In the end I’ve decided to use different taglines depending on the occasion, because Fourth Night is, after all, a chimerical creature with unruly metamorphic tendencies that I can’t always anticipate. So depending on the occasion, I’ll use the most relevant tagline. For now, I’m taking the advice of “A different voice,” namely to disregard the tagline and — something I’ve been meaning to do for some time — reintroduce my old header image. The figure in the photo, by the way, is a sculpture by the Monhegan artist Ted Tihansky, who chainsaws figures out of tree stumps and logs, sets them on fire until they blacken, and then raises them, charred and otherworldly, to contemplate this world.

One comment I’d like to mention came via email. The author said he was not crazy about any of the choices for a tagline and felt the writing “deserves something deeper as a sub-descriptor.” He went on: “I read your About section and for some strange reason the words ‘Missives from the Plague Wagon’ sprang to mind.” I’m not sure if I’ll ever use it, but the fact that it intuitively sprang to his mind after reading my About section makes it without question my favorite tagline. 

For the past few months I’ve spent countless hours scrawling out dozens, or more like hundreds, of sketches for a Fourth Night emblem. Considering that, at last, I have the image to present, I feel entitled to write sparsely today. Thanks to Brian Hall for taking fifteen minutes to walk me through some foreign Photoshop territory (and out of my resigned despair) last night by phone. And thanks to RJ for the Illustrator tutorial back in April, even though I gave up on that program after quickly finding myself in labyrinthine vector-graphics hell.

Please feel free to let me know what you think of the image. Just know that, unlike the tagline, I’m staunchly committed to this one. All the elements that I want are there. After all the sketches and scribbles, I can at last raise a claw to the night and shout, Eureka!                                      

CLICK HERE FOR THE IMAGE