time I was in the service, my experience translates to driving trucks. So what did I do when I got out? I drove trucks, which sucks, but pays well. So I've always nagged James for what I should do as far as getting out of trucking, and in to computers and IT. I've tried my hand at it in the past when I tried to get my BS in Comp. Sci. in 2019, which I failed miserably.
So back to trucking I went always looking for a way out, as I've got a wife and two sons, it makes it hard to raise a family and be present. So he maintains his relationship with Brenda and keeps it on the backburner for conversations, rarely bringing it up, all the way up into 2022 when he's been out of the service for two years, and has made a name for himself in the IT community. He came out to Ohio in Nov 2022 to buy some big ticket items for his own racing setup. He convinced me (without too much arm pulling) to drive out to St. Louis with him to visit our old digs. During this 6 hour drive we catch up on all the old bullshit and what's going on in his love life. The constant fighting, bickering, and me doing my best to cheer him up and let him know, that outside of what he's failing at in his relationship, he's got a pocket full of spades and is exceptionally successful at every other aspect of his life. I mean, what other person do you know who goes from making less than $40k a year to making over $600k in two years? Nonetheless, we also spent that entire time talking about what he currently does, and he set me on a pathway of learning, specifically books, that he said I should read. After I got back to my daily life, and read them; We talked about them, and he made sure I understood the concepts held within them, and oddly he said he'd get back to me.
This is just the surface stuff, what makes James an outright amazing person, is that he's always looking out for those close to him. He had so much pull at his current company, that he was able to make a special position just for me, as a "loyalty program" to get people to train who otherwise didn't have experience in his career field. The books he had me read were primers to see if I had the aptitude to take on this kind of training. The company signed me on at my current monthly rate (as of Dec. 2022) to come on and train exclusively and meet my commitments by the end of January. From then on, it was daily talks of knowledge this, or what experience you have in that. And daily life in general. I came to find out just how little I knew about how knowledgeable and smart James was, and a new appreciation for our friendship,
Where I was once his mentor in the service, he was now my mentor in the tech world. And he was brilliant. Things that would take a whole team months to do, he was capable of doing within a week. I saw him work magic, and was excited to see how I could graft his knowledge and experience into my own. In March, we had a work requirement to meetup at the work site (because IT is remote, duh) and meet with the team that our company supported. There was a whole fiasco and we got up to some of our old shenanigans, but everything was great with the exception of one thing: her. I hadn't asked the entire trip, and he had mentioned that this was the best he'd felt in years. I just didn't want to ask what the problem was, until the day we left to go back to our respective states. I'd come to find out, that the day before he'd left to come out for our trip, his now wife, had locked him out of the main portion of the house (luckily he has over 5000sq/ft house, so he made do with the "other half" as he called it) and I just listened as he lamented about all the garbage that happened prior to his departure. How he gave up everything; his interests, his desires, just to be around her more. How after everything he's sacrificed, he just wanted it to work. That he'd do anything for her, and all she did was spit in his face and shit all over his effort. This last argument he'd had with her before he'd left was all because of him wanting to go get tacos with some of his local friends. A simple disagreement that turned into a 3-day argument.
So things like this progress and he's talking to all the people he needs advice from. His pastor, his therapist, and they're all telling him to run from this woman. These things I've been telling him for years are all starting to come together, and I feel like I can finally take a breath. From hearing stories of how he's slept under his desk to avoid confrontation with her, how he works endlessly because she won't bother him while he works. I was so excited that divorce was now finally an option for him. Until finally she was moving out, and everything came crashing down.
Friday, May 12, 2023. It was work as usual, and he'd spent a little longer at work, and was talking about going out to play pool with a friend. So I ended up talking to him later that evening asking him how things were going, mostly just because I was bored and wanted someone to talk to. When he replied that he was "big sad" and I asked him what was going on. He told me that he was tricked into going out with his friend by Brenda. That the friend was convinced to ask James out by her, so that she could come by their house and move her things out. Which she had never done before, but was prone to leaving at the drop of a hat and going to her sister's house 1.5 hrs away. I expressed that I was sorry for what he had to go through, as I had also gone through a divorce years prior. That regardless if it was for the best, that it is still a painful process. The last thing he said to me: "Can't be mad about a loss that costs me the wins when I'm the one who made the bet" I replied, "Maybe not, but I can understand the loss still hurts."
That was the last thing I said to him at 0016. I'm so fucking mad, at him, at her, at everything. The entire situation, that I would be out there to help him, I joked about moving my family out there with him in that big ass house. That we'd buy property, hundreds and thousands of acres just to bullshit with, and do "hoodrat things with my friends." I texted him and called him Saturday to check on him, but figured he had a hangover, so I didn't want to bother but let him know that I would call a wellness check on him if I didn't hear back. So I called him a few more times on Sunday, which eventually lead to me calling the wellness check at 1421 on Mother's Day. Two hours later, at 1621 exactly, I get a phone call from a detective asking me questions about James. I thought he was in a snag with the police and was doing 180 on the freeway or something, or pulled some Eminem nonsnense. Did I fail to mention that Brenda claimed to be pregnant, and would use getting an abortion as a way to control James? No? Well it was one of the first things I told the detective after they asked me about him being depressed. I didn't understand why the questions were being asked, but they eventually came to tell me that upon their arrival, he was dead. The world snapped to a startling clarity, and I broke out into a cold sweat. I didn't think it could be possible, and my brain reeled at the rushing reality of it all. The sickening reality of it, that she didn't even care because she had already given up, had pulled her claws out of him. It was done, no new memories, no grand dreams, no future plans to conquer the world. But as we know, this is only just the beginning, the aftermath is where it all hurts more.
So his body had to be transported to his hometown on the other side of the country near the coast, from the OTHER side of the country. 3000 miles just to be put in the ground, all for his parents' sake. Which was nice, and a kind gesture, that Brenda allowed and a relatively beautiful ceremony. We show up the day James shows up, a 10 hour drive with no AC and the windows down. My wife and I both knew and loved James, so we were going to be there no matter what. I meet his dad for the first time, a topic James and I regularly talked about. How his father is the best person he knows, and would do anything for. I can see that now, and James' wife had sent a picture to my wife of one of their conversations, about how I reminded James of his dad. That shit broke my heart, and was hard to see, but I appreciated it. Although I think she reveled in twisting the knife. Anyway, come to find out from his dad, that Brenda allowed him to write the obituary, and as James' dad was finalizing it with his wife and James' sisters, Brenda took it and made changes and deleted the things she didn't like.
James' dad took us all around his hometown, showing us where he went to school, where they lived, and what he liked to do. He also took us out for lunch to a local place James liked. I've never felt so at home while not at home. We even got haircuts at James' dad's favorite barber. I met James' mother and sisters, and found that they share a lot of gestures and nuances that were just uncanny. It was good, although, terrifyingly sad. I'm so fucking glad Neil was there, dude was a rock.
The day of the funeral and memorial We got to say our final goodbyes, and there was a line of James' next of kin. Starting with his mother, and ending with his youngest sister. His wife sat separately and was laughing and joking before people started showing up. She adopted a somber and sorrowful set, when we locked eyes, I saw the poison, vitriol, and hate she had for me, and anyone else who cared about James. Her eyes looked like that of Bellatrix Lestrange. She didn't cry, once. It hurt to see someone James cared about so much, not care one lick at his loss. She didn't plan anything for this funeral, didn't appoint pallbearers, nothing. Fortunately, me, Neil, another roommate James had--Jesse, and some other close relatives of James, we raised him one last time. Everything was executed by his parents and was done wonderfully. At his burial site, he was given military honors, which he and I would joke as being terribly done, but for the masses, was acceptable. For military ceremonies like this, the next of kin gets the flag. And unfortunately, they were still married at the time of death. Which she received and treated like nothing so much as a burden. James' parents knew how vile she was and STILL invited her to attend a remembrance party in Honor of James. To which she ran off and never attended. This, this is still the easiest part of the entire process.
James parents are trying to file an injunction, but Brenda hasn't even filed the proper paperwork to begin the probate process. So there isn't even anything to file an injunction against! They want to be able to handle his estate, but can't. There's nothing to do, no memories to take. We fear that everything will be repossessed, foreclosed, and she will laugh her way to the bank to cash in on James' demise. I wish he'd had a will, or started the divorce process. I wish even more, that he was still here. For anyone out there who thinks you won't be missed, you will. For those who think no one will notice them gone, you will be noticed. I would rather talk to you for hours, than be at your grave. Please, reach out, ask for help, or just to talk. I'm sorry things get tough, but you have love and support here if you need it. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help, or talk you out of it. I love you man. Til Valhalla.
submitted by Nruiz43 to TrueOffMyChest [link] [comments]
I'm currently dealing with the loss of my best friend James (27m) who successfully completed suicide a few weeks ago. I'm so unbelievably angry at his loss as he was one of the brightest most intelligent people I've ever known. A person who was too smart for his own good regularly led him down a dark path that I've talked him out of several times in the past. Before we get into the heart of the matter, I'd like to provide some insight to when it all started.
I've known James from our time in the Service together, when we were both assigned to perform military honors for veterans. We met back in 2016, and I'll admit, at first I was standoffish as I am with most new people I meet. After a few weeks we bonded over our disdain for the training regimen and requirements for new Honor Guard(HG) trainees. I wouldn't say we became fast friends, but we deepened our relationship over time with big dreams and even bigger goals. Talking about cars, preferably JDM, guns, technology, games, anime; actually, just everything. This man knew a lot about everything, and we found in eachother kindred spirits. Although he was much better at knowing what the best (in his opinion) of the best was, and what I should focus my efforts or should buy, and I trusted his knowledge. He really was the best.
We maintained a pretty good relationship over the next few years when I left the service in 2018 and moved back home to Ohio and he was left back in Illinois to finish out his service commitment. And during that time, we talked regularly, if not every day, then every other day. With some spotty communication between, we're guys, talking all the time isn't always necessary, and it got to the point of regular check-ins and talks about life and the bullshit going on. Mine being the transition from the military to civilian life, and his, just regular bullshit within the service, and whatever car he was dealing with at the time.
It wasn't until 2019 when things started to unravel, and he decided he wanted to be in a relationship with a woman Brenda (27f) that he'd met at the airport. I'm not sure when he had, but it might've been a few years to a few months prior to the autumn of 2019. The only significance of Brenda was that James had managed to hook up with her AT THE AIRPORT. I dogged on him for being such a smooth talker and having the ability to do that. To my knowledge, it was a one and done thing, but he maintained contact with her, which led to them developing a relationship, and being "official" the autumn of 2019.
After three months, a total of 90 fucking days, this man was smitten. To the point of which he was so torn up about her getting cold feet and breaking up with him. Something I've never seen before from this man who basically had a revolving door with women in the past. I had to talk him off of the figurative ledge because of how much he felt he gave her. Nonetheless, they ended back together, and he moved her into his house to live with him and a long-time roommate Neil (25m). James introduced Neil and I and we've been pretty good friends, but nothing as significant as James and I. Either way we were all pretty close, and both Neil and I advised against staying with Brenda, as she was, as far as we could tell, unbalanced. That was putting it lightly.
This cycle of being together and not being together, and getting angry over petty things, begins to impact the relationship between James and I. To the point where I can't just talk about the bullshit between him and Brenda. So I stopped talking to him for a few months in 2020 and tell him off about how I can't listen to him bitch about his girl anymore.
Either way, we begin talking later on in 2020 and things are friendly as usual, with the exception that we don't really talk too much about Brenda anymore. Which is a nice change of pace. Anyway, from the time I was in the service, my experience translates to driving trucks. So what did I do when I got out? I drove trucks, which sucks, but pays well. So I've always nagged James for what I should do as far as getting out of trucking, and in to computers and IT. I've tried my hand at it in the past when I tried to get my BS in Comp. Sci. in 2019, which I failed miserably.
So back to trucking I went always looking for a way out, as I've got a wife and two sons, it makes it hard to raise a family and be present. So he maintains his relationship with Brenda and keeps it on the backburner for conversations, rarely bringing it up, all the way up into 2022 when he's been out of the service for two years, and has made a name for himself in the IT community. He came out to Ohio in Nov 2022 to buy some big ticket items for his own racing setup. He convinced me (without too much arm pulling) to drive out to St. Louis with him to visit our old digs. During this 6 hour drive we catch up on all the old bullshit and what's going on in his love life. The constant fighting, bickering, and me doing my best to cheer him up and let him know, that outside of what he's failing at in his relationship, he's got a pocket full of spades and is exceptionally successful at every other aspect of his life. I mean, what other person do you know who goes from making less than $40k a year to making over $600k in two years? Nonetheless, we also spent that entire time talking about what he currently does, and he set me on a pathway of learning, specifically books, that he said I should read. After I got back to my daily life, and read them; We talked about them, and he made sure I understood the concepts held within them, and oddly he said he'd get back to me.
