Posted by pancho from pool0357.cvx20-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.251.102) on Sunday, December 15, 2002 at 12:27PM :
In Reply to: Re: What I meant by this is.... posted by Paul Younan from ? (12.242.209.181) on Sunday, December 15, 2002 at 11:27AM :
My darling wife was seldom as angry with me as she was when you and I started sparring back when. She couldn't understand why I was being so damn abrasive to such a good person...AND your wife had just had a baby!
What kind of a monster was I turning into?
To set the scene...I'd just been hammered by a thunderbolt in the shape of the behavior of Nimrod and a few others regarding the Shumirum....not because of any money issues...it was paid for already...but because people I had trusted and believed in had turned out to be so false and unworthy.
We, like most people only more so, place an inordinate amount of energy and trust in appearances...so much so that we prefer the virtual reality of virtue over the real thing. It would have been easy enough for me to trade on my status as the first Assyrian artist to blah blah blah. I used to have lines of people shaking my hands...kissing my hands...tears in their eyes because of what I had done, "For Ashur". I don't buy that kind of praise...it's more for the sake of the person giving it than for any need I have.
I decided to cut to the chase...Lilly says I had no right to practice "tough love" on her or anyone...I wasn't. I was merely giving people my worst shot along with whatever good I had to offer...to see who out there can take both sides...who can look past the addmittedly...even deliberately exagerrated rough edges without losing sight of something fine and worthy...not to be liked all the MORE...but to get down to issues faster with people who can tell the difference.
It would have been easy to be loved and lionized by Hanna for instance...there was even a road into the Gassbags mealey heart if I had absolutely no scruples. My first brush with Hanna came when he "improved" a photo I posted of a sculpture. I could have thanked him...I believe he meant well...but I thought that as an "artist" himself...he should have set the example that you don't take it upon yourself to "improve" what isn't yours...that he of all people should have shown respect for the arftist's right to present his work as he sees fit. It isn't that far from what Hanna presumed to do, to what Atour Golani did in taking my sculptures to Ford Motor Company and having them "improved" by welding as he saw fit.
I jumped all over Hanna, knowing full well how weak headed and desperate we are to be petted and stroked...to see how he would react...if he could admit he had acted with gross presumption...in a manner he should rather have set about discouraging others from following...in a manner intended to increase our people's awareness of the sanctity of Art...not of things...but of Art, which we used to understand so well that even our fragments from 3000 years ago are revered around the world.
My point? Sorry for the rough handling...and thanks for being one more person who keeps his eyes on the prize.
-- pancho
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