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=> Self-Loathing

Self-Loathing

Posted by farid (Guest) - Saturday, November 8 2003, 11:44:46 (EST) from 148.233.93.94 - customer-148-233-93-94.uninet.net.mx Mexico - Windows XP - Internet Explorer Website: Website title:

Two things, no three, I take credit for. One was figuring out how to fund the Ashurbanipal and present it in such a way that a city would feel reluctant to turn it down. I don't think much of whatever artistry there may be in the piece itself...but there was Art in every other aspect of the project. High Art. The second thing is pushing the outside of the envelope so that some Assyrians could feel a little more bold about speaking up and acting out. I'm the "Malcolm" to Martin Luther King. Having said about every awful thing there is to say, it's become easier for others, who share the ideas but were hesitant to speak out, to come out and say a thing or two. I've taken most of the heat...drawn the most fire...my "extremism" pushed the boundaries of acceptable Assyrianismdoodleness. More directly, Eden Naby can thank me for getting her sued. I made such a point of saying we had to clean up this mess we've inherited where every horse's ass is an Assyrian skolar and exprat before we could hope to reverse the trend and especially attract our saner Assyrians or we are done for. She took it to heart and actually pointed out Norman Solkha as the most egregious ass we have...but still one of several. He, seeing the handwriting on the wall made a desperate bid to silence the vacuum in his head by suing Eden...for telling the truth. Jackie Bejan is another who's mad as hell that anyone stripped her cover so publicly and pubicly. And unless she eats huge gobs of Crow...her nekked lust for power and penis will soon be on public and pubic display in a courtroom in her home town. It's getting harder to seriously maintain that we Assyrians must support EVERYBODY or this heritage is going to hell. It's precisely by doing this...and therefore attracting the worst kind whom we assure of protection from their own follies...that we're just about dead and gone too. Let Assyrian would-be leaders who thought till now there was no place safer for them to play the Fool think again. The Heritage is not a refuge...it isn't a resume enhancer and it isn't a place for "healing". There's serious work to be done if we're serious...if not then expect to be hoisted on your own petard. It just got a lot harder to be Assyrian. The third thing I take credit for is exposing the ones who need it...up to and including Narsai David and, of course, myself in the process. I knew Narsai better than Nimrod, Golani and Bejan and there are things I could say and let slip that would really hurt...but that would be unfair...sort of like hurting me badly enough so I couldn't care for my family...things like that...I won't do. In the last three years before they all joined forces I'd gotten to where I was averaging $90,000 a year from the sale of sculpture...to ASSYRIANS. Not bad. And you'd have thought as a People we'd be pleased and hopeful to see that such a thing could be done at all. The fourth year I had to cut prices in half just to put a little food on the table..thanks in large part to Jackie Bejan and her insatiable cunt. They all had a hand in it...Nimrod and Golani and a few minor players...and of course at the end, when I was really gasping and looking at serous prison time in Mexico, Narsai David stepped up for the coup de grace and in all seriousness he's still going, "who me...but I gave you MONEY". We'll discuss how much he "gave" later. Narsai had a large collection of my sculpture...much of it on display in his house. But for some years now all the pieces were put in storage. Except for one and interestingly enough that's the first piece he ever got from me and he coerced me to get it by holding his efforts to "help" with the Ashurbanipal over my head. It's the first version of the "Chariot of Ashurnasirpal". That was the piece I looked at one foggy morning in 1983 at the foundry in Berkeley and thought..."this could be a monument". It would have been too expensive to start with so I eventually scaled it back to one figure...of Ashurbanipal. The first Chariot I cast sold to Dr. Ishoona Beblis...a good man and an excellent doctor. Oddly enough he gave the piece to Norman Solkha some years later for his cardboard museum. My first-born had just been diagnosed with cancer and being broke as usual we moved in with my mother. The chariot sold for $10,000 and was my first real sale. The money couldnt have come at a better time and I put enough aside to cast a second one. That was just after my first meeting with Narsai, after which he'd agreed to help but only if he would be president of the foundation we started. A few weeks after that he visited the foundry where the second Chariot had just been finished. Upon seeing it he said it was his belief that I ought to give it to him. I had to assume he meant as payment for what he was about to do...the "help" he was giving Assyria. The guy had enough money...but he certainly didn't think to buy it...even though it was sort of a matter of life and death for me and mine. What could I do? To say "no" would have been the end of his "help". As he'd done before when he didn't get his way he would have turned his back on Assyria. As much as I'd looked forward to selling a second one and had just completed it...I figured for the sake of the monument I could take a delay and cast another. Only I hadn't counted on his refusal to even pay me anything at all...to cast another one. He just took that one and I didn't have the money to cast a third Chariot...so I never made more than those two. He must be particularly attached to that piece because while all the others are locked away in storage...that one sits in his kitchen and was featured in at least one article about his new remodled home. Narsai always felt taken advantage of...even when he coerced me into changing the deal we'd made where he allowed me to live in a run down storefront in exchange for a copy of any sculpture I made...with him only paying the casting cost. A couple of