This is just the surface stuff, what makes James an outright amazing person, is that he's always looking out for those close to him. He had so much pull at his current company, that he was able to make a special position just for me, as a "loyalty program" to get people to train who otherwise didn't have experience in his career field. The books he had me read were primers to see if I had the aptitude to take on this kind of training. The company signed me on at my current monthly rate (as of Dec. 2022) to come on and train exclusively and meet my commitments by the end of January. From then on, it was daily talks of knowledge this, or what experience you have in that. And daily life in general. I came to find out just how little I knew about how knowledgeable and smart James was, and a new appreciation for our friendship,
Where I was once his mentor in the service, he was now my mentor in the tech world. And he was brilliant. Things that would take a whole team months to do, he was capable of doing within a week. I saw him work magic, and was excited to see how I could graft his knowledge and experience into my own. In March, we had a work requirement to meetup at the work site (because IT is remote, duh) and meet with the team that our company supported. There was a whole fiasco and we got up to some of our old shenanigans, but everything was great with the exception of one thing: her. I hadn't asked the entire trip, and he had mentioned that this was the best he'd felt in years. I just didn't want to ask what the problem was, until the day we left to go back to our respective states. I'd come to find out, that the day before he'd left to come out for our trip, his now wife, had locked him out of the main portion of the house (luckily he has over 5000sq/ft house, so he made do with the "other half" as he called it) and I just listened as he lamented about all the garbage that happened prior to his departure. How he gave up everything; his interests, his desires, just to be around her more. How after everything he's sacrificed, he just wanted it to work. That he'd do anything for her, and all she did was spit in his face and shit all over his effort. This last argument he'd had with her before he'd left was all because of him wanting to go get tacos with some of his local friends. A simple disagreement that turned into a 3-day argument.
So things like this progress and he's talking to all the people he needs advice from. His pastor, his therapist, and they're all telling him to run from this woman. These things I've been telling him for years are all starting to come together, and I feel like I can finally take a breath. From hearing stories of how he's slept under his desk to avoid confrontation with her, how he works endlessly because she won't bother him while he works. I was so excited that divorce was now finally an option for him. Until finally she was moving out, and everything came crashing down.
Friday, May 12, 2023. It was work as usual, and he'd spent a little longer at work, and was talking about going out to play pool with a friend. So I ended up talking to him later that evening asking him how things were going, mostly just because I was bored and wanted someone to talk to. When he replied that he was "big sad" and I asked him what was going on. He told me that he was tricked into going out with his friend by Brenda. That the friend was convinced to ask James out by her, so that she could come by their house and move her things out. Which she had never done before, but was prone to leaving at the drop of a hat and going to her sister's house 1.5 hrs away. I expressed that I was sorry for what he had to go through, as I had also gone through a divorce years prior. That regardless if it was for the best, that it is still a painful process. The last thing he said to me: "Can't be mad about a loss that costs me the wins when I'm the one who made the bet" I replied, "Maybe not, but I can understand the loss still hurts."
That was the last thing I said to him at 0016. I'm so fucking mad, at him, at her, at everything. The entire situation, that I would be out there to help him, I joked about moving my family out there with him in that big ass house. That we'd buy property, hundreds and thousands of acres just to bullshit with, and do "hoodrat things with my friends." I texted him and called him Saturday to check on him, but figured he had a hangover, so I didn't want to bother but let him know that I would call a wellness check on him if I didn't hear back. So I called him a few more times on Sunday, which eventually lead to me calling the wellness check at 1421 on Mother's Day. Two hours later, at 1621 exactly, I get a phone call from a detective asking me questions about James. I thought he was in a snag with the police and was doing 180 on the freeway or something, or pulled some Eminem nonsnense. Did I fail to mention that Brenda claimed to be pregnant, and would use getting an abortion as a way to control James? No? Well it was one of the first things I told the detective after they asked me about him being depressed. I didn't understand why the questions were being asked, but they eventually came to tell me that upon their arrival, he was dead. The world snapped to a startling clarity, and I broke out into a cold sweat. I didn't think it could be possible, and my brain reeled at the rushing reality of it all. The sickening reality of it, that she didn't even care because she had already given up, had pulled her claws out of him. It was done, no new memories, no grand dreams, no future plans to conquer the world. But as we know, this is only just the beginning, the aftermath is where it all hurts more.
So his body had to be transported to his hometown on the other side of the country near the coast, from the OTHER side of the country. 3000 miles just to be put in the ground, all for his parents' sake. Which was nice, and a kind gesture, that Brenda allowed and a relatively beautiful ceremony. We show up the day James shows up, a 10 hour drive with no AC and the windows down. My wife and I both knew and loved James, so we were going to be there no matter what. I meet his dad for the first time, a topic James and I regularly talked about. How his father is the best person he knows, and would do anything for. I can see that now, and James' wife had sent a picture to my wife of one of their conversations, about how I reminded James of his dad. That shit broke my heart, and was hard to see, but I appreciated it. Although I think she reveled in twisting the knife. Anyway, come to find out from his dad, that Brenda allowed him to write the obituary, and as James' dad was finalizing it with his wife and James' sisters, Brenda took it and made changes and deleted the things she didn't like.
James' dad took us all around his hometown, showing us where he went to school, where they lived, and what he liked to do. He also took us out for lunch to a local place James liked. I've never felt so at home while not at home. We even got haircuts at James' dad's favorite barber. I met James' mother and sisters, and found that they share a lot of gestures and nuances that were just uncanny. It was good, although, terrifyingly sad. I'm so fucking glad Neil was there, dude was a rock.
The day of the funeral and memorial We got to say our final goodbyes, and there was a line of James' next of kin. Starting with his mother, and ending with his youngest sister. His wife sat separately and was laughing and joking before people started showing up. She adopted a somber and sorrowful set, when we locked eyes, I saw the poison, vitriol, and hate she had for me, and anyone else who cared about James. Her eyes looked like that of Bellatrix Lestrange. She didn't cry, once. It hurt to see someone James cared about so much, not care one lick at his loss. She didn't plan anything for this funeral, didn't appoint pallbearers, nothing. Fortunately, me, Neil, another roommate James had--Jesse, and some other close relatives of James, we raised him one last time. Everything was executed by his parents and was done wonderfully. At his burial site, he was given military honors, which he and I would joke as being terribly done, but for the masses, was acceptable. For military ceremonies like this, the next of kin gets the flag. And unfortunately, they were still married at the time of death. Which she received and treated like nothing so much as a burden. James' parents knew how vile she was and STILL invited her to attend a remembrance party in Honor of James. To which she ran off and never attended. This, this is still the easiest part of the entire process.
James parents are trying to file an injunction, but Brenda hasn't even filed the proper paperwork to begin the probate process. So there isn't even anything to file an injunction against! They want to be able to handle his estate, but can't. There's nothing to do, no memories to take. We fear that everything will be repossessed, foreclosed, and she will laugh her way to the bank to cash in on James' demise. I wish he'd had a will, or started the divorce process. I wish even more, that he was still here. For anyone out there who thinks you won't be missed, you will. For those who think no one will notice them gone, you will be noticed. I would rather talk to you for hours, than be at your grave. Please, reach out, ask for help, or just to talk. I'm sorry things get tough, but you have love and support here if you need it. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help, or talk you out of it. I love you man. Til Valhalla.
2023.06.02 18:23 SchlesingerMindy323 [HIRING] 25 Jobs in KY Hiring Now!
2023.06.02 14:14 the-third-person Souhait
I’m an artist. Not one you’ve heard of, though that may be changing soon. Being an artist is about creation, not about commercial success. I wouldn’t mind getting the occasional acceptance mixed in with the constant stream of rejection, of course, but it’s a process.
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
submitted by the-third-person to micahwrites [link] [comments]
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
2023.06.02 14:13 the-third-person I discovered one of my paintings in an art gallery
I’m an artist. Not one you’ve heard of, though that may be changing soon. Being an artist is about creation, not about commercial success. I wouldn’t mind getting the occasional acceptance mixed in with the constant stream of rejection, of course, but it’s a process.
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
X
submitted by the-third-person to nosleep [link] [comments]
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
2023.06.01 21:00 DiscoverDurham Things to Do in Durham this Weekend (Jun 1-4)
Check out our full Durham events calendar.
If you'd like to add an event to our calendar, submit an event here. Please check with the event organizers to see if events change due to weather. Have a great weekend!
submitted by DiscoverDurham to bullcity [link] [comments]
If you'd like to add an event to our calendar, submit an event here. Please check with the event organizers to see if events change due to weather. Have a great weekend!
June Featured Events
53rd Annual Bimbé Cultural Arts Festival at Rock Quarry Park- This family-oriented event is a celebration of African and African American history, culture, arts, and traditions.
- Headlined by Intro, Mr. Cheeks, Petey Pablo, and KRS-One
- Free admission
- The show is based on the events leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, telling a story of the efforts of John Adams to persuade his colleagues to vote for American independence and to sign the document.
- This Tony Award-winning Best Musical is tuneful, witty, and constantly surprising, especially in this revolutionary new production from directors Jeffrey L. Page (Violet) and Diane Paulus (Waitress) with a cast that reflects multiple representations of race, gender, and ethnicity.
- Jun 1-4
- $15+
- Raíces, Rutas, y Ritmos highlights the importance of music-making among Latin American migrants in North Carolina, as well as the prominence of Latin American-derived music in the Triangle area.
- 6:30 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
- Free admission
Venue Weekend Schedules
Events at The Carolina Theatre- Fri, Jun 2 at 7:00 p.m. - Leslie Jones: Live
- Sun, Jun 4 at at 4:15 p.m. - The Empower Experience 2023
- Thu, Jun 1 at 8:00 p.m. - Dead Fox No Groove / Julia. / Dylan Innes
- Fri, Jun 2 at 7:00 p.m. - OCRCC’s 12th Annual Punk Cuts To End Rape
- Fri, Jun 2 at 9:00 p.m. - Yolo Karaoke!
- Sat, Jun 3 at 6:00 p.m. - Teia Elaine Presents: What Would Eve Do?
- Sat, Jun 3 at 10:00 p.m. - House Of Coxx Drag Show!
- Sat, Jun 3 at 11:55 p.m. - Rent Due Dance Party!!!
- Sun, Jun 4 at 4:00 p.m. - (Early Show) The Lover Boyz W/ Phil Cook + Kym Register And Friends
- Sun, Jun 4 at 8:00 p.m. - (Late Show) The Lover Boyz W/ Phil Cook + Kym Register And Friends
- Fri, Jun 2 at 8:00 p.m. - Halocene With Lauren Babic / Alphamega
- Sat, Jun 3 at 9:00 p.m. - Gimme Gimme Disco
- Sun, Jun 4 at 7:00 p.m. - Mike’s Dead with The Haunt
- Fri, Jun 2 at 11:00 p.m. - Job Fruit Residency: IN2IT
- Sat, Jun 3 at 10:00 p.m. - Paradox: A 90s Rave Experience
- Sun, Jun 4 at 12:00 p.m. - The Fruit Flea: Monthly Flea Market
- Thu, Jun 1 at 7:30 p.m. - Curtis Salgado Band
- Fri, Jun 2 at 6:00 p.m. - The Duke Street Dogs
- Fri, Jun 2 at 9:15 p.m. - Adam Ezra Group
- Sat, Jun 3 at 7:30 p.m. - JIVES
- Thursdays - Free Board Games
- Thu, Jun 1 at 7:00 p.m. - Trivia
- Fri, Jun 2 at 8:00 p.m. - First Friday Swing Dance Night with Nitelife Boogie!
- Free dance lesson at 7:30 p.m.
- Sun, Jun 4 at 6:30 p.m. - Moon Dog Open Mic
- Sat, Jun 3 at 8:00 p.m. - Eric Williams Quintet
- Thu, Jun 1 - Jay Hammond & Andy Stack with Joe Westerlund and Tarot with Virginia
- Fri, Jun 2 - Russell Favret and Tarot with Heiltje
- Sat, Jun 3 - Bardo Bloom and Tarot with Rene
- Sun, Jun 4 - Matty Famartino and Tarot with Joy
- Thu, Jun 1 at 10:00 p.m. - Miss B Haven Presents: Midnight Remedies
- Fri, Jun 2 at 10:00 p.m. - Mamis & The Papis And Party Illegal Present: Moodboard
- Sat, Jun 3 at 9:00 p.m. - Star People Gang Presents: Freaks And Beats
- Thu, Jun 1
- 5:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. - Food Truck: Safari Eatz
- 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. - Thursday Trivia with Nick
- Fri, Jun 2
- 5:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. - Food Truck: Tacos Paradise
- 8:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. - Open Mic Stand-up Comedy
- Sat, Jun 3
- 12:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. - Food Truck: Chop House BBQ
- 12:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. - DJ Jack Bonney
- 4:00 p.m - 6:00 p.m. - Taxicab Preacher
- Sun, Jun 4
- 1:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. - Food Truck: Charlie C's Hotdogs On Wheels
- 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. - Hammered Trivia with Thor
- Fri, Jun 2 at 8:00 p.m. - The Racket
- Fri, Jun 2 26 at 9:00 p.m. - Hush Hush
- Sat, Jun 3 at 8:00 p.m. - Bull City Press Presents…
- Sat, Jun 3 at 9:00 p.m. - House Party
- Thu, Jun 1 at 5:30 p.m. - Songstories Live at Boxyard RTP
- Fri, Jun 2 from 8:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. - Boxyard Bucks
- First 100 people on site receive $10 to spend at any vendor
- Fri, Jun 2 at 5:30 p.m. - LOJO: Log Off, Jam On
- Sat, Jun 3 from 11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. - Turns 2 Family Friendly Celebration
- Sat, Jun 3 from 11:30 a.m. 2:30 p.m. - Saturdaze: Uno Dose
- Sat, Jun 3 from 5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. - Wonderbop
- Thu, Jun 1 from 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. - Beer Garden Jam Sessions
- Fr, Jun 2 from 5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. - RTP Food Truck Fridays
- Sat, Jun 3 from 5:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. - Beer Garden Jam Sessions
- Thu, Jun 1 from 7:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. - Live Music in the Taproom
- Jun 1-4 from 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. - Weekend Food Trucks
Local Sports
Durham Bulls Home Stand at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park- vs Jacksonville
- Thu, Jun 1 - Pride Night
- Fri, Jun 2 - Friday Night Fireworks
- Sat, Jun 3 - Saturday Night Fireworks
- Sun, Jun 4 - Kids Run the Bases
- $10+
- The 15th running of Durham’s premiere community road race! This scenic course will wind through the historic and revitalized neighborhoods of downtown Durham, American Tobacco Campus, Trinity Park and Old North Durham neighborhoods, and finish with a lap of the warning track inside the historic Old Durham Athletic Park!
