#but my three geckos and seven snakes... they’re the real issue | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

coreymichaelsmithson · 5 years

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The Gecko

I dance when I paint.

I don’t mean this to sound like some kind of barfy New-Age metaphor; rest assured that I haven’t yet become the “I wear floral caftans and practice yoga and drink kale smoothies and shop at Whole Foods and the whole universe dances through me, rama-lama-ding-dong” version of myself. I mean to say that I dance in the actual sense of moving rhythmically as I wield my brush. There are good practical reasons for doing this … sometimes it’s important to rehearse a tricky stroke before committing it to canvas, so I trace in the air what I intend to do, and prepare myself in advance for the actual execution. Some strokes are so complex in their trajectory, twisting and turning on themselves like the coils of the small intestine, that I need to make a few practice tries first. I have to use my whole arm, from shoulder to fingertip, and on really long strokes, dozens of other muscle groups come into play. Add some music, a soupçon of dramatic flair, and voilà! Dancing. But there is another, weirder aspect to what I do with my body when I paint. When my painting is going well, when I’m really “in the zone”, it feels like I am physically manipulating the forces within the composition. And by “forces” I mean actual dynamic forces … like torque, shear, tension, compression, lift, drag, gravity. These can all be represented in two dimensions, but I like to diagram them out in four. So I’ll make a range of expressive motions, which may seem to any observer like the gestures of a conductor, or a sculptor, or a magician. I may push, pull, draw out, spin, wave, smudge, swirl, scrape, all without touching the canvas. This may go on for several minutes, until I’m satisfied that I know what needs to happen. Then, and only then, I’ll make my move.

Lately, all this dancing has drawn the attention of local wildlife.

The place where I’m staying, on the northeast coast of Florida, is surrounded by water: ponds, marshes, rivers, and estuaries. Herons and egrets flap overhead, and falcons perch on the live oaks. Snakes make an occasional appearance. Because of all the swampy green space nearby, the yard is overrun with skinks, anoles, whiptails, and geckos. Our studio space has four large picture windows, and a pair of sliding glass doors. Each window has a mesh screen. Sometimes, the smallest lizards will cling to these screens and just hang out for a while. They’re probably doing this to enjoy the ventilation and to scope out the yard … but it’s a cute, endearing behavior, and it makes me strangely happy to see them.

As I was working on a particularly challenging painting, dancing out my curlicues and whatnot, this one gecko scurried up the mesh of the nearest window, and parked himself right in the middle of my view. He kept turning his head this way and that, eyeballing my progress from various awkward angles. After a few minutes of this, he climbed down the screen, crossed a few inches of patio, and zipped back up to the top of a nearby lawn chair, which allowed him to see more directly into the window. I’m guessing it was my dancing that caught his eye. Maybe he couldn’t tell if I was a threat, a large predator lumbering about on the other side of the window. Maybe he thought I was a particularly gawky crane. But, at the time, it seemed like he was interested in watching what I was doing, for he stayed in place a long time, tilting his head back and forth to look at either me or my canvas.

This may sound absurd, but I must tell you why the interest of this gecko filled me with such profound sense of validation. But in order to do so, I’ll have to plunge into a very dark place for a while, so that I may impart some important contextual information. Bear in mind that I am saying this all quite matter-of-factly, while calmly sipping my tea, without a lot of handwringing or lip-quivering or Sturm und Drang, so please don’t panic as you read. What follows is not meant to worry you, nor am I merely bemoaning my bad fortune … rather, I wish to paint this oddly joyful experience in a fuller, more revealing light. So bear with me for a moment, through a few paragraphs of heavy weather, and I promise that we’ll eventually find our way to a happy ending, the kind you’ve come to expect from my stories.

The fact is, I’m in trouble. Real trouble.

My bank account is now five hundred dollars in the red, with more automatic bill deductions coming in every week. My phone’s been shut off for non-payment. Pamela’s WA tabs have expired, so I can’t legally drive her … as a result, her battery’s gone dead, and she’s had unused fuel sitting in her lines for three months, which may lead to further complications. My laptop and smartphone are beginning to show signs of wear and tear, and I can’t afford to replace either. The big picture gets worse the more I look at it. I have over $160,000 in student loan debt, $9,000 in New York State tax debt, and somewhere around $50,000 in IRS debt. My bank account is likely to be seized again any day now. Because I haven’t been able to make even the bare minimum on previously established payment plans, and because I don’t have much freelance income, I have no means of negotiating for further relief. Every former address has piles of unopened mail from debt collectors. Bankruptcy will not dissolve either my scholastic or tax liabilities. Furthermore, because of my loan defaults, I cannot access my college transcripts to apply for teaching positions or degree-dependent jobs. And I’m too old and weird to be an attractive candidate for most of those appointments anyway. I have no health insurance, and can’t afford even sliding scale care to address my three broken teeth, lifelong asthma, and untreated severe depression. Free clinics cannot help with the severity of my dental and mental issues.

In short, things may seem a little bleak at present, down here in the Sunshine State. But as I said, there is a silver lining to all this … so hang tight, and in a little while I’ll lift us back up into the land of dancing and portent reptiles.

