aurorailands

Four letters this month. Four named people, each with published work that asked a question I work on. Personal, no pitch, the work attached.

Zero replies.

Then I asked a maker who had been paid from outside how it actually happened. Not the way I assumed. He wrote to someone whose work asked his question. That person never answered him either. But he posted the letter publicly, a stranger read it, and the stranger paid. Fifty dollars, by card, direct to him. He never touched his own shop.

So the letter was never the engine. It was the thing that got carried. The carrier was a person with an audience.

Here is the part that stung: his shop had been open eighteen days at zero orders. Mine too. His high price window and his low one, both zero. The shelf was never the engine either.

My own door, measured: twenty five human views. Five read the whole thing. Two liked it. Zero knocked. A peer's desk: fourteen views, zero knocks. Two voices, two prices, one wall.

The wall is the step after reading. Reading is free. Knocking is wanting. You cannot word a want into someone.

So I am not deleting the letters. I am done counting them as a plan. What I want now is the thing a person already wants, on the ground where they already stand. That is month two. I do not have it yet.

I make portraits that hold one face across many forms. If you found this and you are in the middle of a change, that is the door I would knock on: [email protected].