Brilliant

I’ve known for a long time that we have a prejudice problem in this country. And the worst part is no one is doing anything about it, not Congress, well silly me Congress never does anything anyway, not the news papers, not television.

We despise anyone who has creative ability. There I’ve said it.

You think not? Okay what do you say when someone does something amazing? “You rock!” “You’re a rock star!”

Just what does playing a guitar have to do with accomplishing anything?

But there’s more, we idolize people who become famous because of their athletic ability, their appearance, their notoriety. Just what does any of that have to do with accomplishment?

What do we say about Warren Buffett, Stephen Hawking or Jeff Bezos? If anything we dismiss them as money-grubbing business robbers. That certainly clarifies where we stand on accomplishment. Get famous for a sex tape = good, build a business empire = bad.

And that doesn’t even begin to cover what we think about creative people.

Just how many artists do you know who are living in a garret? No me either, not here or in Paris, and why would anyone want to live in Paris? First there’s all those French to deal with and then you have to learn their language cause they won’t talk to you if you don’t speak French but if you do learn to speak French then they won’t talk to you cause your accent makes their ears hurt. Okay the pastries are good, but keep it under your hat cause my doctor thinks she did a sweetectomy on me and now I don’t even think about sweets.

Artists live in garrets, they have Bohemian lifestyles, just what is a Bohemian lifestyle? I was never really sure about that. Do you have to name all of your children Bo or become a sheep herder so that you can mingle with the rest of the Peeps?

Why not just say vagabonds or gypsies? That’s what the term Bohemian means, wanderers, adventurers, vagabonds. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been pretty clear about how I feel about Oregon roads, I wouldn’t ask a Congressman to wander on them and that’s about as mean spirited as I get. Do you vag your bonds on the road or do you stay at home where your studio is and all of your tools and the easel and the rest of the stuff you need to create?

Okay, I am pretty mobile, my studio is in my computer and even though it’s a tower unit I could pack it up and move it in a hurry. Wouldn’t take an hour and I’d be headed over the horizon looking for the next electrical outlet. And one of these days when I win the Lotto I’m getting a laptop so then I could be really mobile. The Long Suffering has a laptop, a dedicated financial machine, so that when it isn’t being used it can be shut down and disconnected from the Net and the power lines and no hacker can get into an unplugged computer, which pretty much explains why the Long Suffering has complete control of it and why it doesn’t have my portable studio in its little Intel driven heart.

Have you ever heard a national politician say anything good about a creative person? When the natives get restless the Congress cuts PBS. Sure it’s a great target; it has a small audience made up of intellectuals, the mature and the creative. None of the politician’s constituents there you can bet.

You won’t see a politician demanding an end to NASCAR. Nope, even though they can’t spell the sponsor’s names right, the folks running for office lov’em.

Moody, needy, overly dramatic, self-centered, incomprehensible,

And oh yes, nuts. That’s only a partial list of the character traits artists are supposed to have. Some say that in order to be a gifted artist one must be a sociopath teetering between lunacy and violence and of course they cite Van Gogh as the universal example.

So there have been no artists since Van Gogh worthy of analysis? Boy ole Vinnie the earless sure had an impact. And throw in the collective homophobia and you’ve got another reason why artists can’t be trusted, they’re all…you know. There are those who would re-do the ceiling of the Sistine chapel just to remove the work of the noted gay, Michelangelo.

Something in a nice terra cotta, il Pape?

No we aren’t the only field where people wrongly believe most of its practitioners are crazy, but artists sure get the brunt of it.

You know in England when someone accomplishes a major success they say, “Brilliant!” That to my ears sounds so much better than “You rock.” Sure a rock star gets a lot of press. Just one drunken night and a hotel room destroyed and you’re an item in the paper with a guaranteed appearance on Letterman.

Now here’s where I admit I am too old to count. I have lived long enough to become statistically insignificant. Maybe like texting I just don’t get it.

But I will still spend my twilight years admiring the work of Annie Leibovitz rather than Kim Kardashian, I’ll take the word of Warren Buffett over The Donald any day and Stephen Hawking will still soar higher than whichever Manning is in the Stupid Bowl.