- Sat, Jun 3 at 7:00 a.m.
- $10-45
Thursday, Jun 1
Thirsty Thursdays at Dashi- Each month Dashi's Thirsty Thursday drink specials revolve around a monthly theme – spirits, cocktails, special ingredients, brand, location, etc. – with new sips every Thursday. Learn more about upcoming themes on their website or visit them in person – there's always something new to try from their expansive bar!
- 5:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
- Enjoy fresh vibes on the patio with DJ Deckades. Bring your own vinyl to share or just listen to what the DJ is spinning.
- 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
- Free admission
- Show up and climb at TRC Durham, then head over to Hi-Wire for some brews. Don't worry if it's your first time or haven't bouldered before; everyone's welcome.
- Your first visit to the gym with the Meetup includes free admission and gear rental, and subsequent visits with the meetup are $15 and include harness rental (outside of meetups, day pass rates of $19 apply and do not include rentals).
- 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
- Join Clouds Durham for Big Slow Tom's Trivia Night, every Thursday. Win some prizes, drink some beer, and show your smarts.
- Enjoy $4 select draft and $5 rotating bartender's choice all night.
- 7:30 p.m.
- Free admission
Friday, Jun 2
Tasting at Ten at Counter Culture Coffee- Every Friday morning at 10 am, Counter Culture Coffee opens their Training Centers to coffee lovers who want to learn more about Counter Culture Coffee’s high-quality, sustainably sourced menu.
- 10:00 a.m.
- Free, but donations accepted
- Visitors to Duke Campus Farm can come take a tour of the space, learn more about what is grown and why, and choose from a number of plants from the garden to experiment with two printing techniques that highlight the shape and color of fresh produce and flowers. With cyanotype printing, we will use either the plant as a silhouette to make sun prints using UV light, or make use of parts of the plants to create a composition on the blue-tinted paper.
- 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
- Free admission (registration encouraged)
Saturday, Jun 3
Durham Farmers’ Market at Durham Central Park- The Durham Farmers’ Market offers locally grown fruits and vegetables, meats, eggs, cut flowers, artisanal cheeses and breads, home-baked pies, honey, handmade chocolates, preserves, local wines, handmade soaps, fresh pasta, and artwork of all sorts!
- 8:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
- Free admission
- The market strives to support new and growing farms and vendors in the greater Durham area, and they are also home to some of the most iconic Durham brands around.
- 8:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
- Free admission
- A free, fun, and friendly weekly 5k community event. Walk, jog, run, volunteer, or spectate. It's up to you!
- 8:00 a.m.
- Free admission
- So, how do you pronounce H-A-Y-T-I ? What are the Hayti Neighborhood's connections to the island of Haiti? ...to Black Wall St.? ...to the city of Durham at large? These questions are answered while many more are raised in this 75-minute tour of Fayetteville St., the commercial center of Durham’s largest African American residential neighborhood. Stops include the neighborhood’s founding institutions: St. Joseph’s AME church, The Carolina Times, Stanford L. Warren Library and more!
- Stories include: Women of Hayti, Power of Black Churches and Urban Renewal. The tour begins and ends at the Hayti Heritage Center.
- 10:00 a.m.
- $20+
- An outdoor party featuring GRAMMY Award-winning producer 9th Wonder and friends. Celebrate Spirit in the Land with pop-up children’s book readings in the galleries. At 2 p.m., Alberto Barrantes, an author visiting from Costa Rica, will give a reading from his new bilingual book Arts for Diversity. Art activities will be inspired by artists María Berrío and Andrea Chung.
- The Museum of Life and Science will join us with StarLab to view the night sky—and insects to study up close. Piedmont Wildlife Center will also bring several animals. Everyone can sample free cotton candy by Wonderpuff. Also fun to try: temporary tattoos inspired by the natural world. Assorted sandwiches and beverages from the Nasher Museum Cafe will be available for purchase. Cash bar.
- 12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
- Free admission
- Shop from 55+ local artists and makers, plus food trucks and coffee.
- 4:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
- Free admission
- Free pint with purchase of craft box. Choose from a variety of craft packages available for all ages.
- 12:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
- The Beaver Queen Pageant is the Triangle’s own special mix of folly, pageantry, and humor. Contestants take on beaver personalities and compete for the title of Beaver Queen with their fashion, talent, and personality. There will be music, a kid's art activity station, food trucks, and much more!
- Enjoy the fun at this family-friendly and free event which raises funds for the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association. Vote for your favorite contestants - or bribe a judge - at www.beaverqueen.org. You are not going to want to miss this truly weird and delightful Durham experience.
- 4:00 p.m.
- Free admission
Sunday, Jun 4
Al Strong Presents Jazz Brunch at Alley Twenty Six- Al Strong, the Grammy-nominated jazz trumpeter, composer and recording artist, will bring a rotating lineup of musicians to perform during Sunday brunch at Durham's Alley Twenty Six. Weather permitting the band will perform in the bar’s namesake alley.
- Brunch from 10:30 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
- Music 12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
- Shop handmade in this special setting. Mystic Farm & Distillery in Durham offers a unique place to gather and enjoy local spirits. The Art-n-Soul Market brings the best local artisans, food trucks and live music out to the farm for bourbon tastings, craft cocktails, food trucks and distinctive gifts you won't find anywhere else. Bring your friends and meet us at the bourbon farm! Dogs welcome.
- 12:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
- Free admission
- Learn about the history, architecture, and life of Duke Chapel in this tour, which is free and open to the public. The tour begins at 12:15 p.m., or immediately following the conclusion of the Sunday morning service, and lasts approximately forty-five minutes.
- No reservation is required but if you plan to bring a large group please notify us in advance. Meet the docent on the front steps of the Chapel.
- Paid parking is available on a first come, first served basis in the Bryan Center Parking Lot at 125 Science Drive. ADA parking is available in the Bryan Center Surface Lot at the same address.
- 12:15 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
- Hosted by the Triangle’s Trivia team, Hammered Trivia, gather your team and post up to compete for prizes and enjoy an afternoon of great drinks, great friends, and great games.
- 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
- Free admission
Running Art Exhibits
upstART Gallery: A Jim Lee Project at Pop Box Gallery- upstART Gallery will host its first group show at Pop Box Gallery & The Art Chose Me’s residency in Old East Durham. The show features 27 artists who were selected through an open call review process. Artists were challenged to create work especially for this unique space, scaled 1:12 (one inch = one foot).
- Wed-Sat from 12:00 p.m - 6:00 p.m.
- Runs through Jul 1
- Truth or Dare: A Reality Show
- Runs through March 2024
- Open 24 hours
- Free admission
- This exhibit highlights several NC-based artists that, on the surface, use colors that are “extra” (which is where their commonality ends) to evoke their intent through a combination of this color with forms and imagery as well as the concepts embedded in color’s many identities. Artists Jane Cheek, Jerstin Crosby, Zach Storm, Tonya Solley Thornton and Leif Zikade all require color to play a primary role in their work and their relationship to an audience.
- Mon–Sat from 9:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. and Sun from 1:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
- Runs through June 4
- Free admission
- 5 Points Gallery in downtown Durham introduces a new exhibit featuring the work of our member artist, Donna Stubbs. Donna uses an archaeological approach to painting, as she lovingly photographs her surroundings and unearths discarded items in thrift stores to create abstract mixed media works.
- Free admission
- An exhibition featuring both abstract and figurative works by two artists with international backgrounds. The SEQUENTIAL exhibition invites the observer on a visual journey, generating an organic relationship between the artworks and the gallery's visitors. Through the dynamics of color, form, ideas, and narratives, Chieko Murasugi and Renzo Ortega seek to generate a dialogue and the experience of art appreciation with the audience.
- Sat, May 20 at 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. - opening reception
- Runs through July 8
- Spirit in the Land is a contemporary art exhibition that examines today’s urgent ecological concerns from a cultural perspective, demonstrating how intricately our identities and natural environments are intertwined. Through their artwork, 30 artists show us how rooted in the earth our most cherished cultural traditions are, how our relationship to land and water shapes us as individuals and communities
- Tue-Fri from 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Sun from 12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
- Runs through Jul 9
- Free admission
- Andy Warhol: You Look Good in Pictures explores the breadth of the artist’s relationship with photography through several distinct bodies of work including screenprints of celebrities, all of which were taken from photographs, a group of Polaroids and black and white snapshots illustrating his social circles, and an early silent film of the curator Henry Geldzahler from 1964.
- Tue-Fri from 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Sun from 12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
- Runs through Aug 27
- Free admission
- This gallery features ceramics, textiles, metalwork and carvings produced by ancient cultures across what is known as present-day Peru.
- Tue-Fri from 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Sun from 12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
- Runs through Dec 2
- Free admission
2023.06.01 17:38 temporalthingss Rental scams?
I reached out online about a house I saw listed for rent online (Redfin), and immediately got a call from a man claiming to be an independent property manager of the home. Online, there was no move-in date or pet policy, and when I asked about those things he immediately told me my desired move-in date (August) and pets would work prefect. He sent over the application and told me the application fee, and then called back twice within 10 mintues telling me to fill it out. When I asked him who the owner of the houe was, he told me a name different from who is listed on the Asheville GIS (I found using avlmap.ashevillenc.gov). I asked to set up a time to go see the home and he pressed me to fill out the application.
Also when I googled this manager's (unique sounding) name, nothing comes up except for an obituary and a few other random people across the country.
Obvioulsy I'm not going to send any $, but does this give anyone else big red flags?
It's hard out here y'all!
Edit to add: I submitted a report to Redfin, hopefully they take the post down and get better about vetting their listings.
Edit again to add: I'm just gonna lightly dox this redfin listing in the off-chance someone else thinks about applying https://www.redfin.com/NC/Asheville/35-Ferncliff-Dr-28805/unit-N-A/home/185557510
submitted by temporalthingss to asheville [link] [comments]
Also when I googled this manager's (unique sounding) name, nothing comes up except for an obituary and a few other random people across the country.
Obvioulsy I'm not going to send any $, but does this give anyone else big red flags?
It's hard out here y'all!
Edit to add: I submitted a report to Redfin, hopefully they take the post down and get better about vetting their listings.
Edit again to add: I'm just gonna lightly dox this redfin listing in the off-chance someone else thinks about applying https://www.redfin.com/NC/Asheville/35-Ferncliff-Dr-28805/unit-N-A/home/185557510
2023.06.01 17:32 PritchettRobert506 [HIRING] 25 Jobs in NC Hiring Now!
2023.06.01 17:30 MrsDepo Mom passed away last week, how do I even think anymore?
Hi all,
I (34F) just found this subreddit after googling post-grief brain fog and am very much looking forward to reading your stories. My mom (57) passed away unexpectedly last Wednesday and I have been a bit of a wreck. When I first found out, I went into hyper-oldest-daughter mode and made my dad stay with me for a few days to take care of him. He was quite emotional but I was more of a robot than anything. I only cried when no one was around, so mostly in the shower. Since then, I made the appointment with the funeral home, did that meeting and paid for the services, made phone calls to let people know, posted on Facebook, started planning the memorial for late summer, and now I still need to write the obituary.
But I can't write it. I actually can't do anything that involves my brain. After my dad went back home, I dove into anything physical I could get my hands on. Cleaning the house, building some built-in bookshelves, gardening, running, anything really. But now that I'm back at work I find that I can't put a single thought together. I can't make myself do work. I just locked myself in my office with a Do Not Disturb sign up, but I'm just surfing the internet.
When does this get better? I'm a professional that many people rely on. I have no real boss, so I self manage, but I can't manage anything and no one is forcing me to work. I had to drop out of a funding opportunity, and everyone 100% understands, but I'm just beating myself up over this. And the obituary is looming over me. I have to write it. But how? I read articles about how to do it, but those are all about the content, not how you can move past the grief enough to just write. Damn it, I've written a book and a dissertation and I can't push myself to write 2 paragraphs!
submitted by MrsDepo to GriefSupport [link] [comments]
I (34F) just found this subreddit after googling post-grief brain fog and am very much looking forward to reading your stories. My mom (57) passed away unexpectedly last Wednesday and I have been a bit of a wreck. When I first found out, I went into hyper-oldest-daughter mode and made my dad stay with me for a few days to take care of him. He was quite emotional but I was more of a robot than anything. I only cried when no one was around, so mostly in the shower. Since then, I made the appointment with the funeral home, did that meeting and paid for the services, made phone calls to let people know, posted on Facebook, started planning the memorial for late summer, and now I still need to write the obituary.
