Unemployed: Artist

I went to the bank the other day to open a savings account, a few decades too late. I’ve always joked that we would have enough when we retired to have lunch and then commit suicide, but it’s not so funny anymore. I mean, we might be able to have lunch, but we won’t be able to have dessert, much less afford to kill ourselves. There used to be the “put the old folks on an ice floe and let them float off to die” alternative, but with global warming, that’s out.
But – getting back to the bank.
The efficient young woman filling out the paperwork asked me what my occupation is, and I told her I didn’t have a job, and that I’m a singer, songwriter, and writer. She wrote in the blank: “Unemployed: artist.”
Ouch. I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to justify my existence to myself, and in two words the edifice of my self-worth trembled, and all the dark fears that my parents were right billowed around me. Remember, I grew up on a farm, and came from conservative hard-working people. I remember well their attitude toward artists.
Artists, actors, musicians, dancers, writers, god help us poets and their ilk did not really work. They had fun during the day and stayed out late having fun at night – not like the workers of the world who were early to bed, early to rise, and none of that damned arts nonsense. All musicians were hopheads. All dancers were queer. All painters were dreamy lay-abouts who couldn’t even make a picture that looked like anything. All artists were parasites living off the pissed-off people who had to get up and go to a job every day.
If that is what you believe, there is nothing I could tell you that would teach you what hard work it takes to create art. To create something wonderful out of what you can do with your body, your mind, and your willingness to be a channel for something greater than yourself is something you achieve by years of hard work and practice, all of which you do for no money. In fact, you might have to pay people to teach you technique – voice lessons, drawing lessons, acting lessons, dancing lessons, instrument lessons. Talent is also helpful.
Meanwhile, while studying and practicing, you wait tables, you type, you clean houses or paint houses or build houses, you do something to support your art habit, and you take a lot of criticism, both artistic and personal.
You will be told more than once not to quit your day job, because you just don’t have what it takes.
When you fill out forms that say, “Occupation – check one,” they will never have a box for what you do.
Artistic success tends to be temporary – a painting sold, a few paying gigs. If you get to be the member of a dance or opera company – well, do you realize how many people are competing for those spots, and how good they are? Do you have any idea how many failed auditions every single dancer, actor, and musician lives through?
Oh yeah, it’s a real walk in the park, the life artistic. That’s why most people do it as a hobby. Going to a job is much easier than being an artist. So why do people do it? They have to. It’s who they are.
That’s why it says on my savings account form, “Unemployed: artist.” I’ll go on struggling with the self-worth thing. Why stop now?
You could help by buying one or two CDs. Why didn’t I think of saying that ‘way before Christmas? Oh well. The music’s been good for over 20 years, and it will still be good in January. Email me at: mary.litchfieldtuel@gmail.com, and we’ll talk.

Snowed In

Dear Hearts and Gentle People ~
It’s a cold Saturday in Puget Sound, and according to the Weather Channel it’s a cold day in a lot of the US of A, except down in southern Texas, where my friend Susan advises me they have the air conditioning on.
I have revised my cold weather getaway plan. I won’t go to California. I’ll pass through California on the way to Houston.
My Brave Knight (that would be Rick) departed for town a few minutes ago, in a pickup truck with chains. He was carrying library books and a grocery list. He qualifies for the Brave Knight rating today because the snow is deep and more is expected. I was going to go with him, but he said that my holey old athletic shoes are not adequate for the snow, and I don’t have any more substantial shoes. So I made the list and sent him off. There was a time I might have argued to go, but that was when I had good knees.
Our road was graded and sanded yesterday, but we haven’t had mail or a paper for two days. I haven’t left the house since last Tuesday.
Being snowed in is not such a big deal when you’ve got cable and internet, but a wind storm is predicted for this evening, so we could be in the dark soon. On the upside of that, we don’t have to worry about losing food in the freezer. We can store it outside and it will keep fine. As long as the raccoons don’t get it. But we’ll deal with that problem when it arises.
So I’m sitting here listening to the Kingston Trio Christmas album, “The Last Month of the Year.” My grand daughter is gluing together a Santa Claus and a snow man my cousin Nancy sent her. After raising two boys I am always amazed that this little girl will sit down with a project and follow the directions and get it done. Wow. As a process person, I appreciate goal-oriented people. They are mysterious and miraculous to me.
Meanwhile I sit here in the middle of a zillion uncompleted projects, with the Kingston Trio singing me through the season.
“One for the little bitty baby who was born, born, born in Bethlehem!”
Stay warm, friends.

