Bedtime Beverages

'Crystal tumbler of absinthe'! 'Crystal tumbler of absinthe'! Finally, somebody understands Pretty Lady. Although her beverage of choice this evening is an Art Nouveau pint glass full of Midas Touch, which, she likes to think, was probably provided by the cartload at Cleopatra's shindigs. It is disgracefully expensive at Pretty Lady's corner store in Brooklyn, however--so much so that she's considering buying a case of it, next time she pops out of The City, to a place where local grocery stores do not have both a captive market and exorbitant overhead.

Somebody offered Pretty Lady some actual absinthe, once, back in the days when it was still decidedly illegal. (Is it still illegal? Pretty Lady read a long article in The New Yorker about a modern-day absinthe-distiller, but Wikipedia doesn't say anything about the bans having been lifted in the modern-day proto-Puritan police state that used to be our beloved U.S. of A.) The absinthe story is part of a long, long story about Pretty Lady's naive youth, which she refuses to tell in public until a certain party has actually passed on, which event looks, possibly, to be imminent.

Pretty Lady has no remarks on that.

The moral of the long story that Pretty Lady is unable to tell, however, is that Pretty Lady Cannot Save Your Soul. And if you try to get her to try, this is Bad for Everyone. She realizes that most of you already knew that. And without the long story, this moral is bald, it is bare, it is boring. Pretty Lady is sorry about this, but not sorry enough to tell that story. It's on a Xeroxed chapbook in the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet, and there it will stay.

No, darlings, as Pretty Lady's old friend Raphael used to say (before she permanently alienated him, in the very week before she left town forever, by telling him that her Best Friend was Out Of His League--it was TRUE! Blast these fellows and their fragile egos!), once you've reached Enlightenment, all there is is Hanging Out.

There are no Needs, no Desires, no Commitments, no Divorces, no Plans, no Agendas, no Goals. There are no Contracts, no Exchanges, no Battles, no Support, no Derision. There are no Separations at all. All of us has everything, and thus have no need to get it.

Pretty Lady has been meditating, lately, upon Funding for the Arts. (This is relevant.) She recently received an email questionaire from a local arts organization of which she is a desultory member. One of the questions was, "How has being a member of X Organization helped your career?"

Pretty Lady has been PMS-ing, just lately, which may be why her reaction to this particular question was so extreme. "No, and WHAT CAREER?!!!" was an approximate summary of her response. Upon further consideration, tallying up her relationships and histories with arts organizations in general, she realized the truth: that the more she has relied upon external entities to provide her with a Career, with Support, with Opportunity, Funding and Exposure, the more the aggregate result has been a gigantic sucking sound, as Pretty Lady's creative energy disappears down a bureaucratic vortex.

Yes, Pretty Lady could tell you more sordid stories than you have the time or inclination to read, about those dear friends who said, with a straight face, "All you have to do is get these six organizations to fill out ten identical forms and sign them, agreeing to match funds, in-kind if necessary, write up a proposal, send in your application, and you have a fifty-percent chance of getting the smallest available grant to work with the most troubled children in the worst school in the city! For a really short time! Isn't that sexy?" Or the cultural organization representative who declared, "This is a wonderful idea. You'll need about forty thousand dollars, and we don't provide grants, but we can provide the hoops for you to jump through so that you can qualify to ask someone else for the money..." Or the sweet, friendly, warm and cuddly art dealer, who, after being friendly and cuddly for a year and a half, said "No, it's a waste of time," when Pretty Lady offered to display her portfolio.

And these were the projects that Pretty Lady initiated, out of her own creative ingenuity, after spending a decade or so filling out the more conventional reams of paperwork for approved artistic Career Trajectories, and figuring out on her own that it was merely a huge pyramid scam. Degrees, residencies, grants and competitions--pah! These are Nothing! They are Not Art! They are Pretension, they are Agenda, they are Precious and Foolish and False!

That is what Pretty Lady now thinks about all that. She now wishes only to communicate, to all those hungry artists out there, in whose eyes she sees that selfsame desperation lurking--let go. You have what you need. Your absinthe tumbler runneth over. You have your hands, your mind, and almost certainly a computer; use them! Care not what the Public thinks! De-schmooze those Curators, those Directors, those Lord High Dispensers of Wholly Inadequate and Downright Insulting Grants!

Because the best investments Pretty Lady ever made in her art career have been 1) family; 2) friends; and 3) vocational school. Love and Support and Somewhat of an Income, in other words. She wishes she had realized sooner that she needed nothing more.