But I can't write it. I actually can't do anything that involves my brain. After my dad went back home, I dove into anything physical I could get my hands on. Cleaning the house, building some built-in bookshelves, gardening, running, anything really. But now that I'm back at work I find that I can't put a single thought together. I can't make myself do work. I just locked myself in my office with a Do Not Disturb sign up, but I'm just surfing the internet.
When does this get better? I'm a professional that many people rely on. I have no real boss, so I self manage, but I can't manage anything and no one is forcing me to work. I had to drop out of a funding opportunity, and everyone 100% understands, but I'm just beating myself up over this. And the obituary is looming over me. I have to write it. But how? I read articles about how to do it, but those are all about the content, not how you can move past the grief enough to just write. Damn it, I've written a book and a dissertation and I can't push myself to write 2 paragraphs!
2023.05.31 19:48 BidObjective43 Was my best friend murdered?
On the morning of February 6th 2021 I received a call that my best friend(29) had been shot and killed (rumor is weapon is a high caliber assault rifle) at her home in Union City, GA. I had moved across the country and we had not talked since the end of November as we had gotten into a spat. Occasionally we would disagree and for awhile both would be too stubborn to reach out but we loved each other and would always make up. Id give anything to have been able to talk to her those last few months. Since I learned of the news I cannot find anything about her death. There was no funeral or viewing just a memorial as I was told her mother donated her body to science. There is no obituary, no reports of shootings, nothing. I’ve done my best to search for any information on what happened but I have been unsuccessful. After joining this sub I was amazed at how helpful everyone is and figured I would shoot my shot. I just want to know what happened to my friend.
Edit: None of our friends know anything (there are a lot of us and we all have the same information) other than the info that I have provided. I spoke to her baby daddy and all said was she was shot in the house but I have been unable to verify any of the information as it is all hearsay.
Edit again: I will not be contacting her family. I am more interested in police reports, death certificates etc not your “theory” of what happened. I’m very much a facts person and I’m hoping it would help with closure as it’s something I think about every moment of every day.
Thank you everyone for your kind words and suggestions. Please feel free to keep them coming! I just really appreciate all the feedback and am hoping this will bring me some closure.
submitted by BidObjective43 to RBI [link] [comments]
Edit: None of our friends know anything (there are a lot of us and we all have the same information) other than the info that I have provided. I spoke to her baby daddy and all said was she was shot in the house but I have been unable to verify any of the information as it is all hearsay.
Edit again: I will not be contacting her family. I am more interested in police reports, death certificates etc not your “theory” of what happened. I’m very much a facts person and I’m hoping it would help with closure as it’s something I think about every moment of every day.
Thank you everyone for your kind words and suggestions. Please feel free to keep them coming! I just really appreciate all the feedback and am hoping this will bring me some closure.
2023.05.31 19:01 outwitthebully Do funeral homes sell personal information
The post on this subreddit today about someone getting spoofed texts from dead relatives spurred me to ask this question.
So my mother died about a year ago. She was an extremely private person, so private she did not even want people to know who her relatives were. When she died, the funeral home director contacted me about an obituary asking for a call back. I called him back, and he sounded as though he was asking questions from a form, and they were benign questions of the sort often answered in an obituary— who were her parents, when was she born, where did she work, what clubs was she in..
Then he asked a question that just didn’t fit. I can’t remember exactly what it was, perhaps where her parents were born or when, I don’t remember. I politely explained to him that she was a private person and would not want any of this in her obituary. I asked if I could write one and send it to him instead and he agreed.
So I wrote it and sent it in to him as he requested within a few weeks of her passing. It was polite, short, complimentary and devoid of any useful information (“she enjoyed lunching with her friends and watching old movies”).
It was never published anywhere and he did not respond to any follow up emails I sent about it. Otherwise he was pleasant. It seemed as though he was a bit upset that I refused to answer the battery of questions. To me, it is not normal or expected for a funeral director to be annoyed by that.
Are they able to sell that information/do they get some kind of kickback for it?
EDTA: the person I talked to on the phone was definitely the funeral director. I went to high school with him, I’d know his voice anywhere— small high school, small town.
submitted by outwitthebully to Scams [link] [comments]
So my mother died about a year ago. She was an extremely private person, so private she did not even want people to know who her relatives were. When she died, the funeral home director contacted me about an obituary asking for a call back. I called him back, and he sounded as though he was asking questions from a form, and they were benign questions of the sort often answered in an obituary— who were her parents, when was she born, where did she work, what clubs was she in..
Then he asked a question that just didn’t fit. I can’t remember exactly what it was, perhaps where her parents were born or when, I don’t remember. I politely explained to him that she was a private person and would not want any of this in her obituary. I asked if I could write one and send it to him instead and he agreed.
So I wrote it and sent it in to him as he requested within a few weeks of her passing. It was polite, short, complimentary and devoid of any useful information (“she enjoyed lunching with her friends and watching old movies”).
It was never published anywhere and he did not respond to any follow up emails I sent about it. Otherwise he was pleasant. It seemed as though he was a bit upset that I refused to answer the battery of questions. To me, it is not normal or expected for a funeral director to be annoyed by that.
Are they able to sell that information/do they get some kind of kickback for it?
EDTA: the person I talked to on the phone was definitely the funeral director. I went to high school with him, I’d know his voice anywhere— small high school, small town.
2023.05.31 08:39 funeralclient Palm Royale Funeral Home and Cemetery
Welcome to Palm Royale Funeral Home and Cemetery
Palm Royale Funeral Home & Cemetery's mission is to be dedicated to every family we serve and hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards.We will always abide by our industry's best practices and treat every family with respect, fairness, and sensitivity. Your comfort, peace of mind, and the trust that you have placed in us will remain our staff's top priority and our commitment to help you will be expressed in everything we do.
Why Choose Our Funeral Home?
At Palm Royale Funeral Home & Cemetery, we pride ourselves on serving the Naples community and surrounding areas with dignity, respect, and compassion. Our experienced staff is available to help you select funeral, burial, or cremation services and design a special place of permanent memorialization that acknowledges and celebrates your loved one’s life in a way that will be meaningful for generations to come.What We Offer?
Palm Royale Funeral Home was built on the beautiful grounds of Palm Royale Cemetery to offer the community a funeral home and cemetery co-located on the same property to provide families with a continuity of care and services.
Palm Royale Funeral Home & Cemetery is the newest funeral home in Naples and offers burial, entombment, and cremation service options that range from highly personalized to time-honored traditional. Our brand-new facility has a light and airy feel to it and was designed to offer a serene, yet uplifting and supportive place to gather and honor.
Inside is a contemporary chapel, reception room, and catering café that are adjacent, yet separate, providing flexibility in the types and styles of services we can offer. There is also easy access to a covered, wrap-around veranda, that provides additional seating in an open-air setting.
A high-quality digital platform enables us to offer sophisticated services such as recording and live streaming, allowing distant family and friends the opportunity to “stay connected”, “say good-bye”, and view services either “live or later”. To learn more, please visit our Recording & Live Streaming page. You're also welcome to call and speak with one of our funeral directors to learn more details, have any questions answered, or to arrange for your loved one's service.
If selected, our state-of-the-art audio-visual system will showcase your loved one’s themed and personalized Life Tribute pictorial throughout our facility, making the time and space feel truly dedicated to celebrating their special life. This Tribute will also be available for viewing on an online Obituary Page we will set up in honor of your loved one at no charge. This page will have its own link and capture condolences and cherished remembrances shared by others. In addition, a Life Tribute DVD will be provided to you as a keepsake. We are also able to produce custom playlists, play special songs, accommodate live musicians, and much more.
Our advanced technology also enables us to make virtual and online arrangements so that those who are out of the area or are confined to home are able to plan, make selections, E-sign documents, and E-pay remotely.
Funeral & Memorial Service Options
Many families feel uncertain or burdened by the notion of planning a tribute. They anticipate that arranging services will be cumbersome, complicated, or overly sad. But setting a unified time and place to gather, share, and pay one’s respects is an important and worthwhile step in the healing process.Many also don’t know where to start or what they “should” do. But we know that families prioritize and find meaning in different ways, so we embrace originality and strive to make every remembrance special. For some, the traditions and rites they are accustomed to offer comfort and stability, while others feel inspired to plan something that reflects the unique personality of their loved one.
Our staff will help you determine the best way to tell your loved one’s story, memorialize their legacy, and bring comfort to family and friends. We will also coordinate with other parties on your behalf, arrange any ancillary services, order items, place obituaries, set up, clean up, and more.
Contact Our Funeral Home
If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to submit a message to our funeral home, cemetery, and/or preneed staff and we will contact you as soon as possible.PALM ROYALE FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY
Address: 6790 Vanderbilt Beach Road
Naples, FL 34119
Phone: (239) 354-5330
Website: https://www.palmroyalecares.com/
2023.05.31 06:51 One_Jackfruit_6549 Home Buying/R-T-O in Lexington
Does anyone know the best way about getting loans to buy a house? Saving for a down payment is rough right now so we’re kind of stuck renting our apartment. Any loan options for a down payment and a home loan? Anyone know of a legit rent to own company for NC?
Specifically Lexington NC and surrounding areas like Linwood, Midway, Welcome •thank you in advance•
submitted by One_Jackfruit_6549 to NorthCarolina [link] [comments]
Specifically Lexington NC and surrounding areas like Linwood, Midway, Welcome •thank you in advance•
2023.05.31 06:30 mrpokec Silly season -March 2012
ARCA
submitted by mrpokec to Nr2003 [link] [comments]
- Darrell Basham loses car parts in tornado: Good news finally came from the small southern Indiana town of Henryville, Indiana. The massive tornado that took direct aim on the downtown area today spared the life of longtime ARCA competitor Darrell Basham and his family. However, much of what Basham didn't lose in a devastating garage/shop fire in November of 2010, was lost today in downtown Henryville. "My old building, which was my main big shop - it's gone, with everything in it. And we had a bunch of stuff in it that we use to go racing. We walked through earlier. There were headers over here, a piece of racecar over there. Lost all my parts. Maybe someone's trying to tell me something; I just don't know. This could be the end of the line for Darrell Basham Racing; we just don't know. We're okay though, but what a mess. "We had a bunch of motor parts; it's all gone. General parts we use all the time - headers, rims. A-frames, trailing arms. Destroyed everything I had down there - it's all gone. Fortunately I had my cars at the house shop, which the tornado missed. (ARCARacing.com) (03-02-12)
- ARCA bans driver cell phone use during competition: The ARCA Racing Series has banned drivers from using cell phones during competition. A bulletin was sent out to teams yesterday stating that "Cars and/or drivers will not be permitted to carry cell phones during competition." This rule has been established after Brad Keselowski's cell phone use during a red flag in NASCAR Sprint Cup's Daytona 500. (03-06-12)
- DnF Enterprises owner Mario Gosselin arrested: A race car driver and owner of the Lake Wales-based DnF Enterprises [that fielded a car for Fain Skinner in the 2012 Mobil 1 200 at Daytona] was among those arrested last week during a sex sting, the Polk County Sheriff's Office said. Mario Gosselin, 40, of Lake Wales, was arrested Saturday and charged with soliciting prostitution, deputies said. The Sheriff's Office conducted a sex sting and said Gosselin was among more than 40 people who responded to online advertisements for sex. Once the people met with undercover detectives, they were arrested and booked into the Polk County Jail. Gosselin told deputies he was a self-employed mechanic. Gosselin bonded out of the Polk County Jail on $500 bail, according to jail records. (TheLedger.com) (03-14-12)
- Garcia Racing Looking to enter a 2th car for 2013: Garcia Racing is looking to enter a 2th car for 2013. Garcia Racing seeking sponsorship for the 2th car for 2013. Interested drivers or sponsor should contact Roberto Garcia. (Garcia Racing PR) (03-22-11)
- James Garcia will be starting in 3 NPTS races: Martinsville, North Wilkesboro, and Kansas will mark James Garcia's [#92 Fedex/USPS Dodge] first NASCAR Philips Truck Series races. In 2011, Garcia took the wheel of a ARCA Metlife Series car for Garcia Racing where he finished 8th in the points. (Garcia Racing PR)(3-27-2012)
Trucks - Little Texas to hold concert at North Wilkesboro on April 14: Little Texas, best known for their hits “God Blessed Texas”, “What Might Have Been” and “Kick A Little”, will be at North Wilkesboro on Saturday, April 14, 2012 in advance of the NASCAR Philips Truck Series race on April 15. Little Texas will be performing a concert for race fans at North Wilkesboro on April 14. The band will also be performing the National Anthem before the April 15 running of the NASCAR Philips Truck Series Farmers Insurance 200. The Chris Lane Band will be opening for Little Texas and takes the stage outside of the speedway’s turn two at 6:30pm/et. April 14. Little Texas will perform at approximately 8:00pm/et. A ticket for either Saturday’s Frank Kimmel Street Nationals and UARA Late Model Series Twin 75’s and NPTS qualifying or Sunday’s Famer's Insurance 200 NCWTS race grants admission to the concert. Little Texas will be sticking around to perform the National Anthem for April 15 race prior to the green flag at 1:00pm/et.(North Wilkesboro PR)(3-5-2012)
