|
sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
|
The Nicest Nicest Nicest Demons Ever
I spent the morning helping a friend set up her booth for the arts show that I sadly--sniff, sniff--did not enter this year. Last year at this time, I was going crazy, trying to push through new work, snarling at other artists over the kiln situation in the studio, madly trying to smash together some sort of booth concept. I ended up, since all my work is based on altars, putting up a street altar in my booth (it's an outdoor art show) complete with flowers and fruit, and with no artwork (that was for sale) on the back wall, only the altar. My work lined the walls as you came up to the altar. If you've ever been to Mexico and seen the somewhat impromptu altars that crop up in on the streets in various places, you know what this looked like. Maybe. Anyway, I missed entering the show this year because entries are due in December, and in December I was going crazy trying to graduate. And now, just six short months later, there I was, walking around, listening to all the other artists go crazy, thinking, I want to be going crazy too. My new work is exciting--I think anyway--at least, it excites me. I am working larger, more complicated pieces, and working a less sentimental vein. I am starting to tap into some conflict and things have become appropriately more complex. So, that's a good thing. Anyway, as I shlepped bubble wrap and boxes of my friend's work, and as I put up with her socializing with the other artists as I climbed ladders and hung pieces, I started to get a little nostalgic. And then I started to remember... Last year, Max helped me set up my booth. He provided, of course, the kind of help that has broken up many an artist and her partner. It was, of course, the kind of help where you are ready to kill each other because someone--not the artist--keeps trying to impose his vision on hers (for whatever reason--practicality, artistic differences, whatever). And I kept wanting to scream at him, "Shut up, you idiot! Get lost! I'm sick of you!" and various other things like that, things that were not part of the wedding vows, you know? And, because I was in a booth next to the nicest woman on the planet--a woman from Wisconsin for chrissakes, and named Jill no less--I couldn't kill Max. I couldn't maim him. I couldn't even scream that I had the number for a very prominent divorce lawyer on speed dial and he was this close to having me call off our whole deal. No. I couldn't do any of that. And why? I blame Jill. Jill and her husband, of course, got along famously. Jill's husband was apparently some kind of master carpenter, and he gladly and ably assembled her booth in a few hours while Jill sat off to the side in her cute little beribboned straw hat and offered him only the most complimentary of compliments. Of course, she was also sitting so that she could see into my booth, my little 8 by 8 foot space, where Max and I were about to start WWIII over how to hang my sky blue photographic paper background, because suddenly I had become enraged at how he was completely inept with a staple gun and even more enraged that he couldn't read my mind well enough to know that he should put the staples three inches and not three and a half inches from one another. And Jill? Jill did things like offer to let us use her ladder and her duct tape. Jill did things like wait until Max and I were about ready to lunge at one another with box knives, and then she'd come over and say, in that beautiful and exceedingly sincere Wisconsinite accent, "Wow! That looks really good, guys!" And Max and I would suddenly have to de-Dr. Jeckyll ourselves--or re-Mr. Hyde ourselves, if you prefer--and say, "Oh, thank you so much, Jill! How is yours coming along? Oh, goodness! That looks terrific!" And we'd have to say it very, very sweetly and very sincerely--as sincerely as two people who were about half a second away from some act of bloody human sacrifice could manage to say anything. So that was Jill. That was our super, super nice Jill. And that was her super, super nice husband. And Jill brought us drinks. And she brought us food. And she lent us an umbrella. And she offered me sunscreen each and every morning. And sometimes--most of the time, to be quite honest--I wanted to strangle her. I wanted to put my hands around her plump little neck and throttle her until she turned blue. And why? Because, in the face of all her niceness, I could not be a raging bitch. That is seriously the reason why I would have sometimes liked to have buried Jill and her husband's lifeless bodies in a shallow grave out on the mesa. And she was nice nice nice super nice--even when it was a zillion degrees outside and when the bathrooms were a freaking hike to get to and no one was buying art because it was too hot to even move the air particles around you and--was that a raindrop? Because there comes Jill to offer to help you roll your tarp down a bit so that your nicely stapled photographic paper doesn't get wet. And on the other side of me, in another booth, was Dave. And Dave was a woodworker. And Dave worked alone for months at a time building furniture. And so Dave had no one to talk to except at shows. So Dave came to do a show and Dave set up his booth. Dave set out his three thousand dollar rocking chairs and then he had nothing to do but talk to me. And while he talked to me, he bummed cigarettes off me. And Dave talked and smoked and talked and smoked. And Dave smoked and talked and smoked and talked. No sooner would I be done turning down Jill's offer to help me, say, wipe my ass on my next potty break than I would turn and have to face Dave, who would have that look on his face, a slightly pleading look, so that already I was reaching for my cigarettes. And Dave had a gaggle--and I do mean gaggle--of women. One woman showed up on the afternoon we were setting up to help him set up his booth. A different woman showed up that evening for preview night (a kind of high-powered affair during which time the artists are supposed to look relatively presentable) dressed in this stretchy black-and-gold minidress with silver lame seven-inch-heeled stripper shoes, looking for all the world to see like the world's tackiest escort. She giggled and teetered around all that night and then the next morning showed up with homemade brownies for all of us. Her visit was followed by another woman and that woman by yet another woman. And in the few precious moments when he wasn't wrangling his harem, Dave took the opportunity to hit on any of my female friends who had the bad sense to walk near his booth or glance in his direction or turn their heads to avoid the Jill's blinding niceness. And all the time Dave was talking and smoking and smoking and talking. And then I killed him. And then I buried his body in the backyard next to Jill and her nicest ever husband. And please, please don't get me started on the redheaded stoner jewelers, a pair of real life Freak Bros., who were astoundingly successful businessmen, who were incongruously go-getter twenty-something stoners who had started their own very successful jewelry business and who took turns throughout the weekend going to their van to "get supplies" and then hitting every food vendor along the route back. It was beautiful. In between selling jewelry and hand-blown hash pipes (from under the counter, only shown to those they thought might be interested in such things and accompanied by a sample which would allow the buyer to test the hash pipes), they smoked and ate fry bread and smoked and ate chili cheese dogs and smoked and drank smoothies. And they grinned very huge, very cheerful grins whenever I looked over at them.... And... I wish I could do it all over again. Ah, the life of an artist.
More lies:
|
|||||