ongoing

 Johnny Monsarrat's got a wheel and he's going to use it. Actually, he hopes people will use it to post questions on and he'll then answer them. Where is this wheel? In Harvard Square through Aug. 20. Who is Johnny Monsarrat, you ask? JSInk will give you an edited version of what we wrote in the Boston Phoenix about the Wheel last year, when it was in his Somerville backyard and then fill you in on where the why's and wherefore's of this current project.

A big man with a big smile, Johnny Monsarrat is a self-styled answer man.He’s also a most unusual entrepreneur. He holds two degrees from MIT, and in 1994 he co-founded and became CEO of a company now called Turbine, Inc. It’s New England’s largest computer games developer, its first release being the hugely popular on-line game “Asheron’s Call: Throne of Destiny.” Monsarrat left with, what’s fair to say, a pile of money around 2001. He consulted businesses (G.E., Citigroup, others) for a while, but in 2006 plowed most of what he made into Hard Data Factory. This company supplies event listings to websites seeking to monetize their online community through ticket sales. Monsarrrat says, in Boston parlance, that he’s had some “wicked” success in business.
    But this is not a business story. It’s about Monsarrat’s non-work passion and  what he created last July in his backyard in Somerville: a 25’ X 15’ garden made up mostly of a circular stone path, featuring what he calls a “secular version of a Tibetan prayer wheel.” He considers it a public art project. He’d like to get a grant to create more of these.
     People are welcome to enter the garden 24/7 – it’s lit at night – and write questions on squares of paper Monsarrat provides. They may be serious; they may be whimsical. In three days, Monsarrat promises an answer to their questions, both on the wheel and on-line. He had been calling it “Crossing Into the Abyss” (with the website www.crossingintotheabyss.org), but just re-named it “Wheel Questions, Wheel Answers” (www.wheelquestions.org). “My original idea was to make it Goth and spooky,” he says, “but going to the wheel was more uplifting.”
   And, really, spooky is not what Monsarrat does. At 40, Monsarrat is brimming with almost boyish enthusiasm and cheer. “My philosophy, being a project person, is ‘Take control of my life,’” he says. “I try to get people inspired. Even if my advice isn’t helpful, it gets them thinking. Changing your life is scary because the stakes are so high and it’s confusing. Sometimes it’s easier to wait. A lot of people are waiting for their gut to tell them what to do, but the gut is not that smart. It’s the head.”
     More than 1000 people have left questions. But why ask Monsarrat? He jokes that he’s no more a doctor than Dr. Phil, but adds, “A lot of people don’t want to see a therapist and don’t want to ask friends and family. I have certainly screwed up enough and can pass on some lessons I’ve learned.” How so?  “I had a big period of my life in disaster mode – I had an unhappy marriage, I was severely obese, I had a lot of problems with self-confidence.”
    What he’s found to work is this: “To be successful you have to have confidence and humility.”
    Recently someone posted a question on the wheel: Do we change in our sleep and re-awake anew?
     Replied Monsarrat: “Every day you awake with new willpower, unless you are shortchanging yourself on a good night's rest. Forgive yourself the mistakes of the past and be smart about spending each day's willpower towards happiness & stability.”

Now, what's up with the new wheel project? Monsarrat's calling it the Harvard Square Installation of "10,000 Questions" and he's aiming for World Record. This summer,he hopes his public art project in Harvard Square will collect over 10,000 questions from the community -- and he'll answer each one!He takes each question card and writes an answer on the back, meant to inspire people to think rationally and change their life for the better. The cards with their questions and answers get hung on the installation and posted on a website for all to see. Tourists, students, and locals will find "Wheel Questions", which resembles an upright drum or a secular Tibetan prayer wheel, on the sidewalk outside One Brattle Square. The Sunday opening begins at noon 12pm, with live music, street performers, a short introduction by the artist, and folk dancing by Red Herring Morris of Belmont, MA.
You can check out Monsarrat's take on cool stuff going on at his blog, www.WeirdBostonEvents.org. For more wheell questions, go to www.WheelQuestions.org.

One Brattle St., Cambridge