- Trucks to Road America in 2013? Montreal also hoping to be in the mix: NASCAR is expected to announce soon that the Camping World Truck Series will return to road-course racing in the 2013 season and that is great news for Canada’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. A source close to Camping World loop told the Toronto Sun that negotiations are all but complete to add a race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis., for next season. That same source also said NASCAR would most certainly add a second road course so that it would make economic sense for the truck teams. “Teams would have to construct purpose built trucks for Road America so to keep those costs in line a second race just makes sense.” A truck race at CTMS–formerly Mosport–would be a prefect fit for the track’s new owners. Ron Fellows–and his partners Alan Boughton and Carlo Fidani–have been actively pursuing a top NASCAR touring series race. “I was on the phone June 1 (the day the group announced it had purchased the legendary Ontario track) with NASCAR officials telling them we wanted a race,” Fellows said in a phone interview from Toronto. “And we are continuing to seek a race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.” It will be at least mid to late summer before NASCAR bosses release their 2013 schedules but it is now a good bet that there will be two truck races turning left and right next season. Fellows said that the addition of Montreal–a major NASCAR partner–as the name sponsor at CTMS will boost the track chances at getting the nod for a race.(TorontoSun.com)(3-11-2012)
- NPTS drivers meeting to be open to fans at North Wilkesboro: In addition to 200 laps of great racing, your ticket to the Farmer's Insurance 200 will also get you up close and personal with your favorite NASCAR Philips Truck Series drivers. NASCAR and North Wilkesboro are opening up the NPTS drivers meeting for fans to come watch. The meeting is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. April 15 in the garage at the speedway. Fans are asked to enter the infield through the tunnel in turn four if they wish to take part in the drivers meeting. A ticket to the race serves as admission. “This event is going to be as fan-friendly as it can be,” Hillenburg said. “Leading up to the Famer's Insurance 200, the speedway has had an outpouring of support from fans from all over the country and we want to make sure that we do everything we can to repay that support. “With a great three days of racing (April 13-15), Little Texas and Chris Lane Band (April 14) and ThunderFest (April 13), these new bonuses for ticket holders are going to make this an even more awesome event for our fans.(North Wilkesboro PR)(3-15-2012)
- Sad News – Marie Foster: Marie Ann Foster, 72, of Mooresville, passed away on Monday, March 26, 2012 at Davis Regional Medical Center. She was born on February 2, 1940 in Akron, Ohio, to the late Jess and Elmira Miller Coffe. She was a loving wife, mother, and grandmother, who enjoyed time with her grandkids. She is survived by her husband, Bill Foster; daughters, Lindy Hornaday and husband, Ron Hornaday Jr., Alicia Dyer and husband, Dennis, Missy Foster; sister, Elmira Coffe; brothers, Jess Coffe, Bobby Chesebrough; grandchildren, Ronnie, Jeremy, Candice, Travis, Chris, J.D., Jesse, Amanda; and great grandchildren, Lacey, Viktoria, Slater, Lily, Maddie, Scarlett, and Violet. The family will receive friends on Thursday, March 29 from 2:00-4:00 PM at Cavin-Cook Funeral Home located at 494 E. Plaza Drive, Mooresville, NC. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Salvation Army, 2318 Julia Ave, Charlotte, NC 28202.(3-27-2012)
2023.05.31 04:56 Burdwatcher In honor of Oakland fans, here is a list of all the failed MLB relocations I know of
This is not a comprehensive list, but it's as close as I could get to one from research and memory, and it includes quite a bit of Bay Area shenanigans. The Superdome appears fairly often as well:
1941 - The St. Louis Browns attempt to move to Los Angeles, but the winter meetings where the move's approval is set for a vote are scrapped by the attack on Pearl Harbor two days prior
1947 - NL President Ford Frick suggests to good friend and St. Louis Cardinals owner Sam Breadon that the team, currently renting Sportsmans Park from the Browns, should move to Chicago so it can finally have a successful NL franchise, but the White Sox and another area team stridently object so the team is instead sold to Fred Saigh
1953 - Facing federal tax evasion charges and bedeviled by Browns owner Bill Veeck loading the payroll with old Cardinals favorites and starting some wild promotions to shove his stadium's NL tenants out of town, Redbirds owner Fred Saigh nearly sells the team to a group in Houston before Gussie Busch floats in on a river of beer to save Stan Musial from a move to Texas
1953 - Saigh also nearly sold the Cardinals to a different beer baron - Fred Miller of Milwaukee - but as mentioned previously, the Budweiser guys saved the day instead
1953 - Unable to compete with the new Anheuser Busch money, the St. Louis Browns nearly move to Milwaukee instead, but Bill Veeck is blocked by the other owners. Milwaukee consoles itself by watching the ex-Boston Braves, who have just relocated there and will stay for a little over a decade. The Browns, who had started out as the original Milwaukee Brewers, move to Maryland and take on the Yankees franchise's original name as the Baltimore Orioles
1956 - The Washington Senators are courted by Los Angeles before the Brooklyn Dodgers enter the fray, then ultimately move to Minnesota five years later instead
1956 - New York Giants consider a move to Minneapolis before settling on San Francisco once the Brooklyn Dodgers' move west is solidified
1956 - The Kansas City Athletics owner, having just moved the team from Philadelphia, immediately regrets his decision and explores Los Angeles before being usurped by the Brooklyn Dodgers. He sells the team to Charles Finley a few years later
1958 - Incensed at having lost the Dodgers and Giants, New York mayor Robert Wagner enlists William Shea to try to poach the Phillies, Reds, or Pirates, before switching tactics and instead attacking MLB's antitrust status until they agree to allow the Mets as an expansion franchise.
1962 - Charles Finley tries to move the Athletics to Dallas but gets blocked by other owners
1963 - Charles Finley tries to move the Athletics to Louisville but gets blocked by other owners
1964-1966 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to Atlanta
1964-1966 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to San Diego
1964-1966 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to Indianapolis
1964-1966 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to Seattle, before ultimately moving them to Oakland in 1968
1965 - The Cincinnati Reds are nearly sold to San Diego by Bill DeWitt (father of current Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt) before local investors step in
1966 - "Singing Cowboy" Gene Autrey tries to move the Los Angeles Angels, formerly of Wrigley Field and Dodger Stadium, to Long Beach, but when the city refuses to pay for a new stadium unless they are called the Long Beach Angels, he moves the team to Anaheim instead so he can use a name that will appeal to a larger southern California base. (Arte Moreno eventually makes a mockery of this entire naming debacle by restoring the Los Angeles name despite the team still being in Anaheim, which the city objects to, leading to the team briefly being called, at least in Spanish, Los Angeles de Los Angeles de Anaheim)
1968 - Bud Selig lures the White Sox to play some home games in Milwaukee and tries to buy the team and move it there, but the sale is blocked by other owners. Two years later he takes the Pilots from Seattle instead
1970s to 1990s - George Steinbrenner threatens to move the Yankees to New Jersey, also halfheartedly flirting with the New Orleans Superdome on a few brief occasions, particularly during a two-year stretch when the Yankees played at Shea Stadium (along with the Jets, Giants and Mets)
1973 - The Padres ink a deal to become the Washington (DC) Stars to replace the Texas Rangers version of the Senators, but after uniforms are designed and baseball cards printed, Ray Kroc of McDonalds fame steps in and keeps the team in San Diego
1975 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to Chicago's Comiskey Park...
1975 - ...because the White Sox' planned move to Seattle falls apart. Instead, baseball settled the debacle from the Pilots' quick exit via the Mariners expansion.
1976 - The San Francisco Giants try to leave Candestick Park for the warmer environs of Toronto, but a sale to the Labatts beer folks is blocked. Toronto gets the new Blue Jays franchise instead
1978 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to Denver
1979 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to New Orleans to play in the Superdome
1980s - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to sell the Athletics to Phoenix and/or to Denver again but is blocked by the city of Oakland after they lose the Raiders
1981 - The Pittsburgh Pirates entertain an offer to move to the Superdome in New Orleans, before the mayor threatens legal action
1981 - The Pirates entertain an offer from Tampa, which does not yet have a dome to offer and is ultimately rejected
1981-1985 - The Pittsburgh Pirates spend several years flirting with Denver, with talk dying down around the time of the (probably unrelated) MLB drug trial in the city, which implicates several players and the team's literally cocaine-addled parrot mascot
1985 - The Pittsburgh Pirates owner also flirts with a sale to Indianapolis, who has just stolen the Baltimore Colts from the NFL, but the mayor threatens to sue and scares both sides out of the deal
1987 - The Chicago White Sox flirt with the idea of moving to a new state-of-the-art dome being built in Tampa but ultimately settle for another Comiskey Park instead, thus narrowly helping the Windy City keep a professional baseball team
1990 - The San Francisco Giants attempt to secure funding for a new stadium in Santa Clara but it is voted down
1992 - The San Francisco Giants attempt to build a stadium in San Jose but the proposal is voted down
1993 - The San Francisco Giants again try to escape the bay area entirely with a move to Tampa's still-vacant state-of-the-art dome, but the other owners block the deal. The dome is eventually occupied by the Rays, who will eventually threaten to half-move to Montreal in part because they hate that dome
1995 - The Pittsburgh Pirates are nearly sold to a DC owner before being saved by Kevin McClatchey, who would eventually taint his legacy by making way for Bob Nutting to supplant him as owner in 2007
1997 - The Minnesota Twins try to move to Charlotte or Piedmont, but both this and Bud Selig's attempt to kill the team outright ultimately fail
2003 - With MLB taking ownership of the Montreal Expos the prior year, various moves are considered. The team plays some games in San Juan, Puerto Rico and kicks the tires on Portland OR, Monterrey Mexico, East Rutherford NJ, Norfolk VA, and Charlotte NC before finally convincing Orioles (neé St. Louis Browns, who started this whole list) owner Peter Angelos to give DC a third bite at the MLB apple.
Lately there has been talk of the Rays and A's moving, as well as Manfred threatening to kick the Brewers out of Milwaukee. It's fascinating to me how many of these prior relocations have involved Milwaukee, the A's, and Tampa... anyway feel free to call me an idiot for any of these you think may be incorrect or for any big ones I missed. Keep the faith, A's fans...
submitted by Burdwatcher to baseball [link] [comments]
1941 - The St. Louis Browns attempt to move to Los Angeles, but the winter meetings where the move's approval is set for a vote are scrapped by the attack on Pearl Harbor two days prior
1947 - NL President Ford Frick suggests to good friend and St. Louis Cardinals owner Sam Breadon that the team, currently renting Sportsmans Park from the Browns, should move to Chicago so it can finally have a successful NL franchise, but the White Sox and another area team stridently object so the team is instead sold to Fred Saigh
1953 - Facing federal tax evasion charges and bedeviled by Browns owner Bill Veeck loading the payroll with old Cardinals favorites and starting some wild promotions to shove his stadium's NL tenants out of town, Redbirds owner Fred Saigh nearly sells the team to a group in Houston before Gussie Busch floats in on a river of beer to save Stan Musial from a move to Texas
1953 - Saigh also nearly sold the Cardinals to a different beer baron - Fred Miller of Milwaukee - but as mentioned previously, the Budweiser guys saved the day instead
1953 - Unable to compete with the new Anheuser Busch money, the St. Louis Browns nearly move to Milwaukee instead, but Bill Veeck is blocked by the other owners. Milwaukee consoles itself by watching the ex-Boston Braves, who have just relocated there and will stay for a little over a decade. The Browns, who had started out as the original Milwaukee Brewers, move to Maryland and take on the Yankees franchise's original name as the Baltimore Orioles
1956 - The Washington Senators are courted by Los Angeles before the Brooklyn Dodgers enter the fray, then ultimately move to Minnesota five years later instead
1956 - New York Giants consider a move to Minneapolis before settling on San Francisco once the Brooklyn Dodgers' move west is solidified
1956 - The Kansas City Athletics owner, having just moved the team from Philadelphia, immediately regrets his decision and explores Los Angeles before being usurped by the Brooklyn Dodgers. He sells the team to Charles Finley a few years later
1958 - Incensed at having lost the Dodgers and Giants, New York mayor Robert Wagner enlists William Shea to try to poach the Phillies, Reds, or Pirates, before switching tactics and instead attacking MLB's antitrust status until they agree to allow the Mets as an expansion franchise.
1962 - Charles Finley tries to move the Athletics to Dallas but gets blocked by other owners
1963 - Charles Finley tries to move the Athletics to Louisville but gets blocked by other owners
1964-1966 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to Atlanta
1964-1966 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to San Diego
1964-1966 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to Indianapolis
1964-1966 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to Seattle, before ultimately moving them to Oakland in 1968
1965 - The Cincinnati Reds are nearly sold to San Diego by Bill DeWitt (father of current Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt) before local investors step in
1966 - "Singing Cowboy" Gene Autrey tries to move the Los Angeles Angels, formerly of Wrigley Field and Dodger Stadium, to Long Beach, but when the city refuses to pay for a new stadium unless they are called the Long Beach Angels, he moves the team to Anaheim instead so he can use a name that will appeal to a larger southern California base. (Arte Moreno eventually makes a mockery of this entire naming debacle by restoring the Los Angeles name despite the team still being in Anaheim, which the city objects to, leading to the team briefly being called, at least in Spanish, Los Angeles de Los Angeles de Anaheim)
1968 - Bud Selig lures the White Sox to play some home games in Milwaukee and tries to buy the team and move it there, but the sale is blocked by other owners. Two years later he takes the Pilots from Seattle instead
1970s to 1990s - George Steinbrenner threatens to move the Yankees to New Jersey, also halfheartedly flirting with the New Orleans Superdome on a few brief occasions, particularly during a two-year stretch when the Yankees played at Shea Stadium (along with the Jets, Giants and Mets)
1973 - The Padres ink a deal to become the Washington (DC) Stars to replace the Texas Rangers version of the Senators, but after uniforms are designed and baseball cards printed, Ray Kroc of McDonalds fame steps in and keeps the team in San Diego
1975 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to Chicago's Comiskey Park...
