Genesis Revisited Post-Script: The Joke Was On Me!
THE SET-UP
The hostess came right out and said it to us seated at her fancy southern dinner table: Nobody cares. She was talking about our work, a lifetime of creative work, his and mine, and the two of us were so shocked, we couldn’t and didn’t have a ready answer. Later, in private, I asked: What was THAT about? And he answered one truth: She doesn’t know what she’s talking about; but that wasn’t really enough.
Of course a serious creative person does it for IT’s sake, not one’s personal own, and such a person knows more than anyone that Nobody cares. I’ve been saying it, printing it outright for decades; it’s a constant theme in my journals, but hearing it said TO you from someone outside of you: now that’s a different and shocking thing. And before dessert!
Point is: nobody cares, and you know it, and at some time you go, more than once: it’s over, enough, no more, and you try to close the book, end it all without “ending it all” (you know), living without caring about what’s been at your center for half a century, at least.
But then again, even after officially and publicly “retiring” from being an Artist --- the museum and gallery proposals going out, ten at a time, the endless travel to install and de-install; the tax records, the publish-or-perish demands for one more line on the vita for the Academy --- one might have a leftover body of work, or several bodies, or even some non-Art potential projects nagging at you for one more “outing.” Fifty years into the non-stop process of creativity, it’s hard to assign the work, no matter its long-term significance or lack thereof, to the recycler or the bonfire. Just one more show, one thinks; one more.
So proposals go out in the mail and online, again, once again, just once, once each, you promise.
The “minor”-but-almost-Art one, full of historic paintings that make sense together but having zero commercial possibilities, goes to the local museum along with its essay, a readymade catalogue that’s actually quite great, one thinks, nodding. And the Curator, someone you even know, doesn’t say diddly: nada; no Got It, no Thanks, just silence.
You dare to offer the “gift” of a major exhibition, in memorial to that awful Day, easy and cheap and really important, and the big-time museum Director is definitely interested, excited, even. But then it, too, gets ignored when the Yay-You Director unexpectedly walks away and the mean-time replacement knows nothing about art, and the place is reportedly in chaos, so that last hoorah disappears, too; fini, done.
And the silly-serious one, just a public reading and a few images, about quitting, about creativity, gets proposed to a local center. You pay to park and actually walk it in and hand it over to an assistant, but the words end up being met with silence, like a slap, familiar but still it hurts. Again, nothing, over and out.
One day all the wanting-not-to-care comes out of the blue as a “poem,” a rhyme, that begins:
So I tell myself they’re busy,
And they are, there’s not a minute,
But it takes fifty-one seconds,
Yes I’ve timed and clicked to send it,
Just to say I’m glad to have it,
Good to see you, hope you’re better,
Thank-you-thank-you, you’re the sweetest,
(Even if they do not mean it.)
But still you can’t quite stop. And so the after-Art one about religion and history and time --- little things like that, you snarkily say --- goes out to the perfect venues, two deeply-southern schools, and the good small one known for its open-door elitist liberal arts focus doesn’t even bother to respond, not a single word of acknowledgment (even if they do not mean it), and you wonder if it’s a generational glitch, this rudeness? (51 seconds!)
Until one day, finally, prompted by a last-ditch-follow-up email to its earlier lack of response, the the big public University says Come by, Let’s talk. So now it gets personal --- from here on “you” will become I, me, my, we ---, and on my next visit there, I go by and we talk. The large urban campus is closed and empty, starting its winter break, and the gallery Director meets me in a quiet lobby.
She is not what I’d expected of a liberal arts academic, but is instead dressed to the nines, clipping lickety-split up and down stairs on stiletto heels, glamorous and elaborately coifed and quite full of herself. Her online bio, checked in advance (‘natch) lists a dazzling past in Manhattan, with fancy names of fashion and jewelry companies she’d started, famous stars she’d hung with, preceded by a doctorate that makes no sense, an undergraduate education with folks who would’ve been her peers, contacted (‘natch) who say they've never heard of/known/seen her.