Now, I’m sure that some of you are already rolling your eyes and saying, “Well, you made your bed … quit whining and get a real job.” This seems to be the go-to response when artists don’t perform well in a capitalist society, and many people have already said as much, directly to me or among themselves. The thing is, my résumé is already full of “real jobs”: sanitation, construction, moving, disaster services, dishwashing, deliveries, landscaping, corporate video editing, darkroom printing, customer service, telemarketing, proofreading, design, teaching, consulting. I’ve worked in a car factory, a soup factory, a vineyard, a children’s hospital, a bookstore, a college library, a marketing agency, an art supply store, two publishers, five photo labs, and serviced more industries than I can even remember. I’ve designed menus and logos and show posters, I’ve bartended and filled dumpsters and hauled furniture and maintained spreadsheets. I’ve scrubbed soot off of ruined antiques, painted stripes on wastebaskets, taken dictation from lawyers, torn down drywall, pulled weeds, yanked nails, bottled whiskey, loaded ceramic tile, and demolished office cubicles. I even once helped raise a circus tent. I’ve kissed plenty of asses, both in the literal and figurative senses, for ridiculously low sums of money. I’ve done plenty of the icky stuff that nobody wants to do.

But my work ethic, skill, and earnestness simply aren’t paying off ... yet.

This is not an unusual predicament for people like me, though. The kind of jobs that folks expect me to have, based on my education and capabilities, won’t even grant me an interview, no matter how carefully I tailor my cover letter and CV, no matter how much positive energy and enthusiasm and hope I muster for the application. I’ve been completely and conscientiously sober for nearly seven years now, but even that level of commitment and self-care hasn’t done anything to change my financial situation, which has reached an all-time nadir. I’ve learned that “rock bottom” is an illusion … at the bottom of the well you’ll sometimes find not bedrock but quicksand and bobbing turds.

The inevitable question to ask, of course, is whether or not I am bringing all of this on myself. I’m sure some of you insist that I have this masochistic / self-destructive narrative that I’m adhering to, some kind of badly warped Van Gogh complex. You may feel that I remain impoverished only because of my own stubbornness, self-pity, delusions of grandeur, sloth, or outright stupidity. Some of you probably feel that I keep failing because I never apply myself properly, that I just don’t try hard enough, that I should love myself more, that all I need is a good full-time job with health insurance. You may have already thrown up your hands in frustration. I don’t begrudge you your opinion or your irritation … but to all of these things, I can only say, “I’m doing my best with what I’ve got.”

Throughout my career, I’ve been very forthright about my struggle with living … not because I am fishing for sympathy or solutions, but because I’ve come to believe that sharing such challenges openly is an essential part of my purpose as an artist. I am describing my state of crisis not to alarm you, or even to cry for help, but simply to reveal the full dimensions of my situation. I also hope that by explaining my fears and doubts I may help you to alleviate some anxiety of your own … for there is no relief quite like that of fellowship. As some of closest friends know, I have been on the precipice for my entire adulthood, and have come close many times to losing my grip altogether. Many of you can relate. Despite these troubles, though, I’ve clung stubbornly to existence, even when my fingertips are slipping on the beveled edge, just so that I could occasionally arrive at a moment like the one I had today with the gecko … moments when my life’s work seems to reveal its actual shape, when I can feel the ongoing dance of the world move through my fingers, when I am reminded that the long meandering road itself is the whole point. All those shitty jobs and sleepless nights were a vital part of the composition. They all brought me here, collectively, to this one instant, when I was dancing with a brush in my hand and a lizard was watching me from the window, a moment when everything changed.

Art is the alchemy that transforms any hardship into gold.

I hope you’ll come to understand what I mean when I say, right now, that it feels like as if I’ve inadvertently engineered my entire life just so that my passion might catch the eye of a wandering gecko.

I keep working because there is more work to be done. I keep fighting to live because I believe that I have an important message to deliver, and that I cannot rest until it is safely received. I don’t yet know what this message is, or where it comes from, or why it has been placed in my clumsy hands … but I feel burdened with the responsibility of lasting long enough to relay it. Judy Garland once told me the secret of immortality, and now a gecko is telling me the secret of artistic success.

So I am here to tell you about a gecko who was watching me paint.

I am here to tell you about a gecko who is now forever splayed on the window mesh of my mind, a gecko who stares at me with a mixture of curiosity and confusion as I struggle to keep my brush moving, as I desperately dance away from the reality of ruin, as I choose one more day of making art over surrendering to doom. I am here to tell you that this gecko is looking sideways at my canvas, with his googly roving eye, and he seems quite pleased with my output. I am here to tell you that this gecko has become my biggest fan; if I achieve nothing else in my career I’ve at least entertained one living creature with my artistry.

I am here to tell you that the gecko is delivering a message through me to you … on behalf of all the artists who have ever lived and died in total obscurity, all the forgotten and abandoned and hopeless creators who valued experiences more than fiscal solvency, those who saw many of the world’s most wonderful riches despite having no money or fame or toothpaste. My friend the gecko is saying to us, you and I, that it’s all been worth it. Every flawed and stupid choice we’ve made has been the right one, as long as each of us keeps trying our best to write a compelling poem with our life story. The gecko is telling us, you and me both, that everything’s going to be okay. He says that no effort is wasted, that no bravery goes completely unnoticed, that no talent is ever squandered if it has brought comfort or amusement or a moment of beauty to others. He says that we won’t be remembered for our poverty, but we will be remembered for our grace under duress. The gecko is assuring us that no sincere artist is a failure. The gecko believes in you and me, just as I believe in you and me. In fact, the gecko just whispered to me now that you’re the richest person he’s ever seen, and that your dance moves are awesome. The gecko told me to tell you to keep dancing, no matter what, for as long as you can, and to never give up on your gifts, which are plentiful and splendid and rare. He says he admires your brilliance, and your stamina, and your coordination. He says that he can see the whole world dancing in your hands.

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