1975 - ...because the White Sox' planned move to Seattle falls apart. Instead, baseball settled the debacle from the Pilots' quick exit via the Mariners expansion.
1976 - The San Francisco Giants try to leave Candestick Park for the warmer environs of Toronto, but a sale to the Labatts beer folks is blocked. Toronto gets the new Blue Jays franchise instead
1978 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to Denver
1979 - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to move the Athletics to New Orleans to play in the Superdome
1980s - Charles Finley tries unsuccessfully to sell the Athletics to Phoenix and/or to Denver again but is blocked by the city of Oakland after they lose the Raiders
1981 - The Pittsburgh Pirates entertain an offer to move to the Superdome in New Orleans, before the mayor threatens legal action
1981 - The Pirates entertain an offer from Tampa, which does not yet have a dome to offer and is ultimately rejected
1981-1985 - The Pittsburgh Pirates spend several years flirting with Denver, with talk dying down around the time of the (probably unrelated) MLB drug trial in the city, which implicates several players and the team's literally cocaine-addled parrot mascot
1985 - The Pittsburgh Pirates owner also flirts with a sale to Indianapolis, who has just stolen the Baltimore Colts from the NFL, but the mayor threatens to sue and scares both sides out of the deal
1987 - The Chicago White Sox flirt with the idea of moving to a new state-of-the-art dome being built in Tampa but ultimately settle for another Comiskey Park instead, thus narrowly helping the Windy City keep a professional baseball team
1990 - The San Francisco Giants attempt to secure funding for a new stadium in Santa Clara but it is voted down
1992 - The San Francisco Giants attempt to build a stadium in San Jose but the proposal is voted down
1993 - The San Francisco Giants again try to escape the bay area entirely with a move to Tampa's still-vacant state-of-the-art dome, but the other owners block the deal. The dome is eventually occupied by the Rays, who will eventually threaten to half-move to Montreal in part because they hate that dome
1995 - The Pittsburgh Pirates are nearly sold to a DC owner before being saved by Kevin McClatchey, who would eventually taint his legacy by making way for Bob Nutting to supplant him as owner in 2007
1997 - The Minnesota Twins try to move to Charlotte or Piedmont, but both this and Bud Selig's attempt to kill the team outright ultimately fail
2003 - With MLB taking ownership of the Montreal Expos the prior year, various moves are considered. The team plays some games in San Juan, Puerto Rico and kicks the tires on Portland OR, Monterrey Mexico, East Rutherford NJ, Norfolk VA, and Charlotte NC before finally convincing Orioles (neé St. Louis Browns, who started this whole list) owner Peter Angelos to give DC a third bite at the MLB apple.
Lately there has been talk of the Rays and A's moving, as well as Manfred threatening to kick the Brewers out of Milwaukee. It's fascinating to me how many of these prior relocations have involved Milwaukee, the A's, and Tampa... anyway feel free to call me an idiot for any of these you think may be incorrect or for any big ones I missed. Keep the faith, A's fans...
2023.05.30 15:09 noripaw Breaking NC due to a death in the family and the convo goes awful.
First, the obvious question: Why did I break the NC? Because of an awful dead in the family regarding to domestic abuse. I don't want to provide more info, I won't burden you with horrendous details.
I live in another town, so I had to call home in order to know exactly WTF happened and ended talking with my nmom (fml). Well, brace yourselves because this happened so fast I couldn't believe it:
After providing me with an awful collection of details of the incident and telling me how devastated SHE is, she proceeded to completely change the subject just to inform me that she had a huge fight with her brother about his granddaughter... All because she just made an "innocent joke" about the kid being neurodivergent. What kind of joke, you ask? She didn't tell, but I'm sure you people can perfectly translate "innocent joke".
Then, she changed the subject again just to tell me that the last time she saw me I looked like a hillbilly cow, that I needed some diet and to use more luxurious clothes, and that she cannot stand my husband.
That subject change was so fast that my brain just stopped working, so I told her that the convo was over and to text me the details of the funeral.
NC has been reinstated and fortified. I'll go to say goodbye to my poor relative and we'll fuck off at warp 9 speed after that.
submitted by noripaw to raisedbynarcissists [link] [comments]
I live in another town, so I had to call home in order to know exactly WTF happened and ended talking with my nmom (fml). Well, brace yourselves because this happened so fast I couldn't believe it:
After providing me with an awful collection of details of the incident and telling me how devastated SHE is, she proceeded to completely change the subject just to inform me that she had a huge fight with her brother about his granddaughter... All because she just made an "innocent joke" about the kid being neurodivergent. What kind of joke, you ask? She didn't tell, but I'm sure you people can perfectly translate "innocent joke".
Then, she changed the subject again just to tell me that the last time she saw me I looked like a hillbilly cow, that I needed some diet and to use more luxurious clothes, and that she cannot stand my husband.
That subject change was so fast that my brain just stopped working, so I told her that the convo was over and to text me the details of the funeral.
NC has been reinstated and fortified. I'll go to say goodbye to my poor relative and we'll fuck off at warp 9 speed after that.
2023.05.29 13:26 Naao_101 Seeking Feedback on Online Obituary Generator Website
Hello everyone,
I've been developing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that allows users to create online obituaries efficiently. It's a tool I've designed with funeral homes in mind, hoping to streamline their operations and offer additional value to their clients.
The platform allows the customization of obituaries with an easy-to-use interface, offers a variety of templates, and facilitates the sharing process to various social media platforms.
I'd greatly appreciate any feedback from this community regarding the following:
submitted by Naao_101 to SaaS [link] [comments]
I've been developing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that allows users to create online obituaries efficiently. It's a tool I've designed with funeral homes in mind, hoping to streamline their operations and offer additional value to their clients.
The platform allows the customization of obituaries with an easy-to-use interface, offers a variety of templates, and facilitates the sharing process to various social media platforms.
I'd greatly appreciate any feedback from this community regarding the following:
- The Website: Any suggestions about the design, usability, functionality, or any features you think would be beneficial to add?
- The Business Model: Thoughts on the per-use pricing model for funeral homes. Are there any alternative pricing models you think could be more effective?
- Marketing Strategy: I'm planning to approach funeral homes directly to sell this service, but I'm open to suggestions for other marketing strategies that could be effective.
- Market Demand: Do you think there's a demand for this kind of service? Are there any other markets you think I should be targeting?
2023.05.29 03:26 Lemonloid He passed away at 22
TLDR: I just need to vent becuase I'm so heartbroken right now. I just want some support. My friend/ex died and before he died he told his other friend that he didn't ever love me.
My friend's celebration of life was a few hours ago and I can't stop crying. I loved him so much. We met eachother in kindergarten but weren't close until after high school. I grew up around him. He was just such an amazing, unique person but he really struggled with alcoholism. It was like I met the person of my dreams. When he was sober he was so charming, funny, intelligent, creative, passionate, energetic, and loving. We had such an intense connection and I've never had butterflies like that before. But I broke up with him only after a week of being official becuase he wasn't very reliable. He was blacking out, canceling plans to get drunk and then lying about how much he had been drinking. We took a break and then started being friends again and I would hear from him from time to time. I moved on to other relationships after that, but I still cared about him deeply as a friend. I just couldn't tolerate his alcoholism anymore as a girlfriend.
I had a dream about him saying goodbye, so I tried to reach out to him but I couldn't becuase all his accounts were deactivated. After that dream I would wake up comforted just to the thought of him and memories of him just kept popping up everywhere. there was one moment it genuinely felt like he was hugging me and resting his head on my shoulder. Until one night I get home from work and I start feeling an intense sense of grief and dread without reason. I could almost hear his name in my room, even though I live alone. So I google him and the first result is his obituary. It says his funeral happened just a few hours ago so I didn't make it. But I still went to the celebration of life. At the celebration of life one of his friends told me that they called him before he passed, and he was talking about me and how much he never loved me. That really broke my heart. I saw his mother too and she said he wouldn't stop talking about me in a good way and that he really loved me and cared. He just wasn't in his right mind to continue a relationship when he isn't sober. His best friends told me not to look too much into it becuase he wasn't well and before he got to that point in his alcoholism he really did care. I'm just so sad that he is gone and I just wanted him to care becuase I cared. I still care.
submitted by Lemonloid to AlAnon [link] [comments]
My friend's celebration of life was a few hours ago and I can't stop crying. I loved him so much. We met eachother in kindergarten but weren't close until after high school. I grew up around him. He was just such an amazing, unique person but he really struggled with alcoholism. It was like I met the person of my dreams. When he was sober he was so charming, funny, intelligent, creative, passionate, energetic, and loving. We had such an intense connection and I've never had butterflies like that before. But I broke up with him only after a week of being official becuase he wasn't very reliable. He was blacking out, canceling plans to get drunk and then lying about how much he had been drinking. We took a break and then started being friends again and I would hear from him from time to time. I moved on to other relationships after that, but I still cared about him deeply as a friend. I just couldn't tolerate his alcoholism anymore as a girlfriend.
I had a dream about him saying goodbye, so I tried to reach out to him but I couldn't becuase all his accounts were deactivated. After that dream I would wake up comforted just to the thought of him and memories of him just kept popping up everywhere. there was one moment it genuinely felt like he was hugging me and resting his head on my shoulder. Until one night I get home from work and I start feeling an intense sense of grief and dread without reason. I could almost hear his name in my room, even though I live alone. So I google him and the first result is his obituary. It says his funeral happened just a few hours ago so I didn't make it. But I still went to the celebration of life. At the celebration of life one of his friends told me that they called him before he passed, and he was talking about me and how much he never loved me. That really broke my heart. I saw his mother too and she said he wouldn't stop talking about me in a good way and that he really loved me and cared. He just wasn't in his right mind to continue a relationship when he isn't sober. His best friends told me not to look too much into it becuase he wasn't well and before he got to that point in his alcoholism he really did care. I'm just so sad that he is gone and I just wanted him to care becuase I cared. I still care.
2023.05.28 20:40 eulalie_pop Logan made Succession a circle, not a line, and we're about to watch it end where it began
So I’ve been down the rabbit hole, trying to chase every off-the-cuff reference, stray allegory, allusion, comparison, and tangent. I’m going to need you to bear (hug) with me for a bit because I think I’ve stumbled on some truly insane parallels between this show and the myriad of references it makes and it will take a lot of text to justify to you that I'm not crazy (or that I am, but at least I do my research).
This is a show that employs a ton of intertextuality and what the poet T.S. Eliot (someone quoted frequently throughout the series) calls “the mythic method”: essentially using historical, literary, and mythological allusions to draw parallels between characters on the show and characters throughout history (real and imagined).
This method helps the audience to build both conscious and unconscious associations with each of the characters and, ultimately, underscores the Roys’ (and humanity’s) damning commitment to making the same mistakes over and over again. The show seems to draw a lot from Greek mythology, Arthurian legend, biblical parables, Shakespearean tragedy, and modernist poetry (among many other things).
These networks of symbolism span from the earliest recorded history to modern celebrity culture and yet they reveal frighteningly unchanged elements in the stories they tell. The parallels of these references throughout the show serve to highlight the cyclical (the illusion of progress) and deterministic (the illusion of free will) nature of existence.
While I will be dipping in and out of the existing references, I want to call particular attention to the poetry of the aforementioned T.S. Eliot (who champions the mythic method) and John Berryman’s poem Dream Song 29 because I believe much of their work has served as a foundation for characters.
In the show, Frank makes mention of his poem “The Long Song Of J Alfred Prufrock” more than once. Outside of the show, Matthew McFayden (the actor who plays Tom) references the same poem to describe his character. Jeremy Strong (the actor who plays Kendall) says Eliot’s work The Four Quartets is a huge inspiration to his acting and character. A line from this particular work did strike me as being quite on the nose, which is why I continued to comb the poem for more (which it does deliver on):
Circles & Cycles: Endless Recurrence & The Futility Of Progress
The show toys a lot with the philosophical concept of eternal recurrence, which postulates that “time repeats itself in an infinite loop, and that exactly the same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way, over and over again, for eternity.”
These eternal loops are symbolized visually with mirrors, water, fractal reflections; in the “uh-huh” and “mhmms” of repeated, near-palindromic dialogue; and in the show events that echo and repeat: in-air death scares, asynchronous business deals, family betrayal, weddings, retreats, implosions, family reunions, trauma bonding, baptism, funerals, etc.
In this understanding of time, there is no linear progress — or even progress at all. Time is cyclical. People are cyclical. As are the events that transpire. This is particularly interesting in a show like Succession whose title alone implies the phrase “line of succession.” Viewers would expect to see what comes next — who comes next — but as Logan himself yells, “Nothing is a line. Everything is moving all the time.”
Logan consistently evokes the circle shape in his speech, “Put a circle around him” he tells Shiv. “We’ve been circling for an hour, tell them we’re out of gas,” he complains in a moment of grim foreshadowing on his plane. “Crawl in a circle and close your eyes,” he shouts during the game of Boar on the Floor.
