Listing to Port
Nineteen days separate the work I do today from my first year review show on March 2nd. The chalk board is filling, the pencils are grinding down through the sharpener on the wall and all the graph paper in the studio is deployed. The ideas are like wild horses racing around the stadium and the lasso flies from my hand sepperating one from the heard and pulling it in here and saddling the damn thing and riding it around a bit until it starts behaving itself. But with horses you never want all the fight to go out of it, so these ideas must remain a little jumpy. Springy and ready for adventure, hopefully I can bring them out full and bright and alive. The artist needs to reach out and thump the audience in the chest. Like a nine pound hammer of "Wow".
Nineteen short days to build the first big statement of my time here in the UCSB MFA, that causes a smirk, a smile that I hope reveals just a little to much confidence, like the first time I took a wrench to the training wheels on my tiny blue Schwin and grew up a little faster than expected. One of my nephews cackles a lot when you get him excited, the other one is too old and cool for cackling but I can still bust him up once in a while. But the little one yells with wild abandon when you get him going, and I like getting him going, full body laughing, full open smile whaling, shaking, wiggling, eyes squeezed shut cackling. It reminds me of that first ride down the driveway through the front yard on that little bike, screaming with joy the whole way. Then that precious moment when the ride ends and you realize two great things, one, you made it, and two, its time to do it again.
Its very wrong how much I like a deadline. Its very wrong how much I like it when someone says I can't do it. Its like calling Marty McFly a chicken, you might as well just plan on being proven wrong. Yes that's a "Back to the Future" reference, get over it. This first year has been a challenge, in ways I didn't anticipate, and I think it has taken this long to get the right perspective, to see it for what it is, a big damn bicycle that needs its training wheels ripped off and a Melroy pedaling like his shoes are on fire. This may look a little wobbly to the rest of you, but to me its just getting good.
The moment they think they got him on the ropes is the moment to duck, cause the left hook is coming, and there is no way they can do a damn thing to stop it, best to just get out of the way and watch.
