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=> The Cook and I

The Cook and I

Posted by Farid (Moderator) - Friday, November 14 2003, 11:38:23 (EST)
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Before moving to Mexico Narsai David asked me to make a humorous sculpture of a chef he could reproduce to give to guest chefs who came to various functions he put together...especially for the AAS fundraisers. Our original deal was that whatever sculptures I made, he was entitled to one copy for the price of casting alone, in return for which I got to stay in a couple of run down pieces of property he owned...or get the equivalent in cash a month if I wanted to go somewhere the roof didn't leak. It started out costng him about $600 a month in defered rent...and then when I moved to Portugal he sent $750 each month until by the time I left St. Helena we'd agreed to $1,200 a month, around $15,000 a year, or about the salary of a dishwasher at a mid-level hotel in San Francisco.

In return he could get any sculpture he wanted for the cost of casting alone. The year he donated the Ashurbanipal head he made $20,000 on that piece alone, which cost $1,000 to cast... plus any others I made that year...can't remember now which pieces were when. I could at least pay him back by about five years ago through donations he could have made and of course he'd have a fine collection of bronzes that would only increase in value...so that eventually he'd have gotten back every cent and then some...not to mention the name recognition that's so dear to his heart.

But the deal never covered pieces HE wanted me to make. I had no interest in making a humorous sculpture for him but felt I had to do it for obvious reasons. He decdided casting costs in the United States were way too expensive...it would have cost around $200 to cast each one and so he shopped the piece around China and Korea where cheap bronze castings are easy to come by. The only problem is they can't do every kind of sculpture well. If a piece has a very rough and textured surface, you're safe. If it's very smooth but has large, smooth area with little detail, like dolphins and whales..you're still okay. They do their worst work on detailed pieces that are also high polished...having a smooth finish. They keep their prices low by knocking this stuff out in a hurry so that their way of polishing a piece is to hold it against a buffing wheel...which smooshes the details cause broze is a soft metal. You have to do it by hand with files working from rough cut to fine and then grades of sandpaper until the piece hardly needs any buffing...working the surface slowly and by degrees. I told him of my concerns but price was the big thing so the bids rolled in.

When I was back in California this time I saw one of the finished Chinese pieces on his desk and it was even worse than I'd feared. The face was "melted" together from the buffing wheel and to cover their tracks they'd applied a really awful patina in two or three shades...and I hate "painted" looking sculptures. I was so dismayed I told him not to tell anyone I'd made the piece...I already said I wouldn't sign it. But on my return to Mexico, still bothered by what had been done to a piece I never wanted to make in the first place, I wrote and asked him not to hand them out to anybody. Since they'd cost him maybe $20 each I figured destroying the few he had cast wouldn't be a big deal. It wasn't a piece to be proud of and it wasn't enough that people wouldn't know who made it...I knew...and I didn't want any piece of mine to receive such shabby and basically "cheap" treatment when the whole thing was out of my hands and not something I ever would have done.

I could just imagine ruining one his "famous" pieces of dead meat...rack of lamb perhaps and then handing it out "free" to people I wanted to honor, no less. Okay, so no one would have known the difference, in the bronze chef I mean, but you to have to remember we're dealing with people, professionals, who get paid lots of money to broil cows and chop onions. If they feel what they do is sacrosant...deserving of books and TV shows and being flogged for every dime they can make from it...when it's nothing more than what our mothers did for free for centuries...then I figured I deserved a bit of consideration for my sculpture. Let's put it this way...I can cook a lot better than Narsai or any of his chefs can sculpt...and ALL of our mothers can serve a better tasting meal than these guys with all the bullshit they haul into the kitchen to fricasee. 'Nough said.

I wrote to Narsai twice before the AAS dinner asking he not hand out the chef sculpture...and got no answer. Then I found out he did indeed hand them out...just as if I hadn't said anything or had no right to. Now in his "sharp" businessman's head he's figuring the piece was his to reproduce in any way he wanted. But there was no agreement signed to such effect and I'm as much a professional as he is...though you can't convince any Assyrian that the Arts are deserving of anything but a patronizing pat on the head. This was going Golani one better...whereas he took it on himself to have my sculpture welded at Ford's...Narsai first ruined mine and then handed it out to people I don't even know and who'll take it back to their cities with them. And it matters not at all that "no one knows" I made the piece...although I placed photographs of it on my art site and on here so word could get out.

Am I making a big deal of nothing? After all, think of what's at stake here...an Assyrian cook is doing "good work" for Assyria...shouldn't I keep my mouth shut and think of all the "poor" people we just killed over there...and shouldn't I want to send some money to the orphans Narsai and I helped create...you know so I can "feelgooaboutmyself" and get some "Closure"...whatever happened to Closure anyway?

Narsai's sent me a very craftilly crafted letter with things like..."you rememer you said"...and.."you knew all along". This is meant for public consumption in case I ever post it. In the letter he comes across as a most reasonable fellow and I'm the nut. He knws PR better as well as he can cook. I replied that his letters were full of his bullshit..and that's all...it was just his...I have my own.