And he is the bright, burning nebulous center of this circle. He’s described as “carr[ying] his gravity. He's not a man, he's a f*cking planet.” And the people around him are described like satellites and moons. Characters exist in his orbit. And every complete orbit (or “revolution”) leaves characters in exactly the same place. There are motions, there is the illusion of progress, but the result is the same. Eliot again:
As most of us are aware, the show has made very direct mention of the John Berryman poem Dream Song 29. The names of the past three season finales (as well as the name of the upcoming fourth) are all direct excerpts from the poem, which deals with grief and sadness and the guilt of killing someone when you can’t even confirm there’s been someone killed at all.
Berryman consistently wrote about the guilt and grief he experienced from his father’s suicide. Berryman himself would eventually end up taking his own life, which on its own is a brutal reminder of the cycles of trauma. It also doesn’t feel insignificant that Berryman jumped off a bridge.
What’s really interesting is how each subsequent finale is named for a line that comes earlier and earlier in the poem. It also toys with this concept that things come full circle and end where they begin. This echoes Eliot’s essential thesis of the poem:
We see "nobody" and "no one mentioned" a lot when it comes to Logan, who believes most people are "fungible as f*ck," and "pygmies" while he's "1,000 feet tall." When Kendall is involved in the accident, we see him echo "NRPI" or no real person involved.
The reason Kendall couldn’t live up to his father’s expectations is that he couldn’t be the killer his father needed him to be (even if his morality or basis of being a good person is off). This retroactive movement through the poem could be Kendall realizing he is, in fact, the killer his father always needed him to be, enabling him to take the necessary steps of seizing the crown on his own.
Allegories & Allusions: Mythic Comparisons & Determinism
It’s Shakespearean, like Roman says, “I kill Kendall, get crowned king, like we’re in f*cking Hamlet or something.” But it’s not just Hamlet, it’s King Lear, King Richard III, Coriolanus, Macbeth. And it’s not just Shakespeare, it’s Oedipus Rex, The Odyssey, The Waste Land, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Cronus devouring his children, Romulus killing Remus, Noah cursing his child for looking upon him naked.
The concept of the monomyth was popularized in "The Hero With 1000 Faces" and discusses throughout history, throughout different times and places, different cultures, different religions, different people have developed stories with relatively similar fundamental elements. The show is rife with allusions of stories that follow that same thread. Logan is Cronus who is King Lear who is Romulus who is who is. This is another form of endless recurrence: the inability to break the cycle. Or, in a very Hamlet reference, "maybe the poison drips through."
The themes of patricide, fratricide, and incest in particular are rampant. Rhea (like Rhea Jarell) in Greek mythology is both sister and consort to Cronus. Both are part of the first generation of aptly named Titan gods. Cronus overthrew his father Uranus and learns his children are fated to overthrow him. So he eats them as soon as they are born. Logan does refer to people as food a surprising amount throughout the show, varying from red meat to vegetables. He outright calls for blood sacrifice, which evokes the language of the gods.
Logan is referenced specifically as one of the last real American titans in his obituaries and eulogies. The language around him is frequently god-like. He's known as "the big man" or even "the big man upstairs." Tom tells Greg to "be his representative here on earth"; Roman asks the audience, "who is going to climb Mt. Olympus and be the next Dr. Zeus?" And that's where the myth gets interesting.
The only child not to be eaten is Zeus, who does end up killing his father and was surprisingly interested in marrying his mother. We're familiar with this plot formula through a different archetype: the Oedipus Complex, which we see referenced in the show with “Oedipus Roy,” “Oedipussy,” and “stabbing my eyes out.” The same story is repeated again in Hamlet with brother killing and brother and son yelling at his mother about her milky breasts (something Roman does to Shiv more than once). In the show when Logan says to Roman, “You may want to f*ck your mother but I don’t.” We know none of these stories end well. As Connor muses, “It’s not right to kill one’s father; history teaches us that.”
In the story of Romulus and Remus (whose mother’s name is also Rhea), the two brothers were initially chased out of their city as potential threats to the King (yet again). They were left by the river to die and were saved by the river god (important). After successfully overthrowing the kingdom that left them for dead, they agree to found a new city. They ultimately disagreed on which hill to found it and decided to have a bird-watching competition to see who could see the most omens indicating they had divine approval for the hill. Remus says he saw 6 auspicious birds but Romulus claims to see 12. Romulus kills Remus over this.
It should remind you of Logan visiting his childhood home with Ewan: “I saw a mistle thrush at the bandstand,” and the log book he kept as a child of birds he “saw” that Ewan would cross out if he didn’t believe him. It may also echo a part of The Four Quartets, “Other echoes/ Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?/ Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,/ Round the corner. Through the first gate,/ Into our first world, shall we follow/ The deception of the thrush?"
There is much to be said about the themes of warring brothers. Also the themes of fathers worried their children would one day overthrow them who take action to thwart or murder their children, which inadvertently sets into motion the very outcome they fear. It happens over and over again in stories old and new. As Panhandle Pete says, “I push him, he pushes me, and around and around we go.” Or as Eliot puts it, “that the wheel may turn and still / Be forever still.”
Much of these works touch on a sort of determinism, or the slow crushing reality that every action you take — even if that action is an attempt to thwart your fate — will ultimately lead to the same inevitable ending. This is the illusion of free will on top of the illusion of progress. And Logan, in fearing his children would usurp him (and also disparaging his children for not being able to), set into motion his own death and his own messy succession.
It’s also a reminder that the greatest men in life are all the same when laid to rest:
The show has very much been structured around Kendall, and we watch him move through bodies of water with what feels like different symbolism each time. Is he drowning, is he reborn? We witness Kendall at his lowest point face down in a pool and at one of his highest, splashing into the Pacific ocean. We watch a man drown. We watch Logan beg Kendall for water as they walk through Adrien Brody’s maze. We watch Roman clamor for water at the funeral when he needs to calm down. Poetry has long played with this life and death dynamic in water, like the sailors dying of thirst in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner who cry:
Logan is apt to use similar water symbolism, even telling Shiv that she’s marrying a man “fathoms” beneath her. As Rhea tells him, fearful of his own monstrosity, “I can’t see the bottom of the pool. I don’t know if you care about anything. It scares me.” ATN’s major scandal was “death cruises.” Even his operating nemesis is called “Sandy.”
In fact, there is mention of all elements and seasons — in particular, fire from Shiv, air from Roman, and earth from Connor. T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets confront these same themes and share some surprising similarities with show scene locations, dialogue, and plot points.
That’s because Succession is an allegory for the micro and the macro: the rise and fall of families, civilizations, monarchies, dynasties, and empires. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, the cycles rinse and repeat. Eliot modeled the four quartets on the 4 elements and the 4 seasons. And you can see even in Succession a similar manifestation of 4 elements. And, well, 4 seasons of the show. (And what occurs after 4 seasons? A full revolution around the sun, bringing you to where you began.)
Water seems to be at the root of it all. Even Ewan’s eulogy meditates on his and Logan’s journey on a boat. Even their abusive uncle is named Noah. In the show, we watch our nobody die by water, we watch our main character nearly die by water, and then we watch him revive in the ocean. As Kendall and his father wind their way through Adrien Brody’s circuitous Long Island home, Kendall remarks, “I think this leads to the ocean.” Because every path leads to the sea in some way or another.
The overarching narration from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is the Arthurian Legend of The Fisher King. This story is told a million different ways with a million different outcomes, but always boils down to an injured or maimed monarch ruling over a dying land. Or as Ewan refers to his "empire of shit": “He’s built a wasteland and called it an empire.”
He’s looking for someone, anyone, to heal him, rescue the kingdom, and ensure the dynasty survives. This is the myth of the holy grail, which, in this show, can be seen as the throne: The original stories of the holy grail were not Christian/religious but they do employ a lot of the same mythmaking from earlier religions and mythologies to tell their stories and thus construct their new realties. As Eliot says in The Four Quartets:
That’s why Kendall’s easy comparisons of himself to Jesus feel less blasphemous than revelatory. Jesus is another hero archetype in the show’s mythology. He is willing to sacrifice himself, which Kendall must do in order to become the successor his father wanted. As he says, "this is a culmination of my life's journey to be crucified for you morons."
(It’s worth noting: In some legends, the knight saves the king; in others, he inadvertently destroys him. We know Logan dies, but it does feel less likely that Waystar Royco survives.) Drowning is a constant feature of Eliot's poems, but so is baptism and renewed life. It is difficult to determine the meaning of water in either instance, except that it doesn't discriminate as a life or death bringer, which is both beautiful and terrifying.
Parallels & Predictions: Piecing The Plot & Poetry Together
To repeat again, as this show is wont to do: “Crawl in a circle and close your eyes!” Logan Roy shouts during a game of Boar On A Floor. It’s an allegory, like many games on the series, and proudly says the quiet part out loud: Logan always wins. Here’s a little boar on the floor reference in The Four Quartets:
Games on Succession (which are a consistent refrain), it turns out, are rarely fun and are often designed to humiliate or inflict pain. The same goes when characters say “I’m just kidding” after an eviscerating remark. Logan thinks life is a game, and as he says, games should be taken seriously. And because Logan explicitly makes the rules, there is no winning, just trudging around the board, passing Go, and collecting $200. The games are essentially Sisyphean tasks that the kids wouldn’t be able to win even if they were actually competent enough to run the company. And yet they keep rolling the boulder. It’s endless. The repetition. It ends where it begins.
We know this show is a game, one that isn't fun at all, and one whose rules Logan made up. Even when there's a winner, there's no winner. So it's almost futile to play at all. That said, it’s impossible to make sense of any of it all without the ending — to confirm this ball has been rolling toward an inevitable conclusion, but given the show’s ending has probably occurred already, here are my thoughts:
“It would be the same at the end of the journey, If you came at night like a broken king, If you came by day not knowing what you came for, It would be the same, when you leave the rough road And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for Is only a shell, a husk of meaning From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled If at all. Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment.”
“Success doesn’t really interest me anymore, it’s too easy. Analysis + capital + execution. Fucking, anyone can do that. But failure, that’s a secret. Just as much failure as possible as fast as possible, burn that shit out, that’s interesting.”
I’m not a big believer that Greg will fail so far upwards that he will win (this would feel like a betrayal in its own right), but do I believe there’s a world where Greg gets himself on a piece of paper with a question mark. Maybe???
I’ll end at the ending. Or conclude where Eliot did on The Four Quartets:
submitted by eulalie_pop to SuccessionTV [link] [comments]
This is a show that employs a ton of intertextuality and what the poet T.S. Eliot (someone quoted frequently throughout the series) calls “the mythic method”: essentially using historical, literary, and mythological allusions to draw parallels between characters on the show and characters throughout history (real and imagined).
This method helps the audience to build both conscious and unconscious associations with each of the characters and, ultimately, underscores the Roys’ (and humanity’s) damning commitment to making the same mistakes over and over again. The show seems to draw a lot from Greek mythology, Arthurian legend, biblical parables, Shakespearean tragedy, and modernist poetry (among many other things).
These networks of symbolism span from the earliest recorded history to modern celebrity culture and yet they reveal frighteningly unchanged elements in the stories they tell. The parallels of these references throughout the show serve to highlight the cyclical (the illusion of progress) and deterministic (the illusion of free will) nature of existence.
While I will be dipping in and out of the existing references, I want to call particular attention to the poetry of the aforementioned T.S. Eliot (who champions the mythic method) and John Berryman’s poem Dream Song 29 because I believe much of their work has served as a foundation for characters.
In the show, Frank makes mention of his poem “The Long Song Of J Alfred Prufrock” more than once. Outside of the show, Matthew McFayden (the actor who plays Tom) references the same poem to describe his character. Jeremy Strong (the actor who plays Kendall) says Eliot’s work The Four Quartets is a huge inspiration to his acting and character. A line from this particular work did strike me as being quite on the nose, which is why I continued to comb the poem for more (which it does deliver on):
"In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf."This will probably be a monster of a post, so I will attempt to break down the following sections between poetic parallels, visual and dialogic symbolism of eternal recurrence, and an exploration of the historical and mythological allusions. Ultimately, I believe all of these clues point to the overwhelming conclusion that we will end where we began, in some way or another.
Circles & Cycles: Endless Recurrence & The Futility Of Progress
The show toys a lot with the philosophical concept of eternal recurrence, which postulates that “time repeats itself in an infinite loop, and that exactly the same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way, over and over again, for eternity.”
These eternal loops are symbolized visually with mirrors, water, fractal reflections; in the “uh-huh” and “mhmms” of repeated, near-palindromic dialogue; and in the show events that echo and repeat: in-air death scares, asynchronous business deals, family betrayal, weddings, retreats, implosions, family reunions, trauma bonding, baptism, funerals, etc.
In this understanding of time, there is no linear progress — or even progress at all. Time is cyclical. People are cyclical. As are the events that transpire. This is particularly interesting in a show like Succession whose title alone implies the phrase “line of succession.” Viewers would expect to see what comes next — who comes next — but as Logan himself yells, “Nothing is a line. Everything is moving all the time.”
Logan consistently evokes the circle shape in his speech, “Put a circle around him” he tells Shiv. “We’ve been circling for an hour, tell them we’re out of gas,” he complains in a moment of grim foreshadowing on his plane. “Crawl in a circle and close your eyes,” he shouts during the game of Boar on the Floor.
