I woke up, I dunno, sometime, and read the hardcover copy of Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie I'd gotten from one of the little free libraries. 1950 printing. That's a hell of a book. Right up there with Charlie And The Chocolate Factory at least.
I'd done my practice last night, while watching inane YouTube stuff, if by "inane" is meant interviews with Art Spiegelman and so on. And went to bed sometime.
My playing is improving, I can tell. Now that I think about it, the sport I did, was not something you could "muscle". It wasn't like, do more push-ups and you'll get better. It was a delicate coordination between muscles and nervous system that takes years to develop, and trying to push things makes it worse. You just have to have a talent for it and to do it a lot.
And in the beginning, no one but me seemed to believe I'd get places with it or really even give a shit. And my first competition, I did 2nd to last only because the guy who placed last fucked up. But I was convinced I was going places and even my best friend pooh-pooh'ed it until it was really obvious that I was going places with it. Looking back, I'm amazed I had that much blind faith in myself. At one point I did decide it was silly, and that I needed a real trade, that being of sign-painter and even befriended a local sign-painter desirous of learning the trade in the proper way, as an apprentice.
But the sign-painter was more of a "kept man" than anything else and didn't paint much or send me out on sub-jobs, and besides there was another competition coming up. There was always another competition coming up. That was another big factor I think. There were always competitions, large and small, like little stair-steps, and bigger stair-steps, so there was always a place to put one's foot however small. There was one coming up that interested me so I made sure I was practiced up and went, and qualified for Nationals. I didn't know it was a qualifier for Nationals. So the thing, that I was good at, kept pulling me on.
I look back, and I was really on the edge of homelessness but somehow it didn't matter. People and situations came through for me. Needed things like a place to live, supplies, and so on, were arranged. I don't know if people have changed from a quarter-century ago, but this is something that can happen if one has a specialized skill.
It was like this when I was supposed to become an artist as a kid. Art supplies, books, you name it, it was arranged for me. It was when I was 18 and realized I was not that good that as an adult I'd just be another broke-ass artist and if my heart were fully in it I'd just have gone ahead and things would have worked themselves out but my heart was not in it. It was all my parents' idea. The oldest would be a writer and write the Great American Novel or something, and my older brother was to be an astronaut or something, and I was to be an artist. I guess the youngest two would be housewives and that would be that.
The truth is I may have been considered one of those musical savants if I'd been let at the piano. You get these parents, who have two full sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica and subscribe to The National Geographic but they don't really put any effort into their kids. The oldest should have been urged to write, little pieces and poems and so on, and I should have gone to art classes, real art classes, where I had to sit down and draw a chair, or whatever, every day. Or at least they'd realized music was my thing and let me at the piano. I'm not complaining so much as mulling over how things turned out the way they did.
We've all turned out painfully ordinary; mediocre. Even in my case, yeah I was national champion a couple of times but it's not all that hard to do. It takes some work but it was easy in those pre-internet days, and somehow floating along without having to work a job. I had free time in a way no one born after 1995 will understand. The conditions conducive to the thing occurring were arranged, and thus, unsurprisingly, the thing occurred.
Maybe the art work was seen by myself as a sort of chore that was expected. After all, one of my earliest memories being of myself painting some thing, with my mom hovering nearby and all and sundry looking on. Maybe it was, to me, like the weeding we had to do - esp. of nutgrass, a sedge that grows like a grass but with a "nut" below to sprout back from and maddeningly, another "nut" much further down. "You have to get the root!" mother would say. I accepted the weeding unquestioningly and I accept that I must do artwork unquestioningly....
At one point, though, I came to enjoy doing artwork. My drawings of my seashells went from primitive to really quite good. I learned to draw bicycles, and those are not easy things. But of course then we lost our Portlock house and everything was topsy-turvy-tizzy as we went from a house on the next ridge from ours, to a place in La'ie, to the Schofield Sands, to Pat's In Punalu'u, and I'm not even sure I've got the order right. Eventually our Pupukea house was finished and we moved in, and eventually things settled down and I even came to enjoy art again, just for a bit. I started doing nice little colored drawings of the "lady crab" shells I'd picked up at Ke'ehi lagoon at our friends', the Bethunes. I was getting into undergound comix which Mom let me buy in Hale'iwa, 2 or 3, depending on the budget. She'd bought me MAD so she bought me these. They were full of great art.
But then we started down the slope of decline again, and now art became a way to maybe scare up a few dollars so my sisters and I could eat. A job. Plus the island was overpopulated and still is, with starving artists.
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