Apples Under the Earth
Tuesday 5 January 2010
It is impossible to get decent potatoes where I live. I grew up on the south coast of WA among potato growers and in a potato growing family, and potatoes have been copious in the cast of my life. I not only have high expectations of them, I have very firm views of how they should be grown. I did not know this about myself until I first went to Pinnaroo in South Australia. At home, potatoes were grown in black dirt - which means a mixture of peat and sand - in swampy paddocks. The local term for this type of paddock - which flooded during winter but shrank back to a shallow peaty lake in summer - was ‘lagoon.’ Like most regional Australian words - and Western Australian words in particular - it has passed out of usage and is now only alive in the minds of a few crusty individuals such as myself.
To return: Pinnaroo is in dry country, flat and scrubby with not a river or a ‘lagoon’ to be found; it is built on limestone and has air that is as harsh to the throat as are the stones to the feet. It is the type of country that is elsewhere given to mixed grazing and cropping - and plenty of that does go on there - but the major industry is potato growing. Great mechanical irrigators trundle like something out of an early draft of The War of the Worlds, showering enormous paddocks with clear water drawn from great deposits immediately underground - and the potatoes grow beneath in orderly rows in a way that my decidedly Western Australian mind believes firmly to be against nature.
I was so shocked at how deeply I felt when I first saw this, that I pulled over to the side of the road to sit for a while and get my breath. It was a stupid moment, not even comical, but a hard reminder of how firmly cemented we can become to our own experience that we can sometimes not see the world for the largeness that it is.
Learning that we can be wrong is one of life’s hardest and most important lessons, but it can also be one of the most deceptive. It is all to easy to conclude that if we can be wrong sometimes, then we must be wrong all the time. This is why most people end up losing their confidence early in life, and living thereafter with regrets for all that they did not do. The truth is that you can never know you are wrong until it is proven. It is like the art of wooing. The lack of ‘yes’ does not imply ‘no,’ it implies ‘umm...’
Most artists hate direct selling. There are good reasons for this. It takes time away from making art - more importantly, from thinking about the art to make. It insists upon trivialities, which feel as though they corrupt the mind. It demands self-promotion in a way and to a degree that most artists find repulsive. It is draining. But, more than all these reasons, there is the constant dread of rejection hiding within every encounter, and artists die in an environment of rejection.
The artists that manage sales the best are not actually artists at all, but trade-names - such as Jeff Koons - with a staff of practising artists behind them and which produce the actual work.
That notwithstanding, we must survive in a money economy, and if we cannot find someone to make the sales for us, then we must make them ourselves. When selling, always ask for the sale. Do not suggest it or hint at it or even ask if it would ‘be of interest’ or ‘something you would like.’ Ask outright. It is important to remember that no sale is ever lost until you hear ‘no.’ The number of times I have made a follow up call to an apparent lost cause only to find that a follow up call was all that was needed to win a ‘yes’ is beyond counting.
The same rule applies to every part of being an artist: you have never failed until the failure is proven. The best play I never wrote was left unfinished because I lost confidence for a week and threw the draft in a discard file. Years later, I discovered that it was some of my strongest writing. In the time that had passed, I had ‘lost’ it as a play, but one day I will recover something from it.
Artists need reality checks. Those that are luckiest have collaborators or agents or confidants with whom they can talk over their work. I have been unlucky in that regard. Reality sometimes has to hit hard before I can see it.
Which is why I can say now: Take heed! South Australia is a another country - they grow potatoes differently there!
Noël Christian
homestead:Theatre of Words
http://www.facebook.com/pages/homestead-Theatre-of-Words/195922452014?ref=ts
http://www.myspace.com/homesteadtheatre
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=505844404
To return: Pinnaroo is in dry country, flat and scrubby with not a river or a ‘lagoon’ to be found; it is built on limestone and has air that is as harsh to the throat as are the stones to the feet. It is the type of country that is elsewhere given to mixed grazing and cropping - and plenty of that does go on there - but the major industry is potato growing. Great mechanical irrigators trundle like something out of an early draft of The War of the Worlds, showering enormous paddocks with clear water drawn from great deposits immediately underground - and the potatoes grow beneath in orderly rows in a way that my decidedly Western Australian mind believes firmly to be against nature.
I was so shocked at how deeply I felt when I first saw this, that I pulled over to the side of the road to sit for a while and get my breath. It was a stupid moment, not even comical, but a hard reminder of how firmly cemented we can become to our own experience that we can sometimes not see the world for the largeness that it is.
Learning that we can be wrong is one of life’s hardest and most important lessons, but it can also be one of the most deceptive. It is all to easy to conclude that if we can be wrong sometimes, then we must be wrong all the time. This is why most people end up losing their confidence early in life, and living thereafter with regrets for all that they did not do. The truth is that you can never know you are wrong until it is proven. It is like the art of wooing. The lack of ‘yes’ does not imply ‘no,’ it implies ‘umm...’
Most artists hate direct selling. There are good reasons for this. It takes time away from making art - more importantly, from thinking about the art to make. It insists upon trivialities, which feel as though they corrupt the mind. It demands self-promotion in a way and to a degree that most artists find repulsive. It is draining. But, more than all these reasons, there is the constant dread of rejection hiding within every encounter, and artists die in an environment of rejection.
The artists that manage sales the best are not actually artists at all, but trade-names - such as Jeff Koons - with a staff of practising artists behind them and which produce the actual work.
That notwithstanding, we must survive in a money economy, and if we cannot find someone to make the sales for us, then we must make them ourselves. When selling, always ask for the sale. Do not suggest it or hint at it or even ask if it would ‘be of interest’ or ‘something you would like.’ Ask outright. It is important to remember that no sale is ever lost until you hear ‘no.’ The number of times I have made a follow up call to an apparent lost cause only to find that a follow up call was all that was needed to win a ‘yes’ is beyond counting.
The same rule applies to every part of being an artist: you have never failed until the failure is proven. The best play I never wrote was left unfinished because I lost confidence for a week and threw the draft in a discard file. Years later, I discovered that it was some of my strongest writing. In the time that had passed, I had ‘lost’ it as a play, but one day I will recover something from it.
Artists need reality checks. Those that are luckiest have collaborators or agents or confidants with whom they can talk over their work. I have been unlucky in that regard. Reality sometimes has to hit hard before I can see it.
Which is why I can say now: Take heed! South Australia is a another country - they grow potatoes differently there!
Noël Christian
homestead:Theatre of Words
http://www.facebook.com/pages/homestead-Theatre-of-Words/195922452014?ref=ts
http://www.myspace.com/homesteadtheatre
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=505844404