|
|
|
|
 2003.02.23 EPISODE 16, in which the doctor rides a magnetic lightning force beam
Dr. Evermor is really Tom Every, the designer of the carousel at the House on the Rock, among other things. He's been working on the Forevertron and its supplementary material for nearly two decades. Saturday, Sharon and I drove out to see it, not knowing what to expect. For my part, I just wanted to get enough information to write a 400-word brief for a class assignment. This is something that should appeal to the readers of Madison Magazine, I figured, and it ought to be easy to do. After being there, I don't believe a 400-word brief can even mention Dr. Evermor, for his mere presence would be a big enough tangent to blow the word count. In 400 words, I can loosely describe the Forevertron itself; to properly cover Dr. Evermor I have at least three more fact-finding trips and probably half a dozen more interviews ahead of me. My initial conception of it was as a 10,000-word piece (plus photo series) for this site. Now I think it may be a book. We got to the site around two o'clock, after a brief detour into nearby Delaney's Surplus. It's hard to really know how to get to the Forevertron if you're concerned about flying past it on the highway. At Delaney's they told us to keep going just a bit more and we'd see an orange gate. Delaney's is a really strange store, selling what appears to be pan-dimensional merchandise to any and everyone in the middle of nowhere. As we left, I naïvely thought Delaney's might make for an interesting brief. There wasn't a clearly marked office or headquarters as we got out of the car, but something quickly happened in the old Tommy Bartlett's Robot World bus behind us. Someone was beckoning us in. We went inside and he didn't even need to introduce himself: We knew. Bundled up and sitting next to a space heater, a crack of genius lightning running down his forehead, he was a guru awaiting earnest pilgrims. He was eager to talk about his work, his ideas, what had brought us all the way out to Baraboo from our comfortable plateaus. We spent almost two hours in the bus before we saw more than a glimpse of the Forevertron. When we got back outside it was shocking. The Forevertron itself is impressive but its detail is overshadowed by the pieces around it. There's something called the Graviton, designed to seat two people who will monitor the voices from the heavens. There are two space basses -- "Fiddle Birds," actually -- that are part of the Bird Band, measuring 40 feet tall and constructed out of tanks used for polio and burn therapy. It all relates to the Forevertron's purpose -- to perpetuate Dr. Evermor off the planet. That's what the glass ball inside the copper egg is for: It's a vessel. Everything involved is from industrial revolution-era equipment -- Sharon and I being "space age," we got this part explained to us real slow-like. The Doctor uses scrap to sculpt, though he says he doesn't really sculpt, he's a "time-binder." Everything he's got gets put together like Tinker Toys. Furthermore, he prefers curves and arches to straight lines. It's hard to manuever straight lines into an energy force. After an hour outside in the frigid, overcast weather, we returned to the bus. The Doctor had earlier invited us to his studio in Cooksville, a tiny town south of Madison, and we needed a map. While we were there, Lady Eleanor, his wife (we think), arrived. She made us some tea, talked about art and water filters and seemed so much more normal than we might have guessed. We were in the bus for another hour and if we'd been tripping we probably would never have left. You may think he's nuts (and he did admit as much, truthfully) and that I've lost it for writing this without irony. You have no idea. I'm looking forward to seeing his studio the way second-graders look forward to summer vacation. I think this may be the piece my brain was missing. Aaron Veenstra is the managing editor of Etc. House Productions and a Master's student in Journalism at the University of Wisconsin. |
