They're afraid some big New York gallery is...
They're afraid some big
New York gallery is going to swoop down and carry
you off
"Anything else about the contract I should know?"
"Nope, and I sense you want to get back to work
I'll get in touch with MrYoshida about these
changes
"Any change in your vision?"
"No, amigoWish I could say there wasBut you
keep painting
I was taking the phone away from my ear when he
said, "Did you happen to see the news this
morning?"
506
"No, never turned it onWhy?"
"County coroner says Candy Brown died of
congestive heart failureJust thought you'd like
to knowIt was a slow go but far from a no go
Wireman swam into existence around the window
where his brain swam on the GulfIt was a younger
Wireman than the one in the photos clipped to the
sides of my easel, but that was okay; I consulted
them less and less, and on the third day I took
them omega pocket watches down altogetherI didn't need them anymore
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 chanel 2.55 bag Selby
Library
Dario looked at me with one eyebrow cocked, as if
I had made a joke"The one 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,
508
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 spy bag fendi stump of a limb; it's as if
they believe, down deep, that amputation might be
catching"Listen, my friend, these 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
509
thereI wanted to turn on The Bone, pull the
cloth off the painting on the easel, and go back
to work on Wireman chanel handbags collection 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 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 roxanne mulberry hous