The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I listened to a report  recently on public radio extolling the virtues of using Instagram to further an artist’s career.  As an artist with a career in definite need of a jumpstart, I paid close attention, figuring maybe a tutorial in social media might be just my ticket to fame and fortune.  They featured two artists, the first being some guy I’d never heard of (no surprise since I don’t subscribe to Instagram) who painted colorful murals but apparently didn’t make enough money to quit his day job.  So, using the power of a photographic platform, he marketed his art on T-shirts and coffee mugs.  Sometimes he tried out new mural designs, see what folks bought and what folks wished he’d never drawn.  Democratic art, I guess, vote for the winning design.

The other artist was a painter and she was doing okay on Instagram but complained how it sucked up all her time trying to stay current, keep posting, respond to her fans and adoring public.  She admitted she was thinking of dropping off the social media rat race, maybe spend some time making art instead.  She mentioned how her fanbase would almost always respond negatively to about anything new or different she was trying out — they only wanted the tried and true.

There are folks I’ve been unfortunate enough to meet who think good art is defined by its sales potential.  If it sells, it’s good.  If it doesn’t, probably bad art.  Nice, I guess, to have a quantifiable definition.  Jeff Koon’s stainless steel rabbit just sold for 91 million dollars to the dad of our past Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, making Koon’s the greatest living artist of our time.  Give me a break.  The guy’s a PR guy who couldn’t, as one critic once said, carve his name on a tree, the kind of putz who photographed himself having anal sex with his Italian porn star wife.  Jeff would have loved Instagram.

I don’t pretend to be the final arbiter of what good art is.  I just know it isn’t what sells the most.  Otherwise I’d probably be printing T-shirts and coffee cups with stained glass designs, probably only the ones my clamoring fans bought multiples of.  The danger, at least to me, of being an artist is falling into the trap of following the money.  I’d rather have a crappy day job if money was the goal.  Which, I guess, is why I was a graveyard shift orderly for 10 lousy years.  Okay, a crappy night job.  Beats boxing up those T-shirt orders, if nothing else.

Hits: 27

Hits: 20

Most folks think homeless people live in the Big City. Seattle and Gomorrah. Portland. Stanwoodopolis. But that’s not true. There’s homeless people living everywhere — even the South End. If you’re the type of cautious soul who’d never pick up a hitchhiker, you’d never have met Stinky Steve. Or you’d think, even now, how mean it was to call Steve ‘Stinky’.  For those of us who DO pick up folks with their thumbs out, we didn’t call him that out of spiteful cruelty. Steve was genuinely, and I mean Full Bore, Head On, Hold Yer Nose, No Kidding, olfactorily displeasing. He had an odor part old B.O., part beer breath, part cigarette smoke and the rest I probably wouldn’t want to guess. I don’t think he minded us rolling a window down even in rain or cold weather. After all, those were his elements.

When I first picked him up, he was living in an abandoned shed a neighbor a couple miles north kindly let him use. He was on his way to work digging soft shell clams on the tideflats near Stanwood, or so he said. Later he lived in a pup tent near me and worked various jobs clearing trail or weed-eating the neighbors’ land for minimum wage. Some even offered him free use of their showers, but Steve wasn’t much for personal hygiene and always politely demurred.

Guitar Bob and me got to know Steve better than most. We used to play the 12 beer blues every Sunday night, and at some point Steve joined our little outdoor guitar duet, singing some ditty to our rambling fingerwork that always sounded oddly familiar. When some kids slashed his tent and strewed his meager belongings, Bob’s neighbors gave him a little trailer to live in … on condition he work around the place and go to Social Services and sign up for disability. Mental disability. They meant well, these Do-Gooders, but the end result of all this was that the State of Washington gave Steve a modest stipend that effectively resulted in Steve’s early retirement from the part time workforce and paid for his malt liquor without him having to work all day to earn it. Steve, predictably enough, had his alcoholism subsidized by the State. And we had a singer more and more off key, schnockered by the time we’d only started to warm up.

