Posted by farid from customer-148-233-71-30.uninet.net.mx (148.233.71.30) on Saturday, August 16, 2003 at 1:11PM :
The reason Alphonse Odishoo dares recite poetry...that Nimrod stores sculpture in his basement, that Golani feels justified to weld sculpture...the reason Jackie replaces bronzes with clay pots...the reason our leadership casts a jaundiced eye over Assyrian "artists" and "talent"...is because they view the Heritage as a haven for incompetance...for charlatans...for self-serving people too feeble in their abilities to make it anywhere else but in this community where these same leaders have labored mightily to keep the standard for what they call excellence so laughably low that they and their friends should have no trouble gaining distinction...so naturally they think the rest of us are "coming home to Assyria"...to hide as well...to strut and bellow and show our stuff where we realize there are pitifully few expectations because we too...like a Jackie or a Nimrod and the rest know damn well we'd be relegated to the bottom anywhere else EXCEPT in the " Asshole's Sanitorium and Thrift Shoppe" they've made of Assyria.
That's why they slyly encourage you to "go somewhere else and make a name for yourself first"...then come back to be lionized or pussied by them. They know damn well, as I did, that if you do such a thing...why the fuck would you come back? You gonna come back to a family or a lover or a friend that tells you you're worth nothing until some other people in the next town aprove of you? Why the hell wouldn't you stay with those people...people who believed in you, who supported you or at the least, left you alone without smearing your name, your family and robbing you of the ability to support your children? Why would you? The answer is, you wouldn't...as they well know who would send you elsewhere to "prove" yourself...one more threat gotten rid of.
Jackie, Golani, Nimrod...all of them continued with their lives...had Christmas with their children, bought presents...I was the one they broke...I was the one who couldn't afford to be with my children for Christmas...who had to borrow to buy them a few things...not because my sculpture failed...but because these leaders became alarmed and then scared and then exasperated by my tenacity...my insistance on remaining and working no matter what they threw in my path. It wasn't just that they stopped buying sculpture...they set out to make sure no one else would. And all the time I did nothing to them, to hurt them or their ability to care for their families...not even to expose them...that being done splendidly well by just doing good, serious work...which to them is a personal attack anyway as any hint of excellence is abhorent because it it's the same as taking a bat to their heads because, either way, they're left black and blue with lumps all over. These are the things they are best at...this is the way they've maintained their status...this is how they have beggared us and robbed us of our really capable and talented people...our young people mostly and made National Fools of us with high-falutin "Diclarations". And some day soon, when no one comes around any longer to play at being Assyrian...these leaders will shrug their shoulders...say that all their hard work was for naught, wasted on unenlightened and ungrateful people...and they'll stay home and watch TV those extra few spare hours they devoted to Assyria.
Which of them risked one tenth of what I or several others did? (As I write this Jeff has been asking Jackie Bejan for two years or more, who made herself keeper of William Daniels flame and works, for copies which are supposedly for sale and which are supposedly Daniels legacy to us...and she has yet to reply, even to the intermediaries he's asked to purchase them for him...thus is William Daniel to be used as well for Jackie's benefit..."go ahead, BEG me some more") Which of them would have suffered the slightest inconvenience for "Assyria"..which of them rested the entire financial well-being of their families on "Assyria"? Which of them, like a Dadeeshoo, if they couldn't draw their salary from the community...would have remained a single day? These people are patriots and workers for Assyria in their spare time...making the most of the piddling things they accomplish by taking forever to lick an envelope and calling that a challenge...a time-comsuming one no less and expecting our praises.
Making work for Assyria mean so little...making it something largely useless and pointless and measureless...they assume and fervently pray that anyone else coming around must be made of the same stuff...out for what glory can be extracted from nothing. And worse...if you expect to be paid professional prices for professional work...as they expect when they do what earns them their bread...they accuse us of being in it for the money...of not being motivated by the same selfless and careless-of-financial-reward motives of love that they are...when they hunger after money more than anyone else because they also must buy their self-esteem and the good will of others. Which of them would hire a surgeon for their child who did it for "love" alone...and not get the best they could...which in almost all things in modern society also means the most expensive? Only for "dear Assyria" do they want the cheapest...the easiest...the quickest and also the most shabby, the least accomplished and therefore the least threatening. What parent of a seriously ill child places him or herself in competition with the surgeon? Yet that's exactly what these leaders do...they are jealous of the carpenter...the electrician, the plumber, the handyman they have to call to patch together Assyria and keep it flushing...afraid that person will receive the credit for unplugging the national toilets...or repairing the roof...or painting the place. And so they select the incompetant worker...the failed stone mason...the cheap material so that nothing outshines them and "their" contribution...so we'll never be impressed by the worksmanship...only by the one who paid for it...be it as shoddy and godawful as it might be...who cares when you're doing it for Assyria...out of your LOVE...your cheap love.
I have to earn my bread elsewhere...away from the community...outside the scope of Assyrian art. But I haven't gone anywhere. Art is art...and these sons of bitches are sons of bitches no matter what or where or when. The kind of sculpture I make now also comes from love and out of necessity...but the work I do ON Assyria...never FOR it...comes from love only and we all know Love hurts.
-- farid
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