Living the Boring Life

Winter weather makes me a little nervous. This house I’m living in has no wood stove, so if the electricity goes off, it will get cold, and stay that way. When I asked the owner of the house what she did when the power was out, she told me that her kind neighbors took her in for a day or two, and after that she flew to California.
I am considering whether I shall follow her sensible course of action if the electricity goes off for an extended period of time. I haven’t been to California for a while.
California is where I was born and where I grew up until my early 20s, when I moved to Vashon Island. I was born in a little town called Watsonville, a farming community on the southern end of Santa Cruz County.
Today at the store I stood in front of a large Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider display, picking up bottles and looking at the pictures from Martinelli’s history on the labels, trying to see if I could recognize anything in them.
The Martinelli’s plant was across the street from my high school. I remember sitting in Mr. Plummer’s freshman English class in the basement of the old high school building (built in 1903, now long gone), staring out the ground level windows at Martinelli’s on the other side of Beach Street. I was waiting for life to begin, waiting to be free from school, and bells, and petty tyrants, of which there seemed to be so many, both adult and student.
One day a man who looked like Gabby Hayes, or a prospector straight out of the Gold Rush, came walking down Beach Street leading a donkey that was carrying a pack. This would have been in 1962 or so. I was curious, but I never found out who he was or why he and his donkey walked by the high school. He was a character, no doubt, one of the people at whom we rolled our eyes and twirled our fingers around our ears to indicate, “crazy.” In 1962 there weren’t many characters. Characters came in a few years later when we all decided to let our hair grow.
I wish I could say that I saw other interesting things while gazing out the windows of my high school classes, but that was pretty much it, just that one guy and his donkey. Other than that it was four years of boredom.
Growing up in California in the fifties and sixties felt pretty boring. I know now that I was living a comfortable life in a place where the temperature stayed between 50 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit all year ‘round. I guess that being safe and comfortable can seem boring to a kid.
My cousin and I are planning a road trip to California next spring. We’ll drive out to Green Valley to see the ranches, both my grandfather’s and my father’s. My father’s apple trees are gone, replaced by dwarf varieties that produce more apples. Also gone are the peach, apricot, fig, and lemon trees that we had for our personal use. Once the place was sold and became a part of agribusiness, no longer a family farm, those oddities had to go. Too bad. I remember how happy my dad looked when he sat down to a bowl of fresh peach slices drenched in cream.
Now when I go up to the top of the hill and look at the views I so loved as a child, I am trespassing on someone else’s land. But I go, anyway, so I can look at the flat orchard-covered floor of Green Valley to the north, and the long vista over the Pajaro Valley and off to Fremont Peak in the hazy distance to the south, and drink the view in.
I must be getting old, to mourn times and people that are no more. Makes me wonder why we want long life, when the older we get, the more losses we carry. Still, you know I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
I wish you all a warm and wonderful Christmas, or whatever the heck you celebrate. May it be safe, and comfortable, and boring. You know: enough to eat, clothes to wear, a roof over your head, family and friends, no sickness or death or other catastrophes. Boring. Let’s hear it for boring.

