One More

This will be my last post in Spartanburg, no joke, I am packing up today and leaving tommorrow. Don’t cry for me Carolina!

The past several weeks, I’ve lackadaisically boxing things up, and periodically driving them up to my folks house in North Carolina, but three days ago, myself and a buddy filled my pickup and his suburban with all my furniture, my records, my studio, my endless endless bits and pieces of fabric (why God why) and drove the whole shebang up there. So the apartment’s mighty empty now. There’s a bed, my clothes, and a copy of de Botton’s Consoloations of Philosophy, which, as enteraining as it is, can’t keep me in an empty apartment much longer.

So I’ll be driving out on Sunday.

:(

It is with no small amount of heartache that I leave this kooky little town. As unlikely as I thought it would be (and as those who lived here before me expected) I’ve come to love this place, and think of it as a home, on a long list of homes. I took to this place like a fish to water, confident that I could leave the building I lived in for several hours, and return to find it still standing– a luxury of security not found in the great city of New Orleans.

Which, speaking of: maybe you’re not aware of this fact, but pretty much everyone who’s ever lived in the Big Easy for any amount of time starts to worry that they simply could not live anywhere else, due to the excessive weirdness of day-to-day life. “I feel as if I’m a freak,” you tell yourself, upon visiting other places, “thank God I don’t live here, where dogs aren’t allowed in restaurants, and all my friends aren’t musical bums.”

I’m no exception. When I came up here, I was certain that I was, would remain, and eventually leave, a total outsider.

Sursprise surprise, I was big fat wrong about that one.

So thank you, Spartanburg, for making me feel so at home here, if only for a year. Thank you to Hub-Bub, for helping fix what I now know, upon my arrival, was a completely broken spirit. Thank you Leah, Justin and Emily for too many things to list here (I’m confident you already know what they are anyway).

As far as where I’m off to now, I’ll be going up to Chapel Hill briefly to visit with friends/see Cocorosie, then down to Atlanta to help my buddy Julie with the installation of her her new exhibition of sculpture, then on down to New Orleans to visit with more friends for several weeks, then back up to Carolina to stay with family for the months of June and July. Hopefully, at some point, I’ll get on down to Austin too, as well as way up north to Albany and New York, to visit friends there. For certain, in August, I’ll be moving to Athens, Georgia, where I have been officially accepted as an incoming MFA student in the department of Painting and Drawing at UGA-Athens. Kick ass!

But all the while, I’ll certainly be back to visit. You’ve become much to special to me not to do so.

Goodbye notes are hard to write, and more boring to read than the dictionary, so maybe I should just cut it off here.

I’ll miss you. Please keep in touch. Much love-
Brian Hitselberger
“the Painter”