I guess the ditches beside the Road of Good Intentions are strewn with folks like Steve. We forget that not all of us want a suburban home, a square meal or even a hot bath. Some of us just want to be left the hell alone, to live our life a different way altogether, without sympathy, without a handout, without a whole lot of socio-psycho hand wringing. I’m not saying you should pick them up hitchhiking into town for their cigarettes and beer. I’m just saying they’re here, they’re not that crazy and they’re okay decent people. There’s no law that says they have to bathe.

Well, long story way too short, the good-hearted neighbors signed him up for computer training in Spokane, detox, three square meals a day and a life as alien to him as a heroin addict in a nursery school. Guitar Bob and I got a couple of letters, half computer hieroglyphics, half semi-sensible musings on his new life and about 2/3rds sadness expressed with a stiff upper lip. We never saw him again. Shortly after those letters he was diagnosed with colon cancer. Then we heard he died. Bob and I bought a 6 pack each and played our 12 beer blues long into the dark night for Steve, a fallen comrade, another loner on the sad old South End the newcomers won’t have to pass by as he stands in a cold drizzle with his tobacco stained thumb held out for the alms of a ride.

Hits: 23

Hits: 15

I got a friend who called me up asking if I had some colored glass he could get his hands on.  Sure, I said, whatcha need it for?  He explained that he was making mermaid sculptures and decorating them with everything from crushed seashells off the beach of Baby Island to possibly pennies as mermaid scales.  He needed some glass to break into pieces and glue onto the mermaid’s tail.  Okay, I said, I got some scrap glass you can use, anything to help a fellow glass breaker.

My pal is a real estate agent.  Meaning, he’s in the same boat as a lot of us here on the lackadaisical South End, folks who basically are self-employed, work when we want, play most of the time.  If we can handle the guilt of not embracing the Protestant Ethic, we’re fairly happy campers.  But now, with this Pandemic Panic, the entire island has self-quarantined.  Every manjack of us is holed up in Paradise wondering what the world will look like after the plague subsides.  Whatever jobs were out there, they may not be after the dust settles and the virus leaves stunned survivors in its wake.

Whatcha making the mermaids for, anyway? I asked my buddy, thinking he was embarked on a mercy mission, maybe take a few to the nursing homes in the area since he’s a pretty philanthropic guy, the kind who takes firewood to shut-ins in the winter or organizes trash pickups alongside the roads.  What do you mean? he asked.  I mean what’s your plan with these mermaids is what I mean.  No reason, he said, just bored.

So you got four mermaids done, now you’re making more?  I was thinking about the 5 guitars I’d just made, no good reason.  “You need to be careful, Zorba,” I warned.  Whaddaya mean? he asked, a slight tremor in his voice.   “Can’t you see, man, the thing has got a hold of you.  One or two mermaids, sure, I get it.  A little hobby to fill the time while the plague passes by.  But the third?  And a fourth?  You can see where this is going.  Be careful is all I’m saying.”

“It’s harmless,” he protested.  “Just something to keep me from being bored.  What’s wrong with that, Skeeter?

“What’s wrong?” I asked.  “You’re playing with a loaded gun, my friend.  Another mermaid you’ll be hooked.  Sure, it’s a few seashells glued on, then it’s some broken glass, some pennies to make scales, next thing you’ll be making full size sculptures, casting bronze, there’s no telling where it leads.  You’ll end up like the rest of us on this desolate hellhole of an island.”

“What do you mean?  What are you talking about?” he fairly squeaked.  I hated being the bearer of bad news but hellfire, someone has to speak Truth to the moths circling the flame.  “What I’m talking about is falling into the trap.  One mermaid okay, two, sure, but the addiction starts there and next thing you know ….”  I paused to let this sink into his bald skull.  “What?” he asked, “Next thing I know what??”

“You become like the rest of us, Zorba, you become an artist.”

“I’m just killing some time, Skeeter, I’m just bored,” he protested.

“That’s what we all said.  If we were honest.  Just … be … careful, that’s all I’m saying.  We got too many lost souls here now, we don’t need some retired realtor joining the ranks.”

Next day when I took him the glass he said he wanted more colors, not just the blues he originally requested.  I shook my head, sure, why not.  Too late, I could tell, nothing for it but to take him the whole crayon box.  Sometimes you just can’t talk folks off the ledge.

Hits: 24