Priced to Move

Yesterday I gave away all my remaining oil paintings. It sounds terrible, but it actually was a lot of fun. They were done five years ago, in my sad man collage period (not anything that I'd really like to be remembered for). I also gave away the huge nude that hung for a while in the living room until my roomies got tired of her. She is going over someone's fireplace.

The lady who took them exclaimed that they were "way better than than I expected" so good in fact, that instead of painting over them, she was going to "hang them up." I even signed them for her. I got to be an art celebrity for 30 seconds.

I told this story to a few friends. They were all vaguely horrified.

Filthy Lucre Rant

I am going to make a 12 hour attempt to get some dough out of my next out-from-under-the-bed art collection, just so I can say I tried. If no one calls in the next 12 hours, they are going on the free-list (where my real fans lurk) because I cannot move them.

Why Its Easier to Just Give it Away

This kind of "art" is produced by the tons in art schools. For people to part with money, for stuff that essentially has no material value, the artist has to be a big deal. I like it when people are happy and although money is nice, I'd much rather the art go to a good home. It is so depressing when things don't sell, that I'd rather avoid that at all costs (what! I am not a Damien Hirst!!? Will My Ego Ever Recover?). And I hate putting pressure on my friends to buy things (no pressure! no pressure!). This is why real artists have agents to deal with the chores of pricing and bill-collecting. Its not just tedious, its actually painful.

Farewell, Little Git!

I am reducing my guitar collection by 1. The beloved steel-string Samick is looking for a new home.

PS Once again CL came through for me. The Mighty Samick was purchased by a homeless mother of two small children (+ a dog) who is planning on touring and she needed a knock-around guitar. She paid me more than I asked. There was actually a bidding war between her and a dude named "Travis". I was surprised.

Good-bye, Samick, have fun on your adventures! I bought it when I was living in Redding, 9 years ago. I was taking guitar lessons at the local JC. It was the first instrument I purchased. The tone was so beautiful when I tried it out that I wept. I stopped playing it after I moved from Capitola, then I lost my calluses (talk about weeping for music!) and I got the super-easy playing classical guitar and blah blah blah.

PPS I actually bought the Samick for my sister. She wanted something to use when she led her students in song (even then, she knew she was going to teach kindergarten). She was afraid to pick it out by herself, so she sent me with $100 bucks to get one for her. I brought back the Samick, after spending $200. She was so horrified by the price (actually, decent guitars start around $500) that she wanted her money back. I bought her out and kept it. She bought a really cheap guitar that was unplayable (even after my dad attacked it with the belt sander).

Purchasing instruments is very magical. I'd imagine its like buying a puppy. You are not just a consumer looking for a product, its more like you are shopping for a friend, seeking a give-and-take that is lacking from other buyables. Guitars seem to hum on their own. I never realized it until I changed out the strings for the first time. I pulled the old strings off and all of a sudden it was mute. I hadn't been aware of it making noise on its own, but without the strings, it was like its soul was gone-- like trying to find a spark of life in a shoe box. As soon as it was strung again, the imperceptible humming started again. Its is vaguely uncanny.

home?

With eleven days before I move on from the glorious town of Flip Flop, I am looking around this house and wondering exactly what it was I considered home.

I came home today after being over the hill for five solid days (when one way of my communte is consistently an hour and a half long, I opt to couch surf). The living room was tastefully redecorated (the usual piles of other people's stuff mysteriously vanished in my absence. Bravo, housemateys!) and the corners appointed with regal Costco houseplants. I had the odd sensation of going into someone else's house. Fortunately, the homey piles of dishes still held court in the sink and the linoleum was still curling up in front of the dishwasher. After a second, more penetrating glance, the house still had its familiar level of decay.

My perpetually messy room has become the vortex in my packing operation. Warehouse, abandoned studio, sty-- it wears many guises, but not that of "bed chamber." The floor is covered. I had a brief vision of it's potential in my mind- a peaceful, uncluttered space, where I could rest, surrounded by a few small art pieces. In some ways, it has ceased to be my room. In a few short days, the M*ster will be calling it hers. It is slowly morphing back into a space that is not my own.

Is it the comforting, familiar mess that says "home?" Or does "home" simply mean a place that I intend to stay at for more than 30 days into the future (assuming a month to month lease)? Are certain things or people necessary to a home? I am teetering on second base, at a figurative apogee, at once fleeing from and looking for home.

The Power of Free

I am an unstoppable hoarder. I have never met a cigarette package on the ground I didn't have to have. Or postage stamps, or postcards, or letters, or cards, invitations, gallery announcements, ticket stubs, receipts.

I cleaned out some drawers today. I found camera lenses tossed with empty TOP tobacco boxes (which has the most brilliant design ever) with Soviet stamps and q-tips. If I had been going through someone else's I would have thought they were crazy. Each scrap of paper, like a physical metonymy, carries with it a memory of a place, or a person. I reviewed a good ten years of my life this afternoon. I filled a bag with odds and ends-- scraps I couldn't use, lenses for cameras I don't have, mysterious objects I kept because they were shiny. I put an ad on Craigslist, in the free section, and within minutes, I had a taker. I didn't have to put my treasures in the garbage, they are going to a good home. I am so happy. Cleaning is fun again.