Of course I can't afford a lawyer so I have to get creative. I'm going to send a letter to each chef who received the sculpture explaiing the situation and asking that they return the sculptures...or else. I wouldn't be surprised to learn they'd tossed them in the back of a closet anyway and would be just as glad to get rid of the damn things. I'll send a copy to their bosses as well. If this embarrasses Narsai, he should have thought about it before. I don't know exactly how these people come away thinking I'll stand by and take whatever they dish out...you'd think he'd have learned a bit from the examples before him. His wife, Venus, said to him one day that she hoped I wouldn't sue him...now that I was suing "everybody". Actually I didn't sue anybody...I got sued. But I think she meant...make any kind of trouble at all. Seems to me I gave him plenty of warning...had the slow boat from China been slower he wouldn't have had the sculptures anyway so there wouldn't have been any great loss. But now, there will be.

Certainly I'll be portrayed as some ungrateful nut who's gone ballistic and is lashing out at the leadershit of Assyria because no one will buy my sculpture any more and I can't stand failing in front of Alex and XXXXX. But that's only because we've become accustomed to "Business as usual" in Assyria...run as it has been by store owners and gas station owners, truck drivers and...when we realy want to impress someone...a doctor or 3000...and now a nationally known cook.

Narsai raised $120,000 for BetNahrain...about a tenth of what they used to earn in a minute back in the 70's. I still can't shake the image of how cynnical this is...to dump billions of dollars of hardware on the people and their homes and museums and then to come back over with "Humanitarian Aid" worth an infintessimal fraction of what we ruined and what they need...and then on top of that to "bask" in the gratitude of people who've been so reduced in circumstances that dry bread is welcome and a band-aid seems a god-send. There was no natural disaster that struck Iraq...it was the United States that devastated it...and this piddling aid makes for very poor blood-money and for us to tout Narsai and the rest of them as "Humanitarians" and Grat Leeders is such a vulgar bit of nonsense it makes my flesh crawl.

We've grown so used to making a poor showing in the world...to getting what satisfaction we can from saying..."Miskeena...he/she IS Assyrian after all..so let's not be too harsh on one of our "Great" people." As in..."if we don't respect our own...who else will"? I beg to differ. I have no problem getting respect for my work anywhere BUT in Assyria. We seem to loathe the Arts in general but Assyrian Art and artists in particular. Every Assyrian parent's nightmare is to hear..."Mom, Dad, I want to be an artist"...much worse than, "Mom, Dad, I'm Gay"...because of the shame an artist brings...the fact that you might as well hang black crepe on the house and post a quarantine sign..."Artist Lived Here"...the question being.."Why DIDN'T you become doctor"? Something they could be proud of. But we feel someone taking the Arts seriously is getting above him/herself..."You want HOW MUCH for that thing"? And the other one..."Why should I pay you anything...my kid can make that for ten bucks". Like who's mother can't outcook Narsai...not to mention the "great" Cooks he snags.

So...it's a running battle...this business of trying to get Assyrians to understand that if we're known at all in the world today, especialy in a somewhat positive light, it's not because of our cooks and doctors and lawyers of 3000 years ago or today...but because of our Art and the people who made it. I think it's that old envy and jealousy our small minds revel in. Of all the proffesionals there are among us...not a one of them makes his or her money from doing anything inherently "Assyrian". Any good they do the Heritage is done through the back door..as in, "he's a famous doctor AND he's Assyrian". Chances are he doesn't practise Assyrian medicine or they'd lock him up and throw away the key and his license. No one in the history of the world has gotten more mileage out of sausages than Narsai David has...out of "Assyrian" sausages. You'd think he discoered botuliam or someting. That and the mention of his mother's cooking has propelled this man to the very pinnacle of Assyrian Leadershitgreatness...and all of it basted with "Humaitarian Aid".

Those letters will go out...I just hope they return the sculptures or I have to spend some more money on lawyers. It isn't that dealing with artists is inherently risky..."look at what happened with Fred"...we don't know how to behave in the world outside of the garage or basement and now, kitchen..and on those rare occasions when we do leave the servant's quarters we bring our manners with us upstairs and embarrass the hell out of everybody. Instead of taking the opportunity to improve ourselves with a correspondence course or two...or reading a book or copying the example of our betters...we decide the people upstairs are worthless snobs and we'll be damned if we'll change our GREAT "Assyrian" ways for that "phoney hoity toity stuff". But this isn't "Assyrian" at all...we're just Christian peasant louts for the most part who've learned to do what the ancient Jews did...take inordinate satisfaction from goat turds and sheepshit and pretend we far prefer it that way...in Narsai's case especially. Scratch away the veneer and you gets what you gets. You'd have to know the guy for 20 years to know this. Is it my fault I know him?

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