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Still, I painted the way I supposed most other
artists painted: as if it were a job instead of
some speed-trip insanity that came and went in
spasmsI did it with the radio on, now always
tuned to The Bone
On the fourth day, Wireman brought me a revised
contract and told me I could signHe said
Nannuzzi wanted to photograph my paintings and
make slides for a lecture at the Selby Library in
Sarasota in mid-March, a month before my show
507
openedThe lecture, Wireman said, would be
attended by sixty or seventy art patrons from the
Tampa-Sarasota areaI told him fine and signed
the contract
Dario came out that afternoonI was impatient for
him to click his pix and be gone so I could go
back to workMostly to make conversation, I asked
him who would be giving the lecture at the Selby
Library
Dario looked at me with one eyebrow cocked, as if
I had made a joke"The one vintage gucci watch person in the world
who is now conversant with your work," he said"I can't give a lecture! I don't
know anything about art!"
He swept his arm at the paintings, which Jack and
two part-timers from the Scoto were going to crate
and transport to Sarasota the following weekThey
would remain crated, I assumed, in the storage
area at the back of the gallery, until just before
the show opened"These say different, my friend
"Dario, these people know stuff! They've taken
courses! I'll bet most of them were art majors,
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for Christ's sake! What do you want me to do,
stand up there and say duh?"
"That's pretty much what Jackson Pollock did when
he talked about his workAnd
it made him rich Dario came over to me and took
me by the stumpVery few
people will touch the stump of a limb; it's as if
they believe, down deep, that amputation might be
catching"Listen, my friend, these louis vuitton diaper bags are important
peopleNot just because they have money, but
because they're interested in new artists and each
one knows three more who feel the sameAfter the
lecture - your lecture - the talk will startThe
kind of talk that almost always turns into that
magical thing called 'buzz'"
He paused, twiddling the strap of his camera and
smiling a little
"All you have to do is talk about how you began,
and how you grew-"
"Dario, I don't know how I grew!"
"Then say thatSay anything! You're an artist,
for God's sake!"
I left it at thatThe threatened lecture still
seemed distant to me, and I wanted him out of
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thereI wanted to turn on The Bone, pull the
cloth off the painting on the easel, and go back
to work on Wireman Looks WestWant the dirty-ass
truth? The painting was no longer about some
hypothetical magic trickNow it was its own magic
trickI had become very bay bag chloe selfish about it, and
anything that might come after - a promised
interview with Mary Ire, the lecture, the show
itself - seemed to be not ahead of me but somehow
far above meThe way rain on the surface of the
Gulf must seem to a fish
During that first week of March, it was all about
daylightNot sunset light but daylightHow it
filled Little Pink and seemed to lift itThat
week it was about the music from the radio,
anything by the Allman Brothers, Molly Hatchet,
FoghatCale beginning "Call Me
the Breeze" by saying "Here's another of your old
rock n roll favorites; shuffle on down to
Broadway," and how when I turned the radio off and
cleaned my brushes, I could hear the shells under
the houseIt was about the ghostface I saw, the
one belonging to a younger man who had yet to see
the view from DumaThere was a song - I think by
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Paul Simon - with the line If I'd never cheap chanel handbag loved, I
never would have criedIt
wasn't a real face, not quite real, but I was
making it realIt was growing around the brain
that was floating on the GulfI didn't need
photographs anymore, because this was a face I
knewThis one was a memory
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March fourth was hot all day, but I didn't bother
turning on the air conditioningI painted in
nothing but a pair of gym shorts, with the sweat
trickling down my face and sidesThe telephone
rang twiceThe first time it was Wireman
"We haven't seen much of you in these parts lately,
EdgarCome to supper?"
"I think I'm going to pass, Wireman
"Painting, or tired of our society down here at El
Palacio? Or both?"
"Just the painting partAny
change in the vision department?"
"The left lamp is still out, but I bought an
eyepatch for it, and when I wear it, I can read
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with my right eye for as long as fifteen minutes
at a chanel shopping bags stretch |
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