Superwoman No More

In a conversation with some other women who have had significant health challenges, I heard myself saying, “It is so hard to wrap your consciousness around the fact that your body is not the same.”
They agreed: “No one prepared us for this.”
“This” could be one or more of any events or illnesses: cancer, car wrecks, chronic illness of any kind, falls, breaks, loss of hearing, sight, smell, taste, or cognitive ability; and whatever else I have forgotten or don’t know about that belongs on this list.
For me it has been various accidents, with mononucleosis piled on top. I cannot rely on my body to do what I once took for granted.
For example, move all these boxes of stuff so I can put up the Christmas tree? At one time that was the work of a moment. Not any more, brothers and sisters. Now it’s a matter of figuring out if I can catch my sons or my husband long enough to do the heavy lifting and shifting. If not, the thing does not get moved, and the little project does not get done.
When I do manage to get something done, I have to rest up afterwards. Crap. Insult added to injury, and then I’m too tired to sustain the insult, and need a nap.
Actually, the naps are great, but there was a time when I would not stop for anything, especially not a nap, which appears to be “doing nothing,” and horrors, we can’t have that, superwoman doing nothing.
Superwoman is beginning to realize that her high flyin’ days are over. They got left behind somewhere – for me, in that car wreck, in various falls and broken bones, and in the mononucleosis that left me with no energy.
It wasn’t until today, when I was talking about how when things happen to your body it takes forever for your conscious mind to catch up, that I realized that my mind still hasn’t caught up. I’m not sure if my mind has even started to admit that there’s anything different than it used to be.
It’s pretty frustrating to stand and look at work you used to do easily and confront the new reality that you can’t do it. It bodes well for anyone who plans on coming to the garage sale I’m going to have one of these days, though. I’m leaning in a lot of ways, but mainly I’m leaning towards getting rid of anything that’s in my way, and that’s practically everything.
Superwoman needs a nap now.

