3,965,000 people were born in the U.S. in the year of my birth. About half of them were males. About half of those have since died. That leaves me, and one million other men.
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On my 62nd birthday, my wife and I went out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. It was a Friday, the thirteenth day of the month. The Mega Millions numbers were 8, 22, 30, 42, 45 and 3. No one won.
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Richard Barton Freeman, born the same day I was, died in October 1972 in South Vietnam when his helicopter was shot down, exactly five months into his tour. He was not even 20. Neither was I. Our military draft lottery number was drawn February 2, 1972. It was 244. Neither of us had to go. But Freeman did. Had I been drafted, I would have emigrated to Canada. Otherwise, I would be dead.
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I am 62. I am now more or less free from having to sell myself. I no longer need to walk fine lines around my principles to please others or worry about how I portray myself. My professional reputation is history — I do not need a new one.
One thing I will not do is adopt an artist persona. An artist persona is an imaginary being conjured up in the typical artist statement, a person who sees things others do not, thinks things others cannot, and exists only to express his or her deep connection with the natural order of things and to finally share such riches with you, the art buyer he or she hopes to impress and thereby achieve his or her self-validation.
As I said, I am more or less free from having to sell myself. I breathe freely.
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Many years ago, I discovered that I am the plagiarist son of novelist Kurt Vonnegut, the weary optimist who wrote about the absurdity of life and human behavior but ultimately decided that his fellow travelers were too charming to fail. But fail they did. So it goes.
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Some days I cannot help but wonder whether I am making the most of life. I have learned that I am not an entrepreneur. I am never going to have an art business with hundreds of followers and great demand for my paintings. Instead, I will paint some quirky paintings, each new one as different from the last as I can manage, and someday I will put them up for sale in the local vendor mall. I do not have the energy, the optimism or the hunger of your thirty-year-old Etsy artist. I am not too charming to fail.
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I know. I could get up at 6:55 am and brew a pot of coffee. By 7:20 am I would be heading out the door to shoot photos of foggy mountain scenery. I’d park the car at 8:55 am and walk into my graphics arts class. After class, I would drive home and pull weeds in the garden until 11:33 am. Then my wife and I would watch The Price is Right while eating leftovers from last night’s dinner. At 12:30 pm, I would head downstairs to my studio and paint for a couple of hours to the background music of 1990s angst-ridden female singer-songwriters. I would pause at 2:15 pm for my daily Twitter post, then return to painting. At 2:50 pm, I would walk over to my computer and put the finishing touches on my latest multi-track recording. That would take me to 4:00 pm, giving me an hour or so to read that World War I book I’ve been meaning to finish since 2011. I would put the book down at 5:12 pm and make martinis. My wife and I would then sit down in front of the television and cue up the famous scene from Goodfellas where Ray Liotta races through another of his coke-soaked days to the tune of “Jump Into the Fire” while an ominous helicopter tracks his every move.
Ah, the restless artist’s life.
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It is a cold, dark sea we swim through, plucking and admiring the bright pearls we find here and there along the way, helping us ignore the patches of blackness beyond.
We all know how pre-school kids draw the sun — a big yellow circle with a bunch of lines coming out of it. That’s all right for little kids. But we figure 30-year-olds know better. Do they? Here is how a bunch of 30-year-old kid artists draw the sun:
These images were lifted from various online news and weather sites. Let’s consider them in turn, from left to right.
The first sun has an odd appearance. Unlike our familiar sun, it is dark in the middle and illuminated from above… but by what? Another, brighter sun perhaps?
The second sun is even odder. Bright in the center, like our own Sun, but with a bright perimeter, as if it were being illuminated from behind. The most remarkable part, though, is that this sun not only emits light but reflects it! We can only wonder what heavenly body, somewhere off to the right, is creating that window-like reflection. I know. It is our tenth planet, Windows 10.
The third sun is your everyday cosmic water-balloon, complete with a weird air bubble. But don’t pop it — those spiny rays could fly out and hurt you!
Our fourth sun, not to be outdone, casts a shadow! I’m not sure what celestial plane this shadow is falling upon, but that doesn’t seem to bother this pre-school artist. When you have photoshop, who needs physics? Physics isn’t taught until high-school. Photoshop can be mastered by kids.