No matter. She is interested! Enthusiastic! The show will happen next year in one of the five galleries she oversees, the liberal arts one in a more public space --- perfect! perfect! --- and soon as she can find the original submission (don’t even look in her office; it’s like an episode of hoarders!), she’ll arrange for a large public billboard with the provocative image. Prepare the tar and feathers, we say and laugh and bid fare-well.
Wait: there was something else --- the spiked heels! ---, an odd and disturbing thing, but I put it aside with a look that was also aside: she mentioned at the end of our conversation, almost off-subject, that the University President would request a monetary donation for my having a show. I remember an instantaneous mental response, a physical and psychologic withdrawal: Uh, no. I’d be, remember, shipping and traveling (at the same cost to go to Paris!) and installing and speaking and then shipping the work back home. Plus a financial donation?!? I must’ve put that in my mind's deepest file, --- back at home I actually made the decision and said ON THE RECORD that I’d wait until the date was firmly set before I said Sorry, but I’d decided to NOT do the show --- because of the Point, the ego-point, below.
The point is that it was a “Go,” and I ignored for a while the nagging little questions and curiosities and details; FINALLY, something again to look forward to, a reason to DO, to BE, and a podium and spotlight and microphone. An audience! Attention! Again. At last. A YES, omg, a YES!
THE PUNCH LINE, THE PUNCH
It was a month later, and I forget which of the home-town friends broke the news, The News that was --- well, words fail me --- astonishing? Incredible? Unbelievable? Hilarious? PERFECT?!?
Yes, perfect.
It seems there'd been a major police bust of a prostitution ring being run by the President of the afore-described University and, along with his arrest, the lovely Director of the art galleries was also taken into custody --- oh, to have seen her in hand-cuffs; for that, I’d pay! --- since she was a major participant in a large-scale (17 more!) prostitution crime, and then add a bit of marijuana in her car. It was front page news. My “gal,” my enthusiastic mentor, my savior from being, after a perfectly good career, a Nobody. The perfect punchline; the perfect punch.
PERFECT!
And so it goes….
The hostess came right out and said it to us seated at her fancy southern dinner table: Nobody cares. She was talking about our work, a lifetime of creative work, his and mine, and the two of us were so shocked, we couldn’t and didn’t have a ready answer. Later, in private, I asked: What was THAT about? And he answered one truth: She doesn’t know what she’s talking about; but that wasn’t really enough.
Of course a serious creative person does it for IT’s sake, not one’s personal own, and such a person knows more than anyone that Nobody cares. I’ve been saying it, printing it outright for decades; it’s a constant theme in my journals, but hearing it said TO you from someone outside of you: now that’s a different and shocking thing. And before dessert!
Point is: nobody cares, and you know it, and at some time you go, more than once: it’s over, enough, no more, and you try to close the book, end it all without “ending it all” (you know), living without caring about what’s been at your center for half a century, at least.
But then again, even after officially and publicly “retiring” from being an Artist --- the museum and gallery proposals going out, ten at a time, the endless travel to install and de-install; the tax records, the publish-or-perish demands for one more line on the vita for the Academy --- one might have a leftover body of work, or several bodies, or even some non-Art potential projects nagging at you for one more “outing.” Fifty years into the non-stop process of creativity, it’s hard to assign the work, no matter its long-term significance or lack thereof, to the recycler or the bonfire. Just one more show, one thinks; one more.
So proposals go out in the mail and online, again, once again, just once, once each, you promise.
The “minor”-but-almost-Art one, full of historic paintings that make sense together but having zero commercial possibilities, goes to the local museum along with its essay, a readymade catalogue that’s actually quite great, one thinks, nodding. And the Curator, someone you even know, doesn’t say diddly: nada; no Got It, no Thanks, just silence.
You dare to offer the “gift” of a major exhibition, in memorial to that awful Day, easy and cheap and really important, and the big-time museum Director is definitely interested, excited, even. But then it, too, gets ignored when the Yay-You Director unexpectedly walks away and the mean-time replacement knows nothing about art, and the place is reportedly in chaos, so that last hoorah disappears, too; fini, done.