Joan Baez in Concert

My friend Becky and I went to see Joan Baez in concert last night. She was at the Moore Theater in Seattle.
We wanted to park close to the Moore because of my bad knee. I can’t do too much walking these days. So we caught a 4:30 boat and headed in to Seattle.
After trolling around the one-way streets of downtown for a while, we found the parking lot directly across the street from the Moore – location, location, location – and then the next thing on the agenda was to find a place to eat dinner, preferably a restaurant with bathroom facilities.
The closest restaurant, across the street from the Moore on Virginia Street, was the Buenos Aires Grill. They had the bill of fare posted outside the front door, and we stood there perusing it for a good five minutes. It looked good, but there were no prices listed. To my mind, when the prices are not listed on a menu, it means, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”
Suddenly Becky stopped reading and said, “If it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for us,” and then said to me sotto voce, “Look to your right.”
To my right, through the window, was a table with three people seated. Two were men and one was Joan Baez.
We walked in and a cheerful young man seated us at the table right next to Joan Baez and, as it turned out, her two band members.
Now Joan Baez is a cultural icon, so Becky and I tried to be good. We did not wish to disturb the folk goddess’s dinner. Inside, though, I was jiggling with excitement and thinking, this is so cool.
A lady who came in soon afterwards was not constrained in her behavior. She rushed to Baez’ table and gushed, “I’ve been following you for 40 years! In college I was you! I let my hair grow and carried a guitar around!” And so on. Joan Baez was quite gracious to her, but after the fan went off to her own table we noticed that Baez and her band mates switched seats so that she was sitting with her back to the room, which put her about three feet away from me.
This is so cool.
When Baez got up to leave, she graciously took the hand of the gushing fan and said a few words, and as she passed us I could no longer restrain myself and said, “Have a wonderful concert. We’ll be in the audience.” She kind of smiled and kept walking.
Now I am not famous, but I have been a singer/songwriter and have experienced people coming up to talk to me after concerts. Most of them, bless their hearts, wanted to say how much they enjoyed the music, and double bless them, buy a CD. Sometimes, though, people came up with a peculiar intensity that could be a little scary. There is a thin line between “rabid fan” and “stalker.” So I can understand the wish of a famous person to protect herself from being loved to death.
Becky and I had our dinners. The food was GREAT. The Buenos Aires Grill, as you might imagine from its name, specializes in good beef, well prepared, so not for vegetarians, but for those of us who are still omnivores, it was a treat.
I also called my husband on my cell phone, and said, “Guess who I had dinner with!” Yes, I was so excited I ended a sentence with a preposition. He was suitably impressed, and after I hung up I said out loud, “This is so cool!” Becky laughed. We both laughed.
One young man was still sitting at the Baez table, and I finally turned to him and said, “I’m trying to be good, but…are you a band member?” He smiled sweetly and said yes. He had a British accent. We talked a little. He said that it was great touring with her, and, “…especially chatting with her. We’ve had some good chats.” Becky and I agreed that Joan Baez must have a lot to say that is of interest. Later, at the concert, I would learn that this young man’s name was John Doyle, and he was the music director of the group, and he played guitar left handed.
The concert was great. She performed with three musicians, one of whom was John Doyle, and she also did some solo songs. She opened with, “Flora, the lily of the west,” and did most if not all of the songs from her latest album, my favorite of which was a tune by that album’s producer, Steve Earle, titled, “God Is God.” Good song.
There was a young woman who came out on stage to switch guitars so Baez could play in different tunings. She switched guitars, she unplugged and plugged in sound cords, she moved music stands. The young woman was eventually introduced as, “Stephanie, my assistant.” Man, I thought, I want a Stephanie.
Joan Baez sang from 8 p.m. until almost 10, without intermission, and did an encore of two songs, and in the last song of the last concert of a month-long tour, you could tell that everyone on stage was relaxing and letting down, having a ball.
Then the band walked off stage and Joan Baez sang “Amazing Grace” a cappella, and the audience joined in, and we sang the verses with her, and broke into harmonies, until the whole audience that filled the Moore Theater to the rafters was one vast gospel choir. As the last note faded, she thanked us all and said good night.
I floated down the ramp to the main floor, where I waited while Becky bought the latest CD, then we went outside and noticed a group of people standing around the tour bus. Becky decided to wait, but my knee was done for the night, so I headed off to the car to await her. When she came, she had her CD autographed by Joan Baez, and a photo on her digital camera of herself and Joan Baez standing side by side. “She was very gracious,” Becky said.
Yes, she was. It was so cool.

Glasses and Canes

My vision started to go when I was about 43. There were a few things I noticed that sent me to the optometrist. One: I was standing in church singing a hymn when I noticed that the letters seemed to be weaving around on the hymnal page like teeny tiny synchronized polliwogs. Two: I was driving on the freeway at night and noticed that all the tail lights of the cars in front of me were blurry, and had little star rays radiating. Three: I looked up at the stars in the sky, and they, like the tail lights, were blurry and had rays.
So I went to see Grant Lindskog, the local eye guy, who gave me an exam and informed me that I had presbyopia – my eyes were getting old. He cheerfully told me that it was people like me who sent his children to college, and he wrote a prescription for low magnitude reading glasses.
Rest in peace, Grant. We miss you.
After that I discovered cheap reading glasses, and started buying those. I got them in different styles, and gradually got stronger ones as my near vision deteriorated. They broke, and lenses fell out of them, so I bought more. I lost them frequently so I bought more and left them all over the house so that at any given time I could find a pair easily.
After about 15 years I started wearing prescription glasses all the time and stopped buying reading glasses, so I don’t have them stashed all over the house anymore.
I noticed the other day that now I’m starting to leave canes around the house.
I got my first cane about the time I got my first glasses, come to think about it – I had a bone spur in my left heel, and walked with a cane until the spur was surgically removed. Then I didn’t need a cane until my car wreck in 2000. After that I wore a back brace for six months, and used a cane for some of the time. I was in bed a lot the first few months, and used that time to tied string around a cane I picked up at the local thrift store. It was an adjustable metal cane, until I did the whole thing in sailor’s knots and varnished it.
Then my knees started to go, and periodically I needed to use a cane again, and I went to the thrift store and bought a few more canes over time. I think I had this idea that I was going to sand them down and paint them in colorful styles, but I don’t know why I thought that. I am not a craftsperson or an artist. Just another one of those darned bright ideas I tend to get, and forget.
Last week I took a fall that did something to my left knee that feels bad. Today I realized that I was leaving canes planted in various spots around the house so I’m close to one when I need it. I’m hoping my knees don’t go the way of the eyes, getting worse and worse. I have an appointment with an orthopedist in early December, and I think there may be some surgery in the near future for my knees. I will go quietly. I miss being able to walk. Maybe while I’m recovering from surgery I’ll have time to put sailor’s knots on some of my other canes. It’s a nice look.

