Assignment: Imagine LACMA is going to have an exhibit about you with signs up all over town.
Title: The Hovel: Bedless Blogger In Topless Hara
In the first exhibit, patrons will walk into my 400-square foot hovel, a converted garage. The first thing they will see will be the blankets on the floor covered with a purple sheet and a black duve. Two pillows in blue cases.
As the patron looks around, he sees overflowing book shelves, a microwave, DVD player and TV on the dresser, a computer on a desk with folders spilling out underneath, and shelves of dry goods.
The next room contains a 1979 Datsun station wagon. Rusty. All of the belongings I brought to Los Angeles in 1994 are piled in boxes in the back. Pillows. Sheets. Duve. Towels to cover the windows for sexy time.
The next room contains my first car — a 1966 VW Bug. It no longer has the gas odor that plagued me for so long. It is no longer cold as my sister found the heat switch. This is the chaste car. Nothing naughty went on in here. The paint doesn’t match. I stopped loving my car after I crashed it headlong into a parked school bus in 1985 and the repair cost me $900. One of many reckless impetuous things I’ve done in my life.
Describe the experience of the patrons:
Patrons feel like they’ve walked through the life of a suicide. It seems worse than sad. It seems repellent. Broken. Jarring. Typical bachelor pad. Mess. Chaos. A wasted life. Predatory. Irresponsible. Childish. The life of a child-man. Why didn’t this guy pull it together? Why wasn’t he able to connect normally? Why couldn’t he live like a mentch? What did he fear?
Upheaval. Dislocation. A life on the run. Running from what? Form himself. From his shame. From fears of insignificance.
The patron’s are amused by the exhibitor’s delusions of grandeur. In the mess, however, some see Orpheus rising and the creation of a sturdy world of words, words with all the strength the protagonist rarely exhibited in real life.
The only reason people visit The Hovel is because of the words he left behind, yet they are entirely absent from the exhibit. No wonder the protagonist lived so much online where he could imagine himself king.