years into it he decided one day tht he should get two copies...not one. What was I going to do...we were half-way through with the Ashurbanipal...and so it went. Since I've known the guy he's cried about how abused he is...while he's abused everyone around him...family most of all...but I won't get into that. He's the slickest of the opportunists we have today, all the more reason to show him off...really show him off. Many will say that I shouldn't because of the good he does...and I would jump all over Sarguis all over again because he doesn't know what he's talking about. Narsai and I had a unique and very competitive relationship...at least on his part. At no time in my life did I want to cater to people's appetites...quite the opposite actually. I was always supportive of his achievements where he couldn't wait to denigrate mine and downplay them. I never wanted to be a cook, but I know Narsai had aspirations of being an artist of some kind. He is immensely talented with his hands and has excellent taste in many things. But when he was growing up being an Assyrian and an artist was more unthinkable than it is today. His success in his field has a good deal to do with an artistic sensibility...but it ain't Art and I think he regrets that and that's what made him so damn antagonistic at the same time he was attracted to me. He had such a love/hate relationship with me it was funny...so funny that even with the great deal he was getting he still believed somewhere inside him that I was conning him...that I MUST be conning him...as he said once himself as he wrote out a check..."I don't write checks...I RECEIVE them"! As an example of the good deal...the head of Ashurbanipal and Shumirum he donated to Cal State Stanislaus were appraised at $90,000...and that's another funny one because the appraiser couldn't stand him and refused to even talk to him on the phone...but she liked my work and we got on well. Casting both heads cost around $2,000. Being close to the 50% tax bracket that meant he was able to keep close to $45,000 in his pocket that Uncle Sam didn't get from him...minus casting costs etc. Not only did he make money but he has a plaque attached to both with his and his wife's name as the donors. Not a thing wrong with any of it...everybody else does it...it's time we did...which was the main reason I left Brian and sunny and free Portugal to return to Narsai. In time I would have paid him back everything he "spent"...and he would have had his sculpture collection AND all the goodwill and name recognition that comes from plastering your name on monuments and donated sculptures. Except for one thing...like the rest of them, Narsai can't see why he has to make someone else "famous". He knew that no matter who footed the bill or gave the commission...eventually the artist's name would rise to the top. To him it seemed that I would wind up getting the benefit of all his "work"...the kind of recogniton he really longed for all is life...not preparing chicken breasts in the basement of Macy's. Nimrod didn't want the Shumirum in Chicago largely because I'd get credit for doing more in "his" town than he ever did...why should he make me "famous"? Narsai, also like Nimrod, put my sculptures in storage where they can't be seen and like Nimrod and Bejan, he now stands in the way of the Shumirum getting installed...finally after 14 years. When Narsai bailed out the Shumirum, after Jackie reneged on her promise to pay the $5,000 foundry bill on the Shumirum cause I kept my pants on...he had me draft a letter for the foundry owner to sign saying that the Shumirum Monument now belonged to him, Narsai M. David. And that's why he was eager to make a deal with Nimrod to stick it anywhere in Chicago...a $90,000 tax savings for him...in one year alone. And it was the reason he got so pissed at me...because I STILL wouldn't hand it over...letter or no letter and he took it personally...like for all he's "done for me", the least I can do is allow myself to be screwed so he saves some money and gets credit for the installation. Narsai is a driven man...the cause of his success. Had he not been the way he was he wouldn't have the profile that benefitted the Ashurbanipal and now works for AAS and ZOWAA...deny it as much as he likes. But there's something else to be considered. Narsai extracted a heavy price from me during those years...and just as I'm not sure anone is going to want to put him or herself in harm's way if Jackie and now Solkha get away with this...neither will most artists and poets be put together in such a way as to resist or withstand the kind of onslaught from Narsai I did. These people help themselves first...and their efforts are geared to promoting themselves...as Jackie did such an "outstanding" job paying for the lawns to be mowed at her club...that today no one wants to run for president because who wants to be compared to her? The things these people achieve are tied to their own personalities and can't surive if they pull out. That's not really going to get us, all of us, anywhere. depending on the charisma of one or two outstanding people is a very poor way to build anything of lasting quality and these people know that and it's just the way they like it.... they want nthing that can perpetuate itself, that won't "need" them. Each one is concerned for his or her own glory...and what falls off the table for the rest of us to use we've become accustomed to thinking was the "whole point" of their efforts. Narsai could have used his gifts and position to create something that could outlive him. But why? Why make someone else "famous"? That's why my sculptures went into storage and the reason the only one left is the one he most clearly got the upper hand on...the one he didn't pay a dime for. To Narsai...when he benefits the most, at little or no cost to himself...is when he's most successful. And it's exactly what he's doing as president of AAS...it's just that the rest are as opportunistic as he is and they admire him for it. We can do a lot better...we'll have to. --------------------- - BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

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