A Projected Future and a Blast from the Past

The artist is already thinking of the piece she will begin when I return to the war zone, which I guess isn't so far away in time now. I was thinking: this is another of the reasons I admire the artist so much. For some it would be a cloth, a garment, a drink, an affair, emptiness, relief, drugs, obsessive behaviour, news-blanking, becoming reclusive. But not for the artist. For her, whatever the situation, it is always work. Not as a distraction. Not as a means of avoiding the facts of life. (Never.) But as a sure line before her. Her mothering skills for example never waver, though nothing to do with work will see her avert her eyes. Where others have a kind of laughable success - in which minor talent possibly is over-rewarded - the artist has nothing to say but industry and exquisite skill. This is why I contacted one of the most important art dealers again in the country just now on her behalf. (I should also have sent him a link to this blog.) I contacted him again after many years twenty-one days ago. He never replied. He used to know me when I worked in the art world myself and I think he enjoyed some kind of professional resonance from this. He also came to see an admittedly minor play I wrote but which was nonetheless produced and performed in the city of the scraped skies with some kind of fanfare. In fact he asked if he could meet one of the actresses afterwards who just so happened to be my girlfriend. Anyway, now, successful, loaded, powerful, he doesn't seem to want to know me. Instead of asking myself what this says about me, it is what it says about him that occupies me most. I just wanted him to look at the artist's work. I didn't want to tell him what to think. I didn't wish to influence him into offering a show - that would have to be his choice. I just wanted a nod from him in the artist's direction. Just like the nods I gave him when he was starting out. I tell you, gallerists are the only people I know who run a mile in order not to do what it is that they are best known for doing. Their loss, I guess. We have our art and the war zone. We are ugly but we have the music. We are not ducking any issue. They, it would appear, they whom we need but wish we didn't, have only money. (Go on, surprise me.) I can't wait to see the artist's next piece.