I discharged a thundering “Ha” rarely heard in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. A news item had flashed and vibrated on my wristwatch, taking me by surprise. I seldom get an arty news item on my wrist in my doctor’s waiting room. And as luck would have it, another person, a patient no doubt, sat directly on the other side of the small office, looking at me almost immediately. The receptionist, too, leaned over the counter to see what was going on. I felt slightly embarrassed, as if I were being silenced in a library or sneezing in a crowded elevator; the sudden outburst wasn’t something I could explain to the other person. Why? Because they have more immediate concerns like their impending physical, out-patient procedure, or test results rather than hearing my awkward explanation of something so trivial as an art auction. I touched the face of my watch to get a little more of the story. I shook my head and rolled my eyes; I shook my head and looked up at the recessed lighting fixture, and then the door opened, “Mr. Colson, would you like to come in?”

****

Sitting in my hybrid I reread the story on a bigger screen. It seems the artist “Tendril” had sold a three-second nano-card for seventy million dollars at auction, that’s seventy with six more zeros, for a little nothing of a keepsake, the size of a trading card encased in plastic resin. It reminded me of something you would find in a worn-out cardboard display at the end of an aisle as a point-of-purchase item in a midwestern five and dime, looked over by all the prairie home companions and then picked up by the little baby dumplings as her mother or father was headed for the check-out. Bitter? I don’t think so. Old? Definitely-ish. And maybe that was getting in the way of genuinely appreciating this new art world sensation, a story to behold, beheld, beholden?

Should I call somebody or meditate and forget about it. Tendril, really?! Tendril scans little plastic toys and makes 3D animations with them. Toys I would gather and toss in a box each night after my toddlers had gone to bed. In no time, you’d give the little plastic forget-me-nots away or sell them at a garage sale, donate the baubles to Goodwill, or, more probably, throw them out. But there must be an inner beauty that the neo-gen-x,y, and z youthful millionaires love, similar to a Proust Madeline experience. Look at me, sometimes, and I wonder if too much art history or artist biographies have impeded my imagination. Maybe everything I’ve done is too precious, well documented and organized. It was still a mystery at sixty. But not playing by the rules at my age could be a fundamental tactical mistake; I might come off as a desperate implacable old fogey, frightening.

My art and interests are such an obsession. Seeing Tendril “get it” so effortlessly and at such a young age makes one stop and contemplate where one is going or doing. Sometimes, I hate being alone with my thoughts, extended what-ifs, and theoretical if-only wormholes that last for hours and lead nowhere but perhaps YouTube. Other times, I am at peace with what I have done creatively and only wish to have given my life’s work a better opportunity to have been seen. It’s not about the money or the fleeting fame; I can guess what that is all about. I would hate to spend a chunk of my time being interviewed and forced to show up at parties and fund-raising functions. But having crowds of people see my pictures, sculptures, and installations together in some retrospective is a dream worth having …and getting. But how? At sixty, I feel like I have tried everything at least once.

These dreams are not something you stumble on later in life but have followed me and my Byzantine psyche forever. This non-stop self-castigation has hindered my growth and upset the apple cart of well-intended visual pronouncements. I had already gone through the phase of blaming everyone around me for extraneous domestic obligations like helping with the dishes or taking out the trash, deviating my artistic course by suggesting I teach or volunteer at a homeless center; the last straw was my art dealer’s disapproval and disparaging candor toward my attention gripping nouvelle nuances in the form of psychedelic paper-mâché reproductions of milieu floral arrangements from sixteenth-century portrait paintings.

When I created these works, they were exquisite and a feast for the eye, soothing the most irritable of discriminating tastes. I was pretty proud and had spent several years researching and perfecting my process and concerns, but to no avail. They didn’t sell, and travails soon appeared as I went loco in a lazy state of passive resentments and incorrigible bad behavior best described as blatant licentiousness carried out with a devil may care attitude, shocking to all who loved me or ever tried to engage me in the simple arithmetic of life. There was a time when I stopped answering my phone, wouldn’t leave the house, and binge-watched all the CSIs.

My partner would try and understand but finally gave up after I started spending savings on second and third-tier talent agents, copyright lawyers, and regressive primal scream therapy. It wasn’t until I reached the end of my rope by touching rock bottom that this addiction of mine was surely going to get the best of me. I felt like a Moby Dick parable; I was the old harpoon that Captain Ahab would throw out into the vast ocean when necessity beckoned, all wet and rusted with remnants of blood and whale blubber stuck to the end of the dull point of the spear. “Wake up, man,” I heard myself say more than once and decided then to reconnect with colleagues, some friends, and maybe some gallerists from the good old days.

So here I am, sitting in my car, ready to get back on track again, prepared to face the music and participate in the game of life without the need to win or feel victimized by my own internal combustible ego. Imagine being so self-consumed with your work that everything else is an obstacle or a bad deal, a waste of time and in some cases a miscarriage of legitimacy.

Vitamins anyone? I got my first check-up in years, and besides a tic of high blood pressure and a deficiency in vitamin D, I was good to go and more or less start a whole health regime backed by science and calculated to keep my calorie intake down below 2000 and run two to three miles a day for starters, “Ring.” Excuse me, that’s my phone. It looks like the doctor’s office, and I just mentioned them, “Hello, Yes? Really? OK, Thank you, I will.” That was the doctor. He said I had a suspicious growth on my liver and needed to come in for more tests and an MRI. “Ha.”

JMe/2021