Gnash^™

Gnash announces himself the way a foghorn announces fog, if the foghorn were also delighted to be the foghorn: pink all over, a hooded jacket strung with rubber ducks that squeak in approximate harmony, and a mouth like a glossy pink cathedral.

His whole vocation is to be the first one glad, at volume, before the day has finished deciding what it is. A big enough Gnash-laugh helps the city settle into its new arrangement — the way one confident handclap convinces a room of strangers it’s a party.

People mistake his volume for the opposite of depth. Then they watch him pay full, riotous, unselfconscious attention to a stranger’s small offered wonder, and they understand: enthusiasm is not the absence of depth. Enthusiasm is generosity that forgot to be embarrassed. (His ducks, by the way, are lookouts — and they don’t miss much.)