171025 Mistaken identity

 – or – Don’t get me wrong. 

People think I’m an artist just because I studied and taught art in college, made things that look like art and had art shows. Even the etching presses I make “art works of art,” they say. Maybe it’s true, maybe I’m an artist, but what good am I to the world? What good is art? What is art. As one woman said, my plan for the Northwest Print Center Incubators is on the scale of “solving Seattle’s homeless problem and all the elephants of the world.”

She nailed it. Those are exactly the things I work on. The making of an artwork, by comparison is a trivial, self-indulgent and pointless waste of materials and time. I will not add to the waste I see all around me when there is work to be done to help solve Seattle’s homeless problem and save all the elephants. I mean business, the only business I’ve ever been in is education.

It happens I can draw, and when I was a kid everyone said, “Oh, Billy, you should be an artist,” and that wired my brain to think so. Other options open to me were engineering, dentistry and the military (Air Force). Sports was out, and anything to do with math was out. At the critical point when the Army beckoned me, I opted to teach.

Yet, I would serve my country! In college I learned about American Values from conservatives like Giovanni Costigan, plus those of my dad and extended family (some of them, anyway!). I admired my professors and I said I would be like them, I would be a great teacher. Art, in and of itself, was not as important as the Big Picture. To me that meant helping to solve Seattle’s Homeless problem and all the elephants of the Earth.

If my ability to draw and make beautiful etching presses (and ugly ones, too, if that were necessary) is a help, that would be great.

The question is, How? How can art help the homelessness in Seattle? I looked into that. I talked to a homeless man recently. His name is Kiesek. He’s Eskimo, down here to get out of the cold. He told me his background: alcoholic, wife abuser, on the lam, and his name means “shoulder blade.” I wondered, as he told me his story, and I told him mine (Legend of Vladimir Chichinoff), can I help this homeless person?

The main thing he liked was my story of Vladimir Chichinoff. Partly it was because he knows about skin boats. On his Eskimo corporate ID, there’s a picture of a skin boat, in fact. He offered to buy me dinner, or drinks, whatever I wanted. He almost begged me to accept something from him. I deferred. How could I accept a gift from a homeless man?

I pictured myself a story teller in those minutes I was with Kiesek. The homeless need entertainment, too, if it takes their minds off their situation a moment. But would it help? I’m a teacher, but my teaching is limited to manufacturing beautiful objects, such as etching presses.

Could I teach Kiesek to make etching presses? Actually, people like me have been trying to teach Kiesek to make a living, keep a family and sustain these things for over forty years and they—and he—failed because the sellers of booze were better at teaching. The alcohol industry, soft drink manufacturers and titillating entertainment know how to teach.

I have tried to steal those industries’ ideas and adapt them to American Values as I understand them from my history lessons. To some degree, I have succeeded. But for Kiesek, I have only a story. Any notion I might have of training a group of people—homeless in Seattle—to make etching presses’ parts and, better yet, own the market I created is stupid.

That part of Kiesek’s brain that is crucial to success of a healthy and whole life and style of living is owned by the industries that got to him first. Those industries beat the hell out of the well-meaning, non-native teachers from my culture. I can’t compete with the alcohol, tobacco and drug industries. No teachers can. The winner in this competition is death itself.

I’m pro-life. That doesn’t mean I’m against birth control and abortion; it means I’m in favor of living. Life is a gift. Every day I live, is a gift. My mother gave me life, assisted by my father and I see them manifest in my reflection in the mirror every morning I awaken. “What will you do with this life we gave you,” they say. “What will you do with the talent I gave you,” they say, like the lord in the parable.

Today is October 25, 2017, and I will work on Fox Spears’ press (he happens to be descended from the indigenous people a little like Kiesek). I will write a few more pages in my autobiography. I will enter my novel in a contest for adaptation to the screen. I will work with our daughter and my wife at assessing the value of our gallery’s contents and preparing it for sale or destruction. There may be surprise visits and emails, perhaps even another order for a Halfwood Press.

Many things await me. I’m grateful. As for the homeless, I wrote an opinion to the Seattle Times last year at the height of what appeared a renewed effort to help the homeless. I suggested building schools under parts of I-5. Education is key to helping the homeless; but are the homeless teachable? The answer is that it depends on who owns the rewards centers of their brains, and how do you compete with those owners? Can you save the elephants? That depends on the competition; can you beat those who are buying the products of the killings? Can you feed the families of the farmers whose crops are destroyed by elephant herds? Can you feed those elephants, competing with human populations which are exceeding Earth’s capacity to feed and water them (and satisfy the reward centers of those humans’ brains?

In short, can you handle it, teacher? Yes, I can, if the student can listen. If the student can handle it.