Basement Meeting

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 8 March 2015.



Still confused on Arthur's attire. I guess if we thought of something really symbolic, we could just go with it. What about highly Country Club and/or Yacht Club?

One of the weirdest situations I've been in was when I went to this quasi cult ("large-group awareness training seminar") gathering in Philadelphia and stayed with the parents of a rich middle-aged former alcoholic who had failed to launch (and, even in the context of this empowerment group, was continuing to fail). He had every advantage...and an addled brain.

Now this guy was WASP, so that's very different than Arthur, but could we imagine an addled Arthur living at the family boathouse in Bloomfield Hills? Or eating his meals everyday at the Yacht Club on Cass Lake, all on the family tab? I'm imagining a daily uniform of khakis, white oxford, monogrammed v-neck or turtleneck cable-knit sweater. Maybe even a captain's hat.

And just spending the days sailing...that's all he can manage any more. Kind of like Yacht Rock in general: we're so burned out by the last two decades we can't do anything else but go on sailboats. And we can't listen to anything heavier than a Christopher Cross guitar solo (although I flipping love this song).

And I love cable-knit sweaters. And you're welcome.

Alternatively, Arthur could be doing the same thing at a Country Club somewhere back in the lakes area of Bloomfield Hills. I like that tight tennis gear that you see in just about every Wes Anderson movie.

Of course, I guess it might be even more likely that Arthur would be returning to his Catholic roots at this point, setting up a Thomas Merton-style hermitage in the family's boathouse. Hermitage-era Thomas Merton clothing might work well too. That would be a totally different feel. Kind of working class/proletariat on top with karate style pants and split-toed socks.

One last thought: the yacht club look might be the most symbolically satisfying, making Arthur more like an Ophelia/Hamlet-type hero whose madness consists in being "native and indued" to (or at least reconciled with) that primordial element of water.

By the way, I like the idea of Carlton Farthington trying to sell his ideas as a "large-group awareness training" (LGAT) rather than a cult. That was really what was happening toward the end of the 70's and into the 80's.

This is where we have the slogan: "Because knology. Is is what's being."

This is the sort of thing that latter-day Diana Ross and John Denver fell into. Much less about dirty hippies looking for some place to crash and burn.