Counting My Thankfuls*

Who misses those nasty campaign ads? Only the ad agencies that were paid to put them together and the television stations that collected the ad revenue for broadcasting them, that’s my guess. So that’s one thing to be thankful for this Thanksgiving: thank God the election is over.
Many rejoice that Obama was elected; it’s a new world, and a fresh start, and boy, we could all use a fresh start in this season of economic crashes. I really could not bring myself to believe beforehand that this amazing thing could happen. It felt like a miracle, a growing up in this country, and I am thankful for that, as are many people.
A conservative friend told me that she wore black and no jewelry the day after the election; I know that conservatives are mourning their loss, as I mourned when Bush became president, both times. I felt hopeless for the future of this country, and the world. Perhaps that is what conservatives are feeling now.
I know and love a lot of conservative people; I grew up in a conservative family, and don’t know why I turned out to be the only liberal, or progressive, I guess I’m supposed to call myself now. Maybe it was the inspiration of the civil rights movement and the ugliness of racism, or the siren song of rock and roll, or the yearning for peace while seeing the country torn apart by division over Vietnam.
Maybe it was the hypocrisy of people saying one thing and doing another. Many of the conservatives who now hoot about patriotism made darn sure that they did not go to Vietnam back in the day. That double standard is alive and well, from those American chicken hawks to Osama bin Laden, who was (and is?) willing that other people should commit suicide for his cause, but took (takes?) tender care for his own well-being.
What I sense is that progressives and conservatives want many of the same things: a living wage, a safe place to live, a healthy family, education for our children, the right to worship as we choose, enough food, a decent place to live. We want to be free to go about our business without the threat of terrorist attacks; we want our children to come home from war unscathed, or not to go to war at all. We all want these things. We disagree deeply about how to go about getting them.
We have lived with one way for many years, and now we’re about to try other ways. Changing how a government, how a country, is run must be akin to persuading a volcano to erupt in some other direction. Some things, when in progress, are almost impossible to change.
So everybody take a deep breath and get ready to work, because no matter who won that election, we had a lot of work ahead of us. It’s time to think about what you’re thankful for these days, and let go of what you cannot change. I’m thankful that we’re all still here to be in this mess.
I’m thankful for my family and friends, no matter what their politics. I’m thankful for the pleasures of the mind, and that I can still walk, if not very well some days. I’m thankful that my husband is still glad to see me and I’m glad to see him at the end of the day, after more than 30 years together, and that we still enjoy talking to each other. I’m thankful for the saving grace of faith in my life, and the laughter of my adult sons.
I’m thankful that I can still learn things about me that make me try to make my personal volcano erupt in a different direction, although now I sometimes say, heck, I’m sixty years old. I don’t want to take the time or energy to try to change (whatever it is) about me now. This is it.
I’m thankful for that, too. What are your thankfuls this Thanksgiving?
*Thanks and a tip o’ the hat to Julian for the word “thankful” as a noun.

This piece was written to appear in the November 20 issue of the Vashon Loop. Alas, Troy, the publisher, is in the hospital with gall stones, so there will not be a November 20 Loop.