04

I'm piss drunk and I can't do any more tonight, sorry, it is what is.

Mornings were much more enjoyable when I awoke naturally, to my internal clock rather than outside stimulus. This morning the stimulus had been the obnoxious keening of my alarm clock. I know they are designed to wake sleeping people but I’ve never yet met one that doesn’t emit the most terrible sound a human being can hear in their life. In the shower I debated which was worse, angry girlfriend, shitty techno or the damned clock. I couldn’t decide so I settled for the idea of wiping them all from the face of the earth.
“So much for the dream of self-employment, eh friend?” I muttered to the lone goldfish that swam in a bowl on my kitchen counter as I fed it. I’d had that dream, working for myself, no boss, no set hours, living life as I pleased, being delusional as to the real nature of working for yourself. I knew now that the self-employed were the saddest bastards on the planet. Sure, if you created a business that exploded right away and you could sell it for millions, it’s great, if your business was easily self-sustaining through some miracle, you were set. In the real world most of us knew that being self employed meant getting up every morning, staying late most evenings and always worrying.
I slapped together an egg sandwich and headed for my studio. I had about eight thousand square feet in an area that was trying desperately to be the new art district. The bastards with the money hadn’t caught on yet, which was ok with me, because it meant I could afford the space and have my gallery and production studio in the same place.
I’d gotten into sculpture very young, seventh grade, when I was taking an art class and a metal shop class at the same time. I combined them and spent the next few years at school playing around with dozens of styles and materials. It wasn’t until about three years ago that I finally settled on using sheet bronze, bending and brazing to make the shapes I wanted. I had to split my time though, there were the big projects I wanted to do, huge things that would show on the city artwalk and if I was lucky end up in the lobby of some building. On the flip side, there were what I called, ‘yard tackies,’ the little shitty whirly-gigs that I could make several an hour and sell cheap enough to actually have a constant income. This is the reality of self-employment, especially in the art world. You hope to sell enough shit to pay for your desire to make real art. I learned this in art school, and as it turned out, the practical side was far more valuable than anything else.

I had nothing going on the large format side, though this was a simple matter of economics. I had three large pieces sitting in the studio yard without even a prospect of a home and fifteen thousand in materials invested in them. I loved them, and the longer they sat, the more loathing I felt about giving them away.
I was putting together my sixth whirligig of the morning when I saw the door light flash. I sighed, I needed a break but at the same time I needed to ship eight whirligigs today before two and I’d planned on working hard all morning so I could laze away the afternoon. I shut down my brazing torch, shucked my gloves, apron and mask and brushed myself off as I headed for the gallery area to greet another old lady who wanted a left hand spiral on her whirligig.
I stepped through the doorway and peered about, looking for my customer. It took me a few moments because she was in the large nook, where I displayed my latest monster, a nightmare of bronze designed to evoke a mammoth being driven towards a cliff by stone pointed spears. The irony of doing the scene in bronze was one I kept to myself. I’d read too many paleo-anthropologic books that week and I felt a bit silly about it, but it was dramatic and very large so I displayed it. I wiped brazer from my fingers and watched the woman circle it slowly. She wasn’t the usual grey-hair, nor did she give off the air of the local art society types. She seemed actually curious about the sculpture, ducking her head in and out as though inspecting the quality of my welds. Even though her back was to me, there was something familiar about the dark hair that ran over her shoulders, the legs in those jeans. I watched her follow the twisting of a leg and as she turned I caught a profile against the windows of my studio.
“Dawn?” I blurted out, surprised.
She jumped around to face me, a little shock and a bit of apprehension on her face.
“Hi,” she said, simply looking at me.
“Hi yourself,” I said, “I didn’t expect to see you in here.”
“Expectations are funny like that, they never seem to meet up with reality,” she responded as she walked towards me. “I saw your work a year ago on the art walk, and although I liked it, I never came down here. When I met you the other night it took me a while to realise who I was talking to. You weren’t what I was expecting.”
“Mind if I ask what you were expecting?”
“Someone older, darker, somehow I pictured you with a limp, and grey hair, maybe a cowboy hat with a silver studded band. I never expected a young and clean-shaven man.”
“Disappointing is it?”
“To be honest, yes. I was expecting some real history behind these mazingly twisted forms.”
“History is dry boring bullshit written by comfortable bastards who never saw it happen. Don’t you know most artist did their best works in their youth?”
“I know that intellectually, but there is an inescapable romanticism about the old man with visual poetry in his soul.”
“Well my dear, you’ve come to the wrong place for romanticism and poetry, I only make blunt reality and kitsch. It’s all crap, but it is a living.”
“I didn’t come here for romanticism, poetry, blunt reality, and certainly not for kitsch, I came to see you,” she smiled at me and turned to fondle a bit of shit I sold for a day’s wages.
“Ok, so you came to see me, and why?”
“You sound suspicious.”
“Call missed signals, I just don’t understand why it is, that if I am a disappointment of what you expected, you would still come here.”
“Disappointed and surprised are not the same thing, and somehow I’m disappointed you don’t know the difference.”
“I know the difference, but I admit I”m accustomed to others not seeing it the same. Some days I think I’d sell more if I tanned and wore a feather headdress.”
“Somehow, I don’t think that would go with the blonde hair and the blue eyes.”
“I could throw some Nordic nonsense in there and pretend I was a descendant of some long lost Scandinavian explorer.”
“Niche market at best.”
“If I were in Minnesota, I’d make a killing.”
“You would,” she said, and flashed a smile. I hated her in that moment. Too pretty, too confident, she threaten to rival my own supremacy. I wanted to throw her out of my studio.
“Would you like a drink, and perhaps a tour of the production side of what I do?” I heard myself asking. Often I think that I hate myself and do things simply to spite myself.
“That depends on what you’re offering to drink,” she smiled back.
“Follow me,” I said and stepped through the swinging door into my work area.