And the silly-serious one, just a public reading and a few images, about quitting, about creativity, gets proposed to a local center. You pay to park and actually walk it in and hand it over to an assistant, but the words end up being met with silence, like a slap, familiar but still it hurts. Again, nothing, over and out.
One day all the wanting-not-to-care comes out of the blue as a “poem,” a rhyme, that begins:
So I tell myself they’re busy,
And they are, there’s not a minute,
But it takes fifty-one seconds,
Yes I’ve timed and clicked to send it,
Just to say I’m glad to have it,
Good to see you, hope you’re better,
Thank-you-thank-you, you’re the sweetest,
(Even if they do not mean it.)
But still you can’t quite stop. And so the after-Art one about religion and history and time --- little things like that, you snarkily say --- goes out to the perfect venues, two deeply-southern schools, and the good small one known for its open-door elitist liberal arts focus doesn’t even bother to respond, not a single word of acknowledgment (even if they do not mean it), and you wonder if it’s a generational glitch, this rudeness? (51 seconds!)
Until one day, finally, prompted by a last-ditch-follow-up email to its earlier lack of response, the the big public University says Come by, Let’s talk. So now it gets personal --- from here on “you” will become I, me, my, we ---, and on my next visit there, I go by and we talk. The large urban campus is closed and empty, starting its winter break, and the gallery Director meets me in a quiet lobby.
She is not what I’d expected of a liberal arts academic, but is instead dressed to the nines, clipping lickety-split up and down stairs on stiletto heels, glamorous and elaborately coifed and quite full of herself. Her online bio, checked in advance (‘natch) lists a dazzling past in Manhattan, with fancy names of fashion and jewelry companies she’d started, famous stars she’d hung with, preceded by a doctorate that makes no sense, an undergraduate education with folks who would’ve been her peers, contacted (‘natch) who say they've never heard of/known/seen her.
No matter. She is interested! Enthusiastic! The show will happen next year in one of the five galleries she oversees, the liberal arts one in a more public space --- perfect! perfect! --- and soon as she can find the original submission (don’t even look in her office; it’s like an episode of hoarders!), she’ll arrange for a large public billboard with the provocative image. Prepare the tar and feathers, we say and laugh and bid fare-well.
Wait: there was something else --- the spiked heels! ---, an odd and disturbing thing, but I put it aside with a look that was also aside: she mentioned at the end of our conversation, almost off-subject, that the University President would request a monetary donation for my having a show. I remember an instantaneous mental response, a physical and psychologic withdrawal: Uh, no. I’d be, remember, shipping and traveling (at the same cost to go to Paris!) and installing and speaking and then shipping the work back home. Plus a financial donation?!? I must’ve put that in my mind's deepest file, --- back at home I actually made the decision and said ON THE RECORD that I’d wait until the date was firmly set before I said Sorry, but I’d decided to NOT do the show --- because of the Point, the ego-point, below.
The point is that it was a “Go,” and I ignored for a while the nagging little questions and curiosities and details; FINALLY, something again to look forward to, a reason to DO, to BE, and a podium and spotlight and microphone. An audience! Attention! Again. At last. A YES, omg, a YES!
THE PUNCH LINE, THE PUNCH
It was a month later, and I forget which of the home-town friends broke the news, The News that was --- well, words fail me --- astonishing? Incredible? Unbelievable? Hilarious? PERFECT?!?
Yes, perfect.
It seems there'd been a major police bust of a prostitution ring being run by the President of the afore-described University and, along with his arrest, the lovely Director of the art galleries was also taken into custody --- oh, to have seen her in hand-cuffs; for that, I’d pay! --- since she was a major participant in a large-scale (17 more!) prostitution crime, and then add a bit of marijuana in her car. It was front page news. My “gal,” my enthusiastic mentor, my savior from being, after a perfectly good career, a Nobody. The perfect punchline; the perfect punch.
PERFECT!
And so it goes….