Tyler McBrien

He wrote a book.

He wrote On the Stones to make sure that people knew what they were about.

And then people, you know, the irony is that people just took it wherever they wanted anyway.

It's because they were vague enough and he was mysterious that they just made up their own stories about it.

Exactly, yeah.

And by saying mysterious, he wanted to keep the attention away from him, but then it's kind of like a Streisand effect where he made himself mysterious, and then he attracts all the attention.

Yeah, a return guy.

But I mean, to be honest, that was one of the reasons he was, I mean, he had the money, which was remarkable.

I think in today's terms, it was upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But I mean, you joke, this is one of the reasons I was interested.

I saw it almost as like a piece of folk art where someone had just felt compelled to erect this massive monument at great expense, at great effort.

There's elsewhere in North Georgia, there's this other guy, Howard Finster, who's a folk artist.

He has this place called Paradise Garden.

And he similarly saw a vision from God.

For him, it was some paint on his thumb.

And the paint on his thumb, which was God, told him to paint sacred art.

And so he just made this massive cathedral by hand and erected all these strange works of art.

So that's one of the things that drew me in.

I'm like, why would someone do this?

Why would someone go through all of this to build a strange monument that everyone ends up hating?