And he is the bright, burning nebulous center of this circle. He’s described as “carr[ying] his gravity. He's not a man, he's a f*cking planet.” And the people around him are described like satellites and moons. Characters exist in his orbit. And every complete orbit (or “revolution”) leaves characters in exactly the same place. There are motions, there is the illusion of progress, but the result is the same. Eliot again:
“every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure”With this understanding, the show may just end where it begins. Not only in “nothing” happening, but in repeating the same events ad infinitum: A kid tries to take over the family business, they try to align with their siblings, they eventually backstab their siblings, they end out in the cold, and then they reunite, swear not to do it again, until it all repeats.
As most of us are aware, the show has made very direct mention of the John Berryman poem Dream Song 29. The names of the past three season finales (as well as the name of the upcoming fourth) are all direct excerpts from the poem, which deals with grief and sadness and the guilt of killing someone when you can’t even confirm there’s been someone killed at all.
Berryman consistently wrote about the guilt and grief he experienced from his father’s suicide. Berryman himself would eventually end up taking his own life, which on its own is a brutal reminder of the cycles of trauma. It also doesn’t feel insignificant that Berryman jumped off a bridge.
What’s really interesting is how each subsequent finale is named for a line that comes earlier and earlier in the poem. It also toys with this concept that things come full circle and end where they begin. This echoes Eliot’s essential thesis of the poem:
“What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”But while the speaker of the poem comes to realize he has not murdered “nobody” by the poem’s last line; Kendall, moving through the poem backward, must reckon with the idea that he may have killed somebody even if they were a “nobody.” And while we may encounter this as a moment in which Kendall is genuinely despairing over his season 1 inadvertent murder, I believe we are far more likely to see Kendall embrace this moment.
We see "nobody" and "no one mentioned" a lot when it comes to Logan, who believes most people are "fungible as f*ck," and "pygmies" while he's "1,000 feet tall." When Kendall is involved in the accident, we see him echo "NRPI" or no real person involved.
The reason Kendall couldn’t live up to his father’s expectations is that he couldn’t be the killer his father needed him to be (even if his morality or basis of being a good person is off). This retroactive movement through the poem could be Kendall realizing he is, in fact, the killer his father always needed him to be, enabling him to take the necessary steps of seizing the crown on his own.
Allegories & Allusions: Mythic Comparisons & Determinism
It’s Shakespearean, like Roman says, “I kill Kendall, get crowned king, like we’re in f*cking Hamlet or something.” But it’s not just Hamlet, it’s King Lear, King Richard III, Coriolanus, Macbeth. And it’s not just Shakespeare, it’s Oedipus Rex, The Odyssey, The Waste Land, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Cronus devouring his children, Romulus killing Remus, Noah cursing his child for looking upon him naked.
The concept of the monomyth was popularized in "The Hero With 1000 Faces" and discusses throughout history, throughout different times and places, different cultures, different religions, different people have developed stories with relatively similar fundamental elements. The show is rife with allusions of stories that follow that same thread. Logan is Cronus who is King Lear who is Romulus who is who is. This is another form of endless recurrence: the inability to break the cycle. Or, in a very Hamlet reference, "maybe the poison drips through."
The themes of patricide, fratricide, and incest in particular are rampant. Rhea (like Rhea Jarell) in Greek mythology is both sister and consort to Cronus. Both are part of the first generation of aptly named Titan gods. Cronus overthrew his father Uranus and learns his children are fated to overthrow him. So he eats them as soon as they are born. Logan does refer to people as food a surprising amount throughout the show, varying from red meat to vegetables. He outright calls for blood sacrifice, which evokes the language of the gods.
Logan is referenced specifically as one of the last real American titans in his obituaries and eulogies. The language around him is frequently god-like. He's known as "the big man" or even "the big man upstairs." Tom tells Greg to "be his representative here on earth"; Roman asks the audience, "who is going to climb Mt. Olympus and be the next Dr. Zeus?" And that's where the myth gets interesting.
The only child not to be eaten is Zeus, who does end up killing his father and was surprisingly interested in marrying his mother. We're familiar with this plot formula through a different archetype: the Oedipus Complex, which we see referenced in the show with “Oedipus Roy,” “Oedipussy,” and “stabbing my eyes out.” The same story is repeated again in Hamlet with brother killing and brother and son yelling at his mother about her milky breasts (something Roman does to Shiv more than once). In the show when Logan says to Roman, “You may want to f*ck your mother but I don’t.” We know none of these stories end well. As Connor muses, “It’s not right to kill one’s father; history teaches us that.”
In the story of Romulus and Remus (whose mother’s name is also Rhea), the two brothers were initially chased out of their city as potential threats to the King (yet again). They were left by the river to die and were saved by the river god (important). After successfully overthrowing the kingdom that left them for dead, they agree to found a new city. They ultimately disagreed on which hill to found it and decided to have a bird-watching competition to see who could see the most omens indicating they had divine approval for the hill. Remus says he saw 6 auspicious birds but Romulus claims to see 12. Romulus kills Remus over this.
It should remind you of Logan visiting his childhood home with Ewan: “I saw a mistle thrush at the bandstand,” and the log book he kept as a child of birds he “saw” that Ewan would cross out if he didn’t believe him. It may also echo a part of The Four Quartets, “Other echoes/ Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?/ Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,/ Round the corner. Through the first gate,/ Into our first world, shall we follow/ The deception of the thrush?"
There is much to be said about the themes of warring brothers. Also the themes of fathers worried their children would one day overthrow them who take action to thwart or murder their children, which inadvertently sets into motion the very outcome they fear. It happens over and over again in stories old and new. As Panhandle Pete says, “I push him, he pushes me, and around and around we go.” Or as Eliot puts it, “that the wheel may turn and still / Be forever still.”
Much of these works touch on a sort of determinism, or the slow crushing reality that every action you take — even if that action is an attempt to thwart your fate — will ultimately lead to the same inevitable ending. This is the illusion of free will on top of the illusion of progress. And Logan, in fearing his children would usurp him (and also disparaging his children for not being able to), set into motion his own death and his own messy succession.
It’s also a reminder that the greatest men in life are all the same when laid to rest:
"O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant, The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark…"Structure & Symbolism: Water As Rebirth & Destruction
The show has very much been structured around Kendall, and we watch him move through bodies of water with what feels like different symbolism each time. Is he drowning, is he reborn? We witness Kendall at his lowest point face down in a pool and at one of his highest, splashing into the Pacific ocean. We watch a man drown. We watch Logan beg Kendall for water as they walk through Adrien Brody’s maze. We watch Roman clamor for water at the funeral when he needs to calm down. Poetry has long played with this life and death dynamic in water, like the sailors dying of thirst in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner who cry:
“Water, water, every where,. And all the boards did shrink;. Water, water, every where,. Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot: O Christ!”This sub has noted Kendall’s connection to water, which has been represented over and over visually. But once you realize every metaphor, analogy, and simile he uses is water-based, you can’t unhear it. He calls his father “a tsunami of corruption” and describes things “as more precious than water”; he calls deals “choppy” and “dead in the water,” and asks to “help steady the ship”; he offers to “row back” on business deals, says timing is “high tide,” and that he has “bigger fish to fry.”
Logan is apt to use similar water symbolism, even telling Shiv that she’s marrying a man “fathoms” beneath her. As Rhea tells him, fearful of his own monstrosity, “I can’t see the bottom of the pool. I don’t know if you care about anything. It scares me.” ATN’s major scandal was “death cruises.” Even his operating nemesis is called “Sandy.”
In fact, there is mention of all elements and seasons — in particular, fire from Shiv, air from Roman, and earth from Connor. T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets confront these same themes and share some surprising similarities with show scene locations, dialogue, and plot points.
That’s because Succession is an allegory for the micro and the macro: the rise and fall of families, civilizations, monarchies, dynasties, and empires. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, the cycles rinse and repeat. Eliot modeled the four quartets on the 4 elements and the 4 seasons. And you can see even in Succession a similar manifestation of 4 elements. And, well, 4 seasons of the show. (And what occurs after 4 seasons? A full revolution around the sun, bringing you to where you began.)
Water seems to be at the root of it all. Even Ewan’s eulogy meditates on his and Logan’s journey on a boat. Even their abusive uncle is named Noah. In the show, we watch our nobody die by water, we watch our main character nearly die by water, and then we watch him revive in the ocean. As Kendall and his father wind their way through Adrien Brody’s circuitous Long Island home, Kendall remarks, “I think this leads to the ocean.” Because every path leads to the sea in some way or another.
The overarching narration from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is the Arthurian Legend of The Fisher King. This story is told a million different ways with a million different outcomes, but always boils down to an injured or maimed monarch ruling over a dying land. Or as Ewan refers to his "empire of shit": “He’s built a wasteland and called it an empire.”
He’s looking for someone, anyone, to heal him, rescue the kingdom, and ensure the dynasty survives. This is the myth of the holy grail, which, in this show, can be seen as the throne: The original stories of the holy grail were not Christian/religious but they do employ a lot of the same mythmaking from earlier religions and mythologies to tell their stories and thus construct their new realties. As Eliot says in The Four Quartets:
"The whole earth is our hospital Endowed by the ruined millionaire, Wherein, if we do well, we shall Die of the absolute paternal care That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere."I believe Kendall (and the other children) represent the grail knights who try to save the king. (On the same level they stand in for the gods, the elements, or anything at all). When Christianity became more popular, these myths adapted to Christian overtones, but they still had the Celtic and pagan myths at their core: the grail becomes the chalice from the last supper.
That’s why Kendall’s easy comparisons of himself to Jesus feel less blasphemous than revelatory. Jesus is another hero archetype in the show’s mythology. He is willing to sacrifice himself, which Kendall must do in order to become the successor his father wanted. As he says, "this is a culmination of my life's journey to be crucified for you morons."
(It’s worth noting: In some legends, the knight saves the king; in others, he inadvertently destroys him. We know Logan dies, but it does feel less likely that Waystar Royco survives.) Drowning is a constant feature of Eliot's poems, but so is baptism and renewed life. It is difficult to determine the meaning of water in either instance, except that it doesn't discriminate as a life or death bringer, which is both beautiful and terrifying.
Parallels & Predictions: Piecing The Plot & Poetry Together
To repeat again, as this show is wont to do: “Crawl in a circle and close your eyes!” Logan Roy shouts during a game of Boar On A Floor. It’s an allegory, like many games on the series, and proudly says the quiet part out loud: Logan always wins. Here’s a little boar on the floor reference in The Four Quartets:
"We move above the moving tree In light upon the figured leaf And hear upon the sodden floor Below, the boarhound and the boar Pursue their pattern as before But reconciled among the stars."We’ve seen the L.O.G.A.N. system at work many times and with many people. He dangles a carrot, a morsel of love, as each character attempts to play the game over and over while expecting different results. They are doomed to crawl in that circle, to play that blind game, as Logan angrily shouts, “It’s fun!” And this game doesn't end in death. The children still ask. "What would dad do?"
Games on Succession (which are a consistent refrain), it turns out, are rarely fun and are often designed to humiliate or inflict pain. The same goes when characters say “I’m just kidding” after an eviscerating remark. Logan thinks life is a game, and as he says, games should be taken seriously. And because Logan explicitly makes the rules, there is no winning, just trudging around the board, passing Go, and collecting $200. The games are essentially Sisyphean tasks that the kids wouldn’t be able to win even if they were actually competent enough to run the company. And yet they keep rolling the boulder. It’s endless. The repetition. It ends where it begins.
"Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph. And any action Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start. We die with the dying: See, they depart, and we go with them. We are born with the dead: See, they return, and bring us with them. The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree Are of equal duration. A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments."Please also note the use of “the rose” and “the yew tree,” which are the names of Logan’s siblings Rose and Ewan, which derives from yew-tree. Other important name comparisons include Kendall’s association to spring/river valley; Siobhan’s nickname either a knife (Shiv) or Pinky (a variation of the name Rose); Roman’s connection to Romulus/Corialanus; Tom’s name meaning “twin” because there was already someone named Judas in the bible HELLO; Logan’s name meaning little hollow, which recalls another Eliot poem, The Hollow Men.
We know this show is a game, one that isn't fun at all, and one whose rules Logan made up. Even when there's a winner, there's no winner. So it's almost futile to play at all. That said, it’s impossible to make sense of any of it all without the ending — to confirm this ball has been rolling toward an inevitable conclusion, but given the show’s ending has probably occurred already, here are my thoughts:
- Kendall drowns
“It would be the same at the end of the journey, If you came at night like a broken king, If you came by day not knowing what you came for, It would be the same, when you leave the rough road And turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade And the tombstone. And what you thought you came for Is only a shell, a husk of meaning From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled If at all. Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment.”
- Kendall is king of the ashes
- Mattson wins it all
- Mattson destroys it all
“Success doesn’t really interest me anymore, it’s too easy. Analysis + capital + execution. Fucking, anyone can do that. But failure, that’s a secret. Just as much failure as possible as fast as possible, burn that shit out, that’s interesting.”
- Tom betrays Shiv
- Greg betrays Tom
I’m not a big believer that Greg will fail so far upwards that he will win (this would feel like a betrayal in its own right), but do I believe there’s a world where Greg gets himself on a piece of paper with a question mark. Maybe???
- Geri finally beats Tom
I’ll end at the ending. Or conclude where Eliot did on The Four Quartets:
"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always— A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one."PS. Given ‘Pinky’ is another name for ‘Rose’ does this mean Shiv wins??? JK let’s just watch the show tonight and laugh at our